The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible | 
 enlarge | Author: A. J. Jacobs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  357 reviews
Sales Rank: 1284
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0743291476
Dewey Decimal Number: 220
EAN: 9780743291477
ASIN: 0743291476
Publication Date: October 9, 2007
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Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2007: Make no mistake: A.J. Jacobs is not a religious man. He describes himself as Jewish "in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant." Yet his latest work, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, is an insightful and hilarious journey for readers of all faiths. Though no fatted calves were harmed in the making of this book, Jacobs chronicles 12 months living a remarkably strict Biblical life full of charity, chastity, and facial hair as impressive as anything found in The Lord of the Rings. Through it all, he manages to brilliantly keep things light, while avoiding the sinful eye of judgment. --Dave Callanan Amazon.com
Subtitled: "One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible," Jacobs, or A.J., as his two-year-old son calls him, does just that. It is likely that no one but A.J. Jacobs could have accomplished such a feat. After all, his last book, The Know-It-All, chronicles his reading of the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica, from A to Z. No one but a smart, witty, self-deprecating, nitpicky kinda guy would undertake two such daunting tasks, and complete them with grace, no pun intended. Jacobs, a New York Jewish agnostic, decides to follow the laws and rules of the Bible, beginning with the Old Testament, for one year. (He actually adds some bonus days and makes it a 381-day year.) He starts by growing a beard and we are with him through every itchy moment. Jacobs is borderline OCD, at least as he describes himself; obsessing over possible dangers to his son, germs, literal interpretation of Bible verses, etc. He enlists the aid of counselors along the way; Jewish rabbis, Christians of every stripe, friends and neighbors. In an open-minded way he also visits with atheists, Evangelicals Concerned (a gay group), Jerry Falwell, snake handlers, Red Letter Christians--those who adhere to the red letters in the Bible, those words spoken by Jesus Himself, and even takes a trip to Israel and meets Samaritans. Through it all, he keeps a healthy skepticism, but continues to pray and is open to the flowering of real faith. Jacobs is a knowledge junky, to be sure. He enjoys the lore he picks up along the way as much as any other aspect of his experiment. One of the ongoing schticks is his meeting with the shatnez tester, Mr. Berkowitz. He is the one who determines whether or not your clothes are made of mixed fibers, in keeping with the Biblical injunction not to wear wool and linen together. The two become friends and prayer partners, in only one of the unexpected results of this year. In the end, he says, "I'm now a reverent agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred." Not a bad outcome. --Valerie Ryan
Product Description
From the bestselling author of The Know-It-All comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.
Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.
The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.
Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All. His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.
Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.
Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, The Year of Living Biblically is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 352 more reviews...
 Entertaining and Inspirational July 26, 2008
I finished this book last night. I have to admit I was impressed as well as relieved that he maintined his agnostic status. I have always found religion to be the root of many of our problems as a society. Religion is like a super sharp knife when you use it the proper way you can create a great meal, but if you abuse it then only thing you can create is chaos. I find the book both entertaining in many ways and KUDOS to Julie for hanging in their despite being pregnant (with twins to boot) for most of the year. Great book AJ keep up the good work.
 The inspired insipid July 22, 2008
I found this book both "charming" and "funny" - it seemed created to inspire such insipid scare-quote bracketed adjectives. The balance of reverence and humor is just fine - and utterly unconvincing. The shallowness of the secular intellectual and the nice-guy emptiness of the NYC "lite"-Jewish journalist set my teeth on edge even as I genuinely enjoyed various anecdotes and the writing was consistently decent. Ultimately, the book is solipsistic and one has to decide if one enjoys the time and company one keeps while reading this book. For me, the answer is "no," and I allow as to others might have a different answer.
 Some Good, Some Bad July 22, 2008
A.J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire, must have a lot of time on his hands. Several years ago he decided to read Encyclopedia Brittanica from cover to cover, apparently in a quest to become the smartest person in the world (though a subsequent attempt to prove his knowledge on "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" showed that he had a long way to go (he missed the $32,000 question). He documented his year-long journey through the Encyclopedia in a bestselling book titled The Know-It-All. In his second book, The Year of Living Biblically, he dedicates a year to attempting to follow every rule and law in the Bible. Like its predecessor, this book has sold very well, quickly making its way onto the lists of bestsellers.
Jacobs is Jewish by birth but grew up in a family that did not practice the faith, or not seriously at any rate. After the birth of his son, though, Jacobs began to wonder if teaching his son about religion would scar him or make him a better person. He set out on this quest to determine how religion could impact a life. To that end he decided to study the Bible and seek to understand its every rule. For the first eight months he focused exclusively on the Old Testament, looking through the Bible to find even the most obscure laws. He implemented as many of them as he could. And in the last four months of the year he turned to the New Testament. He simply overs a chronological records of his year, providing a journal entry every two or three days.
While the book claims that Jacobs lived "biblically," the reader will soon note that he often relied in large part on Jewish extra-biblical interpretation of the Old Testament laws. Hence his practice of many of these rules was based not on a plain reading of the Bible but on age-old interpretations, many of which are almost unbelievably obscure and strangely mystical. We'll have to use the word "biblically" quite loosely.
Jacobs is at his best in this book when seeking the heart of the biblical commandments, when rather than just blindly following the commands he is seeking the reason God gave them and attempting to obey not the letter but the spirit. He is at his worst when he is being deliberately Pharisaical, seeking to adhere to the letter rather than the spirit. Hence he finds himself in a park tossing tiny pebbles at adulterers so he can fulfill the law to stone those who commit adultery. Or maybe he is at his worst when he is searching out the most radically liberal Christians to teach him not what the Bible teaches but what he wants to hear. Thus he attends a Bible study for homosexuals where he is taught that the Bible does not forbid homosexuality but merely homosexual rape. This appeals to him as a self-professed liberal but veers far from the broad stream of Christian interpretation. There are several occasions where he essentially admits that he is finding interpretations that appeal to him even if they are not strictly accurate.
In the end of it all, Jacobs seems to be little better off than when he began. He remains agnostic but somehow feels he can and should pray (to whom? to what end?). He has discovered some cultural Jewish roots but does not seem to have found any true faith. He has discovered the value of the sacred, but continues to forsake God.
The Year of Living Biblically has many poignant moments and many that are quite funny. There are even a few laugh out loud moments. But there are plenty of others that are no doubt supposed to be funny but which fall strangely flat. This is bound to happen in a book that stretches to almost 350 pages, perhaps a hundred more than it ought to have been. Yet it is by no means all bad. It was quite an enjoyable read, even if it did drag near the end. Still, as much as he seems to attempt to make this a book the reader will take seriously, Jacobs cannot escape it seeming more like a gimmick. This experiment is really a strange form of exhibitionism where he invites the readers into his life as he deliberately makes a fool of himself. It is more entertainment than of any serious value. It is for good reason, I suppose, that you will find the book filed under the heading of "Humor." It is a year of living loosely biblical and a year of gathering information that will lead to a bestselling book. The reader will have to decide which of those motives was foremost in the author's mind. Personally, I suspect the latter.
I loved it! July 21, 2008
I loved AJ Jacobs' book The Know It All, so I was excited to see a new book by him. We chose it for our book club for July, at my suggestion. We haven't met yet, so I don't know what others thought, but I thought it was fantastic. Everytime I set it down, I was eager to pick it back up. As someone who was raised in a moderately religious family and attended private school, I have been fairly exposed to the Bible, but in the current state of the world, I often find it hard to relate to the Bible in any real way. I'm at the cusp of labeling myself an agnostic, but this book was very affirming for me. It's heartfelt and witty, and is fun without mocking the subject matter. I fully recommend it!
 Wonderful book July 20, 2008
I thought this book was great and even gave it as a gift. However, there is one part that bothered me somewhat.
On hearing that she was going to have a son, the author's wife wept because she wanted a girl. I mean wept (not disappointment) on the news that she is going to have a HEALTHY child. It just made me uncomfortable. What some other woman would have given for such news...personally, I would not have included it.
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