The Year of Living Biblically, by A. J. Jacobs

Although the purpose of the Bible is to teach us the right way to live with its numerous rules, the book “The Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs, exposes the less publicized rules and how contradictory some of them can be. The main propose of the author of this book is not to criticize or make fun of religion in his quest to “follow the Bible as literally as possible”, but to demonstrate that he enjoys the learning experience. A.J. Jacobs suggests that people claim to be religious when in fact, they only take the rules and ideas they want, this is the reason why I think gender inequality continues to penetrate society today.

Numerous women in history, have negative stigmas attached to them simply for, well, being women and just like a phrase in the Bible says; “Sin began with a woman and thanks to her we all must die”. However, the Bible states that all men are created equal, that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”, however, as you read through the passages and see the roles each human plays in them, which greatly differs depending gender, one can easily come to the realization that this is not entirely true. Jacobs writes that “Married women are not allowed to sleep around… Married men on the other hand… well they have more leeway…” (page 135) noting that there is in fact inequality and he tries to show this as much as he can throughout the book. As one reads through the Bible, and tries to grasp and follow every rule given, one learns not to be and feel equal but to behave and act “correctly” and accordingly to gender roles, roles that gives too much liberty to men and very little to women when clearly the Bible says we are ...

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...girls to behave in certain ways and boys in another way. So where really is equality in the Bible? If we are all born the same, why do we each have different roles? The Bible seems to be written with the point of view of a man rather than of a God. Which is partly true, the Bible is written by a man, Moses, this probably explains why men have more rights and liberty than women. In my opinion the Bible makes people, especially women, be treated as inferior and be looked as “dirty” and “impure”. Past generations, those who are more devoted to the Bible have deeply internalized all these gender roles and passed them down to the next generations. Although now-a-days teens and young adults are not really religious, they still have the mentality that their parents and grandparents had. Yes, things are changing, but it hard when girls too think of themselves as inferior.