CptStern
suckmonkey
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- May 5, 2004
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man lives for year on literal interpretation of Bible, very interesting read
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21186291/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...e05/BNStory/lifeMain/home?cid=al_gam_mostview
As I write this, I have a beard that makes me resemble Moses. Or Abe Lincoln. Or Ted Kaczynski. I've been called all three.
It's not a well-manicured, socially acceptable beard. It's an untamed mass that creeps up toward my eyeballs and drapes below my neckline.
I've suffered for my beard. It's been caught in jacket zippers and been tugged on by my surprisingly strong two-year-old son. I've spent a lot of time answering questions at airport security.
I've been asked if I'm named Smith and sell cough drops with my brother. ZZ Top is mentioned at least three times a week. Passersby have shouted ?Yo, Gandalf!? Someone called me Steven Seagal, which I found curious, since he doesn't have a beard.
The facial hair is simply the most noticeable physical manifestation of a spiritual journey I began a year ago.
My quest has been this: to live the ultimate biblical life. Or more precisely, to follow the Bible as literally as possible. To obey the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love my neighbor. To tithe my income. But also to abide by the oft-neglected rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers. To stone adulterers. And, naturally, to leave the edges of my beard unshaven (Leviticus 19:27). I am trying to obey the entire Bible, without picking and choosing.
...this project would be a way to explore the huge and fascinating topic of biblical literalism. Millions of Americans say they take the Bible literally. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, the number hovers near 33 percent; a 2004 Newsweek poll put it at 55 percent. A literal interpretation of the Bible ? both Jewish and Christian ? shapes American policies on the Middle East, homosexuality, stem cell research, education, abortion ? right on down to rules about buying beer on Sunday.
But my suspicion was that almost everyone's literalism consisted of picking and choosing. People plucked out the parts that fit their agenda, whether that agenda was to the right or left. Not me. I thought, with some na?vet?, I would peel away the layers of interpretation and find the true Bible underneath. I would do this by being the ultimate fundamentalist. I'd be fearless. I would do exactly what the Bible said, and in so doing, I'd discover what's great and timeless in the Bible and what is outdated.
As I read, I type into my PowerBook every rule, every guideline, every suggestion, every nugget of advice I find in the Bible. When I finish, I have a very long list. It runs seventy-two pages. More than seven hundred rules. The scope is astounding. All aspects of my life will be affected ? the way I talk, walk, eat, bathe, dress, and hug my wife.
Many of the rules will be good for me and will, I hope, make me a better person by the end of the year. I'm thinking of: No lying. No coveting. No stealing. Love your neighbor. Honor your parents. Dozens of them. I'll be the Gandhi of the Upper West Side.
But plenty of other rules don't seem like they'll make me more righteous at all. Just more strange, more obsessive, more likely to alienate friends and family: Bathe after sex. Don't eat fruit from a tree planted less than five years ago. Pay the wages of a worker every day.
And a good number of the rules aren't just baffling, but federally outlawed. As in: Destroy idols. Kill magicians. Sacrifice oxen.
1. Which version of the Bible should I use?
I go to a Bible bookstore in midtown Manhattan. It's a huge Wal-Mart-sized store with fluorescent lighting and a long counter of cash registers at the front. My salesman is named Chris, a soft-spoken guy with the body of an Olympic power lifter. He shows me tables covered with Bibles of all shapes, sizes, and linguistic slants ? from the plain-spoken English of the Good News Bible to the majestic cadence of the Jerusalem Bible.
He points out one Bible I might want. It's designed to look exactly like a Seventeen magazine: An attractive (if long-sleeved) model graces the front, next to cover lines like ?What's Your Spiritual IQ?? Open it up and you'll find sidebars such as ?Rebecca the Control Freak.?
?This one's good if you're on the subway and are too embarrassed to be seen reading the Bible,? says Chris. ?Because no one will ever know it's a Bible.? It's an odd and poignant selling point. You know you're in a secular city when it's considered more acceptable for a grown man to read a teen girl's magazine than the Bible.
It's a good bet that, at some time or other in history, every single passage in the Bible has been taken as literal. I've decided I can't do that. That'd be misleading, unnecessarily flip, and would result in missing body parts. No, instead my plan is this: I will try to find the original intent of the biblical rule or teaching and follow that to the letter. If the passage is unquestionably figurative ? and I'm going to say the eunuch one is ? then I won't obey it literally. But if there's any doubt whatsoever ? and most often there is ? I will err on the side of being literal. When it says don't tell lies, I'll try not to tell any lies. When it says to stone blasphemers, I'll pick up rocks.
It's the first day, and I already feel like the water is three feet over my head.
I have chosen Sept. 1 to start my project, and from the moment I wake up, the Bible consumes my life. I can't do anything without fearing I'm breaking a biblical law. Before I so much as inhale or exhale, I have to run through a long mental checklist of the rules.
It begins when I open my closet to get dressed. The Bible forbids men to wear women's clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5), so that comfortable Dickinson College sweatshirt is off-limits. It was originally my wife's.
The Bible says to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibres (Leviticus 19:19), so I have to mothball my poly-cotton Esquire magazine T-shirt.
And loafers? Am I allowed to wear leather? I go to the living room, click on my PowerBook and open my Biblical Rules file. I scroll down to the ones about animals. Pigskin and snakeskin are questionable, but it looks like regular old cow leather is permissible.
But wait ? am I even allowed to use the computer? The Bible, as you might have guessed, doesn't address the issue specifically, so I give it a tentative yes. Maybe some time down the road, I could try stone tablets.
And then I stumble. Within a half hour of waking, I check the Amazon.com sales ranking of my last book. How many sins does that comprise? Pride? Envy? Greed? I can't even count.
I don't do much better on my errand to Mail Boxes Etc. I want to Xerox a half dozen copies of the Ten Commandments so I can Scotch tape them up all over the apartment, figuring it'd be a good memory aid.
The Bible says those with good sense are "slow to anger" (Proverbs 19:11). So when I get there at the same time as this wiry 40ish woman, and she practically sprints to the counter to beat me in line, I try not to be annoyed.
And when she tells the Mail Boxes Etc. employee to copy something on the one and only functioning Xerox machine, I try to shrug it off. And when she pulls out a stack of pages that looks like the collected works of J. K. Rowling and plunks it on the counter, I say to myself: "Slow to anger, slow to anger."
After which she asks some complicated question involving paper stock ?
I remind myself: Remember what happened when the Israelites were waiting for Moses while he was up on the mountaintop for 40 days? They got impatient, lost faith and were struck with a plague.
Oh, and she pays by cheque. And asks for a receipt. And asks to get the receipt initialled.
I don't have time for this. I have a 72-page list of other biblical tasks to do.
I finally make it to the counter and give the cashier a dollar. She scoops my thirty-eight cents of change from the register and holds it out for me to take.
"Could you, uh, put the change on the counter?" I ask.
She glares at me. I'm not supposed to touch women ? so I am simply trying to avoid unnecessary finger-to-finger contact.
"I have a cold," I say. "I don't want to give it to you."
A complete lie. In trying to avoid one sin, I committed another.
Month Two: October
When a woman has a discharge of blood, which is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening.
?Leviticus 15:19
Day 34. In case you were wondering, Julie, my wife, got her period yesterday ? which is bad news in two senses. First, it means that our attempt to be fruitful and multiply has failed yet again. Second, it ratchets up the biblical living to a whole new level of awkwardness.
The Hebrew Bible discourages the faithful from touching a woman for the week after the start of her period. So far in my year, adhering to this rule has been only mildly uncomfortable, nothing worse. In fact, it's got an upside: It dovetails quite nicely with my lifelong obsessive-compulsive disorder and germaphobia, so it's turned out to be a brilliantly convenient excuse to avoid touching 51 per cent of the human population.
A female friend will come in for a cheek kiss, and I'll dart my head out of the way like Oscar De La Hoya. A colleague will try to shake my hand, and I'll step backward to safety.
Julie, however, finds the whole ritual offensive. I'm not loving it either. It's one thing to avoid handshakes during flu season. But to give up all physical contact with your wife for seven days a month? It's actually quite exhausting, painful, and lonely. You have to be constantly on guard ? no sex, of course, but also no hand holding, no shoulder tapping, no hair tousling, no good-night kissing. When I give her the apartment keys, I drop them into her hand from a safe height of six inches.
"This is absurd," she tells me, as she unlocks the door. "It's like cooties from seventh grade. It's theological cooties."
I tell Julie that I can't pick and choose what I follow in the Bible. That'd negate the whole point of my experiment. If I'm trying to get into the mindset of the ancient Israelites, I can't ignore even the most inconvenient or obscure rule. I also point out that I didn't send her to a red tent.
She's not amused. "I feel like a leper."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21186291/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...e05/BNStory/lifeMain/home?cid=al_gam_mostview
