Here's
an interview with a guy who tried to "follow every rule in the Bible" for one year, then wrote a book about it.
Jacobs spent the year carrying around a stapled list of the more than 700 rules and prohibitions identified in the Good Book, and also consulted with religious leaders and spent time with the Amish, Hassidic Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I doubt I'll buy the book, but man, I'd love to see that list. The problem with following all the "rules" in the Bible is that many of them tend to be contradictory.
There's this:
Avoiding sins we commit every day like lying, gossiping and coveting was hard, and then there were the rules that were hard to do in modern life, like stoning adulterers. But I did manage to fulfill that one. What happened was, I was in the park, dressed in my white garb, and this man in his 70s came over and asked what I was doing. I explained I was trying to follow every rule in the Bible as literally as possible, including growing my beard, not mixing fibers, stoning adulterers, and he said, “I’m an adulterer, are you going to stone me?” I said, “Yeah that would be great.” The Bible doesn’t say what size the stones have to be, so I had been carrying around these pebbles in my pocket for just such an occasion. I took the pebbles out of my pocket, and he instantly picked one up and threw it at me, so I decided, an eye for an eye, and I tossed one at him. It did provide an entry for talking to people about capital punishment and the Bible. How could they stone adulterers, what was life like back then, does it apply today. I tried to say to the guy, you shouldn’t sleep with other women, but I don’t know if it sunk in.
Ignoring for a minute the silliness of "stoning" someone with pebbles, instead of deciding "an eye for an eye" why not "turn the other cheek"? Did the Old Testament hand out "rules" while Jesus just offered up guidelines or suggestions?
So the book sounds pretty dumb, but I'd still like to see that list.