This one’s easy to sum up: Jacobs (who gets paid for his OCD, basically — he lets weird projects take over his life and then writes books about them; his last was about reading the entire encyclopedia cover-to-cover) spent a year living by the Bible’s rules as literally as possible. Everything from “though shalt honor thy father and thy mother” to obscure stuff about not wearing clothes with mixed fibers and tithing your fruit. He has two goals here: to show that even the most fundamental of religious fundamentalism is by necessity selective, and to explore his own uneasy relationship with religion.
I loved reading this book. At first, I was annoyed with Jacobs’ flip tone (his day job is as a writer for Esquire, as he reminds you every three pages, so I guess flip is his home turf) — I wanted more in-depth consideration of some of these weighty issues. But I found I couldn’t get away from Jacobs’ life, even when I wasn’t actually reading. And by halfway through, the book — mirroring Jacobs’ own journey — had gone from jokey to irreverently reverent.
He does a creditable, if not particularly scholarly, job throughout of separating the actual words of the Bible from the layers of interpretation built up over centuries. Despite having never read much of the Bible besides my bat mitzvah Torah portion and the Yom Kippur portion every year, I’ve been cynical about it my whole life, thanks to the many nutjobs who use it as an excuse for fucking up my country — which was pretty much the position Jacobs started from. I came away from the book with Jacobs’ newfound appreciation for some of the Bible’s wisdom and beauty, and a desire to read Ecclesiastes, at least.
One of Jacobs’ most profound insights comes on his pilgrimage to Israel:
My quest is a paradoxical one. I’m trying to fly solo on a route that was specifically designed for a crowd. As one of my spiritual advisors, David Bossman, a religion professor at Seton Hall University, told me: “The people of the Bible were ‘groupies.’ You did what the group did, you observed the customs of your group. Only the crazy Europeans came up with the idea of individualism. So what you’re doing is a modern phenomenon.”
I’ve loved that crazy European individualism all my life…. This year I’ve tried to worship alone and find meaning alone. The solitary approach has its advantages — I like trying to figure it out myself. I like reading the holy words unfiltered by layers of interpretation. But going it alone also has limits, and big ones. I miss out on the feeling of belonging, which is a key part of religion…. I tried to do [Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah] alone. I fasted. I ate sweets. I sent portions to the poor. But I was doing it cluelessly and by myself, and it felt empty.
Yes. I still consider myself Jewish because of the connection to my grandparents and great-grandparents and on down the line to Moses. I visited my aunt and uncle last week and saw old pictures of my grandmother’s family at a Passover seder, and I was struck by the similarity to my friends and I laughing over our own seder meal (with, I bet, fewer jokes about Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who). But if I didn’t have those Jewish friends to build a Passover tradition with, if our vegetarian seder with its homemade haggadah weren’t the “custom of our group,” would I still celebrate Passover? Heck, no.
But other customs of my groups include quoting Buffy at the drop of a hat and apple-picking in October and snowffle ball after midnight on New Year’s and celebrating Pi Day as a college-friends reunion. The Bible is nowhere in there, and no matter how much respect I may come to have for its words and its wisdom, ultimately it’s tradition (Tradition!) and society that make believers.
(Totally unrelated side note: the barista at 1369 in Inman looks exactly like a hipper alterna-chick version of Brenda from Adventures in Babysitting. I hope she didn’t spike my Tab with Drain-o.)
Question: Talk to me about your experience with the Bible. Have you read it? Do you follow any of its teachings, consciously or unconsciously? Do you have a prejudicial eye-rolling reaction when you hear the word “Bible,” or do you feel like you need to keep your faith hidden among us secular urban heathens? We talk about sex and money all the time, but religion is still somewhat taboo — let’s get uncomfortable!
7 responses so far ↓
1 frog // Jul 29, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Have I read the Bible? As my grandpa says, Does a bear live in the woods?
Haven’t read the whole thing, but I have read large chunks of it, old and new testaments alike. It’s what happens when you’re raised Southern Baptist — and when you go to church every Sunday and most Wednesday evenings for your entire childhood and adolescence. Also, during the period when I considered myself a devout Christian (from ages 10-16) I also read the Bible every day. It’s called a “devotional”.
I’ve gotten over my anger and cynicism enough to be able to attend church with my grandparents when I visit them without completely losing my mind. I even fix my hair without complaining. Turns out church services are really great for mentally organizing my to-do list. Very, very occasionally I feel an urge to address the Universe using the God-language I was taught. Otherwise I do credit my Christian upbringing with making me the fairly spiritual person that I am. I’m pretty content being a new-age-goddam-pagan-hippie, though, and don’t think I’ll go back to being all Jesus-happy anytime soon.
Anyway, I’ve got lots of stories. We should talk sometime. :)
2 Sara // Jul 29, 2008 at 12:43 pm
In addition to listening to the Yom Kippur portion yearly, I’ve read the Book of Job in King James. I love it, it’s one of my favorite works of literature. I recommend it.
3 Arun // Jul 29, 2008 at 4:37 pm
My opinion, the Bible is less evil than the Bhagavad Gita. But it still ranks up there with one of the more evil producing idea(s) of humankind.
Maybe I’m not the best person to discuss religion with. RIght now, my faith in humanity is at a nadir.
4 Michael // Jul 29, 2008 at 10:31 pm
From kindergarten through 12th grade, I went to a school that was half Hebrew and Judaic studies. I’ve read most of the Bible, much in two languages — all of the Chumash (“five books of Moses”), some-but-not-all of the Prophets (good bits only from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and missed some of the Twelve entirely), maybe-all-but-I’m-not-completely-sure of the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and so on). To its credit, by the time high school let us go, we had enough background to intelligently study the Bible-as-literature and Bible-as-religious-foundation and, dare I say, the serenity to know the difference.
As you say, Sam, there’s something of a distance between either of those Bibles and the religion-is-tradition point of view. But maybe the break is a little less absolute than you make it out to be.
The stories in the Bible comprise a (some would say the) canon — for some time and place, a body of literature that you could assume were background knowledge common to everyone you met. When you mentioned Buffy and BSG and Dr Who references above, you were talking about the same thing on a small social scale, but of course we have society-wide versions also: write something in this font, and you’re automatically invoking Superman imagery in the mind of your reader. (Oof, I’m going to look like a fool if WordPress doesn’t embed images :-) The words and grammar of the Bible was the Superman font of its time, and I’ll send you a dove carrying an olive branch if you don’t believe some of it still is.
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to claim that a society is in some ways influenced by the family of stories it uses for its canon. And the Bible is only a small part of that, of course — along with Greek/Roman mythology, Shakespeare, and so on… oh, including that other book called “The New Testament”, about which I know far less than I feel I ought.
So the answer is, I do see influences from the Bible all around. I sometimes feel funny doing so — not the way I feel funny eating a bacon-cheeseburger, because Lord knows I’ve never batted an eyelash over that. But I feel like I’m more conscious of some of these currents than I would be without this strange religious background I ended up with, and in the end I’m glad of it.
5 Sam // Jul 29, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Michael:
Oh, I would never begin to claim that the Bible doesn’t heavily influence our society. Of course that influence is huge, even on people like me who’ve never read the whole thing (or even most of it). But that influence — the metaphors, the language, the stories that most of us are familiar with — isn’t the same thing as *belief*. That’s the distinction I was making. I celebrate Passover because it’s a tradition of my family and my friends, but that doesn’t mean I actually believe God sent a bunch of plagues to the Egyptians, or that any other part of the Bible is the literal word of God.
I thought it was interesting to read about someone’s journey back to the original source of these influences, as he tried to tease out which pieces of what anyone credits/blames the Bible for are actually part of the text.
So, since you mention appreciating your Biblical education, now I’m curious — how much Biblical knowledge are you raising your kids with?
6 Lorelei // Jul 29, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I’ve read various bits and pieces of the Bible over the years. I keep telling myself I’ll read the whole thing some day, but parts of it are deadly dull. I have real problems with a lot of the various Christian belief systems I’ve been exposed to, so I was really prepared to hate the book.
Then I took a Bible-as-literature course in college, and not only made me read the text, it gave me ways to think about it in context. I tend to read the Old Testament as the history of a culture, and the Gospels as philosophy. Jesus says a lot of intersting and thought-provoking things, and overall I think he has a lot of good advice on how to live in this world. It probably says something that this almost never comes across in my interactions with actual Christians.
I’m usually happy to discuss religion/philosophy all day long, in case you’re interested.
7 Michael // Jul 30, 2008 at 10:04 am
D., age 9, goes to Hebrew school twice a week (3hrs Sunday morning, 2hrs Tuesday afternoon). This seems like a huge amount of his otherwise-free time, and I sometimes cringe. But at the same time it seems like so much less than what I had that I can’t imagine it’s enough. Much to my relief, he gives all evidence of enjoying attending; if he were fighting against it and unhappy, I don’t know what I’d do.
The past year, 3rd grade, things changed notably: before then the language studies were foundational, but last year he could genuinely read simple stories in Hebrew.
Of course, your questions were about Bible studies, not Hebrew language. It turns out I can’t separate them from each other. I feel like the ability to read the Bible itself, in Hebrew, was a key part of my learning the distinction between the document itself and the reverberations it has on society. Probably the Hebrew-ness of it isn’t as important as I make it out to be; surely someone who read a translation could do the same.
For D., it’s early days still: this sort of Hebrew school education is inevitable aimed towards his Bar Mitzvah. What happens after that? I have to admit I don’t know — don’t know what either of us will want, to tell the truth.
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