Post by linsi on Dec 26, 2008 23:28:51 GMT 10
quote ko na lang po ditoang exchanges sa multiply: eto na po
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as literally as Possible
Category: Books
Genre: Religion & Spirituality
Author: A.J. Jacobs
This is a social experiment I wouldn't impose as punishment on criminals, but Jacobs makes it both illuminating and entertaining. How far can he take Bible literalism for a whole year? He tries to avoid discriminating which traditions he will observe. Some hundreds of injunctions, like the one about taking eggs from under mother birds without hurting the mother, can be done once and crossed off, like a list of things to be done within 365 days. Other commands won't go away, like observing "Thou shalt not lie", when his wife keeps asking "What are you thinking?".
As I feared, Jacob's juggling act gets complicated. He notes, "In Judaism, the biblical laws that come without explanation -- and there are many -- are called 'chukim'". There's also a Hebrew term 'Chasid Shote', meaning a righteous id like the guy who avoided helping a drowning woman lest he break the ban on touching her.
Along the way, Jacobs searches out fellow literalists. He invites the Jehovah Witnesses to his house to learn they don't believe in the Trinity or Hell, since they claim those doctrines arn't properly in the book. He learns of Jews who want to bring back polygamy, and a gay pastor whose pamphlet titled "What Jesus Said about Homosexuality" opens to a completely blank page. He finds there's a group called "Jubilee USA", which seeks to apply Old Testament laws about forgiving debt in the Jubilee year to the problem of odious debt in Africa. In his personal quest for literalism, Jacobs finds that the line "Love ... keeps no record of wrongs" forces him to delete a computer record of incorrect statements made by his wife.
Anyway, it's a surprising trip, and Jacobs is certainly changed. He emerges from his year more grateful for life, and more funny than ever. This is a well-conceived, delimited experiment in religious practice, that's well reported, and highly productive of insights small and big.
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usapan:
rainwalker1 wrote on Dec 21
any taker of same experiment using the quran?
briangriffith wrote on Dec 22
The Quran has only a few rules in it. Almost all the rules in Islam are added in other books. So the experiment in the Quran would be interesting -- Islam without the Sunna or the mullahs,