CatholicBibliophagist read and liked Skylar Burris's review of The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible:

"This book was amusing, although it occasionally inspired eye-rolls as the author’s literal interpretations of Scripture sometimes defied the Biblical context and both Jewish and Christian tradition (even orthodox and fundamentalist traditions). Th...more This book was amusing, although it occasionally inspired eye-rolls as the author’s literal interpretations of Scripture sometimes defied the Biblical context and both Jewish and Christian tradition (even orthodox and fundamentalist traditions). The author’s attempts to draw a list of commands and advice from the Bible and to follow it literarily is at times comical, and it ends up highlighting the importance of following Scripture in the context of a tradition and a fellowship of like believers. It reveals the ultimate inadequacy of religion apart from community; it shows how solo devotion, while valuable to a point, can only take a person so far and can end up being quite lonely.

The author was surprisingly non-prejudiced in his treatment of fundamentalists of various stripes; while he couldn’t buy into their positions, he did not treat them, as journalists so often do, as caricatures and villains, but instead he gave them a mostly fair shake.

I read a great deal of theology and devotional literature, and I find it interesting that it should be a book about a humorous, bizarre experiment conducted by a secular, agnostic Jew that should inspire in me an urge to begin trying harder to live my life according to God’s will and the Bible’s teachings. Life changes and stresses can make it easy for one’s focus to drift, and this has certainly happened to me; reading The Year of Living Biblically has made me more conscious of the way I live my life and of the things I have done that I ought not to have done as well as the things I should do that I am not doing.

He gives much less attention to the New Testament than to the Old in the book, and I do think his attempts to follow the New Testament inevitably miss the point, since Christianity is ultimately about a relationship with Christ and an experience of grace and not simply about following Christ’s moral teachings, which, when you get right down to it, are not vastly different than the teachings of many rabbis and prophets who came before and after Him. Christianity essentially adds little to the Jewish moral tradition. Without following the commands to worship Christ, to teach, to baptize, to participate in communion, etc., one is not really experiencing the New Testament. (But, were I Jewish, I would probably say he was not really experiencing the Hebrew Scriptures either, given the way he went about following it.)

It was interesting to observe the author’s journey during his “biblical year” and the softening of his agnostic position. Ultimately, he seems to emerge essentially unchanged from the experiment, with most of his suppositions intact, but perhaps a little more respect for religious people and religion in general.
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