The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs

From Barnes & Noble

Put a fine writer to work on a great idea and you get a book that is timely, at times hilarious, moving, profound, irreverent, and respectful. This memoir of a secular individual's attempts to obey the Bible, literally, for an entire year -- from the Ten Commandments to somewhat less publicized rules, such as avoiding clothes made of mixed fibers, playing a ten-string harp, and stoning adulterers. The Year of Living Biblically demonstrates that relations between believers and skeptics can be friendly and constructive.

From the Publisher

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 grow his beard. To stone adulterers.

The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal. Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally, including the Amish and the Hasidim. He discovers ancient Biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the 21st-century brain.

Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. Sure to charm listeners both secular and religious, The Year of Living Biblically is part Cliffs-Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to stop listening.

The New York Times - Hanna Rosin

If I were to write this review while trying to live biblically, here are some of the rules I would have to follow: Love thy neighbor. Jacobs is a fellow journalist and thus a neighbor of sorts. I would have to strive to be as generous as possible, and point out right at the outset that this book is an inspired idea and that Jacobs is alarmingly adept at keeping the joke alive for 365 days. Thou shalt not covet. I would have to confess my jealousy that Jacobs already had a movie contract in place before the book had even been published, and that even though I have spent much more time around young-earth creationists than he has, he thought of a much funnier way to describe them…

The Washington Post - Jerome M. Segal

Jacobs is a humorist, and at times he had me laughing out loud. To stop ogling women, he silently recited Bible verses; when his 2-year-old son hit him, he chose to overlook Exodus 21:15 ("Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death."). Still, his focus on following the commandments is in the long Jewish tradition of putting doing before understanding. In the end, he emerged from his year without experiencing revelation, but in the perfectly sound place of embracing Shabbat—or in his closing words, "a quiet Friday night."

Publishers Weekly

With the Bible in hand, Jacobs sets off to spend a year attempting to follow the innumerous laws of Scripture in order to achieve the supposed claim of fundamentalists who say the Bible should be taken literally. Many obstacles stand in the way of this Jewish Manhattan father with a wife expecting twins by year's end. Through his journey, Jacobs does experience a spiritual awakening of sorts that reminds him of the importance of religion. He also reveals the scriptural selectiveness practiced by even the most zealous fundamentalists. While the abridgment generally works in providing listeners with the highlights of Jacobs's year, there are times when it seems to refer to material not covered in the audio. Sometimes too, the entries are too abrupt or trimmed. Jacobs reads the audiobook with adequate tone, speed and emphasis. While his soft nasal voice isn't particularly compelling, what he has to say about his adventures in living biblically will certainly keep people listening. Simultaneous release with the S&S hardcover (Reviews, June 25). (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Throughout his journey, Jacobs comes across as a generous and thoughtful (and yes, slightly neurotic) participant observer, lacing his story with absurdly funny cultural commentary as well as nuanced insights into the impossible task of biblical literalism." -- (Starred)

Kirkus Reviews

Esquire editor-at-large Jacobs, who read the entire 2002 Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All (2004), embarks on his second lofty exploit: a year of living the Bible "as literally as possible."Like David confronting Goliath, Jacobs stood before his ex-girlfriend's Bible and pledged to spend the following 12 months (much of that time in New York City) exploring biblical literalism by living the good book as it was originally intended. The author attempted to follow many infamous biblical dictums-growing a beard (he does), eschewing menstruating women (he tries), accepting Creationism, keeping the Sabbath, praying three times a day, dancing before the Lord (and thus attending "the loudest, rowdiest, most drunken party of my life . . . with several hundred Hasidic men"), stoning blasphemers (a futile pebble toss at a pot-bellied, Sabbath-breaking Avis employee)-and learned in the process that living the Bible literally is baffling and often impossible. Rules like destroying idols and killing magicians, for example, are federally outlawed. Jacobs paid attention to both the Old and New Testaments, and received help from a board of spiritual advisors, "some conservative, some one four-letter word away from excommunication." His efforts at this daunting task are impressive and often tremendously amusing-though rarely deep or scholarly. The author's determination despite constant complications from his modern secular life (wife, job, family, NYC) underscores both the absurdity of his plight and its profundity. While debunking biblical literalism-with dinner party-ready scriptural quotes-Jacobs simultaneously finds his spirituality renewed. He discovers that "you can't immerse yourself inreligion for 12 months and emerge unaffected...I didn't expect to fondle a pigeon egg . . . or find solace in prayer."A biblical travelogue-and far funnier than your standard King James.

Product Details

• Reading Group Guide
• Forewords & Introductions
• Read an Excerpt

Reading Group Guide

At the beginning of the year, I wrote down every rule, every guideline, every suggestion, every nugget of advice I could find in the Bible. It’s a very long list. It runs 72 pages. More than 700 rules.
Some rules were wise, some completely baffling. Some were baffling at first, then wise. Some were wise first then baffling. Here, some of the highlights, broken down by category.

MOST UNEXPECTEDLY WISE AND LIFE-ENHANCING RULES

--Keep the Sabbath. As a workaholic (I check my emails in the middle of movies), I learned the beauty of an enforced pause in the week. No cell phones, no messages, no thinking about deadlines. It was a bizarre and glorious feeling. As one famous rabbi called it, the Sabbath is a “sanctuary in time.”
--“Let your garments be always white” Ecclesiastes 9:8. I chose to follow this literally – I wore white pants, a white shirt and a white jacket. This was one of the best things I did all year. I felt lighter, happier, purer. Clothes make the man: You can’t be in a bad mood when you’re dressed like you’re about to play the semi-finals at Wimbledon.
--No gossip. When you try to go on a gossip diet, you realize just how much of our conversations involve negative speech about others. But holding your tongue is like the verbal equivalent of wearing white. I felt cleaner and untainted.
--No images. If you interpret the second commandment literally, then it tells you not to make a likeness of anything in heaven, on earth, or underwater. Which pretty much covers it. So I tried to eliminate photos, TV, movies, doodling. It made me realize we’re too visual in this culture. It made me fall in love once again with words, with text.
--Give thanks. The Bible says to thank the Lord after meals. I did that. Perhaps too much. I got carried away. I gave thanks for everything – for the subway coming on time, for the comfortableness of my couch, etc. It was strange but great. Never have I been so aware of the thousands of little things that go right in our lives.

MOST BAFFLING RULES TO THE 21ST CENTURY MIND*
(Note: See bottom of this for possible explanations of some of these rules)

You shall not wear a “garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff.” (Leviticus 19:19). At first, I thought this applied to any mixed fiber. So I cleared my closet of all polycotton T-shirts. But it turns out the truly forbidden combo is mixing wool and linen. Sadly, my only good suit – my wedding suit -- contained both wool and linen. So I had to embargo it for a year.
If you are in a fistfight with another man, and his wife grabs your private parts, you “shall cut off her hand.” (Deuteronomy 25:11-12). Another rule you won’t find engraved outside many courthouses.
If you suspect your wife is cheating, you shall bring her to a priest, who will mix a potion of barley, water, and dust, which the woman shall drink. If she’s cheating, her stomach will swell. (Numbers 5:11-20)
If you set your slave free after six years, but he decides to stay, then you shall bring him to the doorpost and bore a hole in his ear. (Exodus 21:5)

RULES THAT I SUCCESSFULLY KEPT THE ENTIRE YEAR WITHOUT VIOLATING EVEN ONCE

You shall not marry your wife’s sister (Leviticus 18:18) It helps that my wife doesn’t have a sister.
You shall not plant your field with two kinds of seed (Leviticus 19:19). I did plant some cucumber seeds in some pots. But I kept it purely cukes.
You shall not eat eagles, vultures, black vultures, red kites, black kites, ravens, horned or screech owl, gull or any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat.
Do not become a shrine prostitute (Deuteronomy 23:17) I didn’t become any kind of prostitute.

MOST DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW

You shall not trim the corners of your beard (Leviticus 19:27)
My rabbinical beard became wildly uncomfortable, plus I was subjected to every beard joke in the history of facial hair, with about 412 ZZ Top references.
You should not lie on a bed where a menstruating woman has lain, and you can’t sit on a chair where she has sat (Leviticus 15:20).
That knocks out all subways and restaurants. See the Handy Seat section for my attempt to follow this.
[link to how to live biblically here]
You shall smash idols. The ban on idolatry is such a huge part of the Bible, I figured I should try to smash something. I ended up smashing my wife’s fake Oscar statuette. But it felt like a hollow gesture, and it annoyed my wife by getting gold flakes all over the rug.
Put to death men and women who commit adultery. Though I did manage to figure out a way to stone adulterers. One adulterer in particular. A grumpy seventysomething man I met in the park. I used pebbles.

RULES VIOLATED AT LEAST ONE TIME PER DAY

You shall not covet.
This is like asking someone not to breathe. Especially in New York. New York is a city that runs on coveting. On a typical day, I covet everything from Jonathan Safran Foer’s speaking fee (allegedly $15,000) to our friend’s sprawling backyard in the suburbs.
You shall not lie.
Once I started keeping track, the number of lies was astounding. I lie to everyone – strangers, my wife, my three-year-old son (“No, we can’t watch TV. It’s broken.”)
You shall stand in the presence of the elderly.
I did try to follow this at certain points in my journey. Like the time I ate dinner in a Florida restaurant at 5 p.m. That was the highest concentration of elderly people in America. So I stood up from my chair every time a white-haired person entered the room, which meant I was bouncing up and down like a pogo stick.
You shall not utter the name of another God.
English is filled with the names of pagan gods – even the days of the week are named for them: Thursday, for the Norse god of thunder Thor.
Be slow to anger (Proverbs 19:11)
My anger isn’t of the shouting, pulsing, vein-in-the-forehead variety. It’s more of long-lasting resentment. I never fully got it under control, but the best method for putting the brakes on my anger came from the story of Jonah. (See the book for details)

*THE BAFFLING RULES (KIND OF, SORT OF) EXPLAINED

There are two schools of thought on the baffling rules. Well, there are countless schools of thought on them. But I’ll keep it to two for simplicity. a) Many baffling rules have no rational explanation. We have to accept what God tells us, because He knows better than we do, just as a parent knows better than a child.
b) The baffling rules actually do have a rational explanation. They either made perfect logical sense back in biblical time, or they yield tangible benefits today, or both.
Here, the spin on the baffling rules cited above (note: I’m not saying I buy all this spin, but I present it to you to judge):
--No mixing of wool and linen. This taught the ancient Israelites to keep things separate, good training for not intermarrying.
--If a woman grabs her husband’s opponent, she shall have her hand cut off. The hand-chopping part was meant as a metaphor: The woman actually just had to pay a monetary fine. And why? Because she had embarrassed her husband and his opponent.
--Make a suspected adulteress drink holy water. This was early marriage counseling. If the woman is, indeed, innocent of adultery, all she has to do is drink some water with a little dirt in it, and her husband’s mind will be put at ease. Marriage saved.
--Drill a hole in a slave’s ear if he refuses freedom. A man, it’s argued, should embrace freedom. An ear hole is a mark of humiliation, another reason why he should leave his master.

YOU TOO CAN LIVE BIBLICALLY

Just follow in my sandal-steps.
Wear sandals
As this site itself says, these sandals are “comfortable enough to wander in for 40 years.”
http://www.biblicalsandals.com/
Eat Ezekiel Bread
Perhaps the best recipe in the Bible is the bread that God commanded Ezekiel to eat for 390 days straight. It’s got wheat, rye, millet, lentils and beans. (Note: If you are really committed, you should cook it over cow dung, as Ezekiel did. I wasn’t that committed).
http://www.breadbeckers.com/recipes/ezekiel_bread.htm
Play the 10-string Harp
Psalm 33 instructs us to praise the Lord on a harp of ten strings. The Tiffany’s of 10-string harps is this place, Jubilee Harps.
http://www.jubilee-harps.com/
Carry a staff
This walking stick is pretty close to a staff. It’s called the Walden Walker, and is apparently for those who “move to a Thoreauvian rhythm.”
http://www.dirkleach.com/walden-walkers.html
Drink Goat’s milk
In biblical times, cows were for mainly used for dragging farm implements. The dairy of choice was goat and sheep milk. It’s a little thicker than normal milk – about the consistency of an Odwalla smoothie – but not bad at all.
http://www.meyenberg.com/
Don a biblical robe
I couldn’t find the exact robe I wore, but here’s one that’s pretty close. The robe is surprisingly comfortable. A man rarely gets to walk around in public with his legs unencumbered by pants.
http://www.akrondesign.com/Religious/Relig.%20Pages/Biblical%20Robes-2.html
Burn Myrrh
If you want to smell biblical, try this herb. Though my wife said our apartment smelled like the inside of a cathedral.
http://www.tattvasherbs.com/myrrh%20oil.htm?gclid=CIiX75nyy40CFSWQGgodfX9tLw
Light your house with Olive Oil lamps
I spent many a night literally burning the midnight oil. Here’s two places to get replicas of biblical lamps. Full disclosure: I had trouble figuring out how to properly adjust the wick, so the flame was alarmingly high. It looked like it could be used in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. http://www.jerusalemdepot.com/default.aspx?tabid=157&view=product&fid=29&cid=179&pid=2674
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=999120&event=CF

Sit on the Handyseat
If you want to be strict with the biblical impurity laws, you shouldn’t touch women during their ‘time of the month.’ If you want to be REALLY strict with the biblical impurity laws, you shouldn’t lie on a bed where a menstruating woman has lain, and you can’t sit on a chair where she has sat. ( “And everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean.” Leviticus 15:20). Since every subway and restaurant seat is no doubt impure, I had to resort to desperate measures. Namely: The Handy Seat. A portable chair I took with me everywhere. It folks up into a cane. It’s quite cool, even if you just want to be assured of a seat on the subway. http://www.lifewithease.com/sprtshseat.html

Taste some Kosher crickets
The Bible bans most insects – but it makes an exception for locusts, crickets and grasshoppers (Leviticus TK). I figured I better take advantage of the loophole and get me some crickets. (Leviticus 11:22)
http://www.flukerfarms.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=13

Avoid lustful gazing
As you know, Hollywood movies have more than their share of coveting and harlotry. Which is where Clearplay comes in. http://www.clearplay.com/.
This is a service that lets you skip the sex and violence. It even lets you customize the list of sins that you want to ban – do you want to nix partial nudity? Or only full frontal? You’re choice.
I rented Kill Bill from this place, just to see what it was like. As you might expect, it was all Bill, no Kill.

HOW TO BE GOOD
During my year, I never achieved the moral heights of Gandhi or Angelina Jolie. But I was certainly more angelic than my normal, non-Biblical self. Here, some techniques I picked up:

HOW NOT TO GOSSIP
One of my spiritual advisers gave me a good image here: Think of negative speech as verbal pollution. Visualize insults and gossip as a dark cloud, maybe one with some sulfur dioxide. Once you’ve belched it out, you can’t take it back.
Another good anti-gossiping resource: The Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, a Jewish organization that is on a mission to stamp out negative speech (Lashon hara in Hebrew. http://www.chofetzchaimusa.org/ They even have a hotline you can call when you’re on the precipice of saying something negative: 718-951-3696. (I once called it when I had the irrepressible urge to say nasty things about Hollywood director Michael Bay, about whom I was writing about in an article. They talked me down).
And finally, a pastor in Kansas City has started this movement:
A Complaint Free World. [[http://ccunitykc.org/]] The idea is that you wear a purple bracelet to remind you to stop whining for 21 straight days.

HOW NOT TO STEAL
My dad is the only person I know who does not steal. Ever. When we go on a road trip, he won’t stop at a gas station just to use their bathroom. He feels that’s stealing the station’s paper towels and soap.
During my year, I tried to think like my dad. You must be constantly aware of the impact of your actions. Because we steal all the time: We steal office supplies. We swipe our neighbor’s wireless. We steal time from a friend by being late. We steal from our kids’ future by leaving the lights on when we go out of the house.
You have to think absurdly broadly. Is refusing to buckle your seatbelt an act of theft? Probably. If you get injured, you’re taking medical resources away from others. What about eating a plate of trans-fat-filled curly fries? Probably stealing. Anyway, it tastes too good not to be sinful.

HOW TO TITHE
During my year, I carved out 10 percent of my salary and gave it, as the Bible recommends, to the poor, the widows and the orphans. It was, as they say, a good kind of pain. My only suggestions:
Use this great website charitynavigator.org, which is a Zagat’s guide to charities. It rates charities by efficiency: How much of the money actually gets to the people, and how much goes to CEO salaries and office supplies
. The charities I gave to included: Feed the Children, Save Darfur and Warm Blankets Orphan Care
. Also, a plug for a friend’s business: Goodsearch.com. Every time you use this search engine, a corporation donates to a favorite cause of yours.

HOW NOT TO LIE
The Bible says not to lie (“A righteous man hateth lying,” Proverbs 13:5). Which is shockingly hard to do, since I have a lying problem. I don’t tell a lot of big lies, mostly just white lies. Half-truths. Sugarcoating.
But in the year, I experimented with a fib-free existence.
If you want to try this, you should read a book called Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton. He started a movement that is the real-life version of Jim Carrey’s Liar, Liar. I wrote about the movement for an Esquire article here [http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707-2]. It was a fascinating experiment, and completely terrifying.

HOW NOT TO COVET
The Bible is not actually anti-sex. Parts, especially in the Old Testament, are quite in favor of erotic love. And the Song of Solomon is almost as racy as a Henry Miller novel.
But if you’re a married man (or woman) and you become infatuated with your neighbor’s wife (or husband), then it’s probably good biblical sense to put the freeze on your libido. How to do that? I found four strategies.
.a) A medieval rabbi recommended this one: When you see a pretty married woman, think of her as out of your league. Think of her as a peasant would a princess: She’s attractive, but she’s so far out of your realm, your admiration is abstract, not lascivious.
.b) A more extreme variation on that first strategy: Put your neighbor’s wife in the same category as your mother. The very thought of sex with her is abhorrent, except to those who read too much Freud. Try it. It’s effective, if disturbing. (Also courtesy of the medieval rabbi).
.c) Recite Bible passages. This method I got from a book called When Good Men Are Tempted. The meaning of the passage is almost beside the point. I could have probably recited the lyrics to the Mikado and gotten a similar benefit. It’s all about keeping your mind distracted.
.d) Do not objectify. Battle your urge to objectify women and/or men focusing on them as a complete person, instead of a collection of covetable body parts. Think about their childhood, what their favorite novel might be, how many cousins they have, whether they own a PC or Mac. I learned this strategy from a sermon by a Unitarian pastor.
http://www.uuaa.org/sermons/lust.txt

Forewords & Introductions

Discussion Questions

1. Why does Jacobs embark on his year-long biblical journey? What does he expect to find at its end? How do the questions he seeks to answer evolve as he immerses himself in the project?

2. Identify the formal and informal spiritual guides Jacobs consults during his year of biblical living. Whom do you find most instructive, most challenging to accept, and/or most spiritually compelling? Provide examples for each of your responses.

3. What are Jacobs's primary challenges in living the Bible as literally as possible? How does he attempt to resolve them? Is he successful? Why or why not?

4. Discuss the various religious groups that Jacobs visits during his year. How are they similar and different from each other? What contradictions does Jacobs uncover in their biblical living? What lessons does Jacobs take away from his encounters with these groups?

5. What role does prayer play in Jacobs's year-long journey? How does his relationship with prayer evolve? What meaning does he attach to prayer? Do you agree? Why or why not?

6. What specific issues arise as Jacobs shifts from the Old Testament to the New? What implications do they have for his entire biblical living project?

7. What value does Jacobs attach to the idea of surrendering? Why is surrendering such a challenge for Jacobs? Does Jacobs ever surrender? Why or why not?

8. What does Jacobs's relationship with his neighbor, Nancy in 5I, and the circumstances surrounding her death illuminate about Jacobs's biblical quest? How does this particular situation support or challenge Jacobs's conclusions about the limits of literal interpretations of the Bible?

9. What conclusions does Jacobsdraw about the Bible, its literal adherents, and the nature of religious activity as a result of his year of living biblically? What is the value of the experience for Jacobs personally?

10. What is the value of Jacobs's exploration for you personally? What key lessons or insights will you take away from Jacobs's experiences? How has his journey informed your perceptions and understanding of the Bible?

Enhancing Your Book Club

- What were the challenges members encountered as they tried to live biblically?

- Were they able to live biblically through the seven days? Why or why not?

- What lessons will members take away from this process?

- What did they become mindful of as they participated in their seven-day exercise?

- Are there specific actions they plan to continue beyond the seven days? What are they and why?

Invite a local religious leader to be a guide for this book club selection.

Your religious guide should be willing to read the book and

help to lead a portion of the book club discussion. Points to consider

during the discussion:

- What were the significant religious themes in the book? Why?

- What alternative or additional interpretations exist for some of the views expressed by Jacobs's religious guides?

- What does he/she make of Jacobs's conclusions about biblical literalism or the role of the Bible in people's lives?

- What recommendations can he/she provide to members who might like to live more biblically?

Assemble a biblical feast for book club members using food items listed in the Bible. Popular items include: wine, grapes, pomegranates, figs, cucumbers, olives, chickpeas, and lamb. You may procure goat's milk, the dairy product of choice, at your local specialty grocer or online. Additionally, Jacobs recommends chocolate-covered crickets from http://www.flukerfarms.com.

For an extra bit of effort, you may use the recipe below to make Ezekiel Bread for the group (http://www.breadbeckers.com/recipes/ ezekiel_bread.htm)

Combine the following whole grains:

2 ½ cups hard red wheat
1 ½ cups spelt or rye (Biblically, spelt was used, Ezekiel 4:9)
½ cup barley (hulled)
¼ cup millet
¼ cup lentils (green preferred)
2 tbsp. Great Northern beans
2 tbsp. red kidney beans
2 tbsp. pinto beans

Stir the above ingredients very well. Grind in flour mill.

Measure into large bowl:

4 cups lukewarm water
1 cup honey
½ cup oil

Add to liquids:

Freshly milled flour from the above mixture of grains plus
2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. yeast

Stir or knead until well kneaded, about 10 minutes. This is a batter-type bread and will not form a smooth ball.

Pour dough into greased pans. You may use 2 large loaf pans (10x5x3) or 3 medium loaf pans or 2 9x13 brownie pans. Let rise in a warm place for one hour or until the dough is almost to the top of the pan. If it rises too much, it will overflow out of the pan while baking. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes for loaf pans and 35-40 minutes for brownie pans.

If your group is able, you can visit the Creation Museum (http://www.creationmuseum.org/) located in Petersburg, Kentucky. There are special rates and promotions for groups of fifteen or more people.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

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 never allowed my facial hair to grow before, and it's been an odd and enlightening experience. I've been inducted into a secret fraternity of bearded guys — we nod at each other as we pass on the street, giving a knowing quarter smile. Strangers have come up to me and petted my beard, like it's a Labrador retriever puppy or a pregnant woman's stomach.

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.

I've battled itch and heat. I've spent a week's salary on balms, powders, ointments, and conditioners. My beard has been a temporary home to cappuccino foam and lentil soup. And it's upset people. Thus far, two little girls have burst into tears, and one boy has hidden behind his mother.

But I mean no harm. 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 andmultiply. 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.

To back up: I grew up in an extremely secular home in New York City. I am officially Jewish, but I'm Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. Which is to say: not very. I attended no Hebrew school, ate no matzoh. The closest my family came to observing Judaism was that paradoxical classic of assimilation: a Star of David on top of our Christmas tree.

It's not that my parents badmouthed religion. It's just that religion wasn't for us. We lived in the twentieth century, for crying out loud. In our house, spirituality was almost a taboo subject, much like my father's salary or my sister's clove-cigarette habit.

My only brushes with the Bible were brief and superficial. We had a next-door neighbor, Reverend Schulze, a kindly Lutheran minister who looked remarkably like Thomas Jefferson. (By the way, Reverend Schulze's son became an actor and, oddly enough, went on to play the part of the creepy priest on The Sopranos.) Reverend Schulze told great stories about college sit-ins during the sixties, but whenever he started talking about God, it just sounded like a foreign language to me.

I attended a handful of bar mitzvahs where I zoned out during services and spent the time trying to guess who had bald spots under their yarmulkes. I went to my paternal grandfather's funeral, which was, to my surprise, presided over by a rabbi. How could the rabbi eulogize a man he'd never met? It was disconcerting.

And as far as childhood religion, that was about it.

I was agnostic before I even knew what the word meant. Partly, it was the problem of the existence of evil. If there is a God, why would He allow war, disease, and my fourth-grade teacher Ms. Barker, who forced us to have a sugar-free bake sale? But mostly, the idea of God seemed superfluous. Why dowe need an invisible, inaudible deity? Maybe He exists, but we'll never know in this life.

College didn't help my spiritual development. I went to a secular university where you were more likely to study the semiotics of Wicca rituals than the Judeo-Christian tradition. And when we did read the Bible, it was as literature, as a fusty, ancient book with the same truth quotient as The Faerie Queene.

We did, of course, study the history of religion. How the Bible has been the force behind many of humankind's greatest achievements: the civil rights movement, charitable giving, the abolition of slavery. And how, of course, it's been used to justify our worst: war, genocide, and the subjugation of others.

For a long time, I thought that religion, for all the good it does, seemed too risky for our modern world. The potential for abuse too high. I figured it would slowly fade away like other archaic things. Science was on the march. Someday soon we'd all be living in a neo-Enlightenment paradise where every decision was made with steely Spock-like logic.

As you might have noticed, I was spectacularly mistaken. The influence of the Bible — and religion as a whole — remains a mighty force, perhaps even stronger than it was when I was a kid. So in the last few years, religion has become my fixation. Is half of the world suffering from a massive delusion? Or is my blindness to spirituality a huge defect in my personality? What if I'm missing out on part of being human, like a guy who goes through life without ever hearing Beethoven or falling in love? And most important, I now have a young son — if my lack of religion is a flaw, I don't want to pass it on to him.

So I knew I wanted to explore religion. I just needed to figure out how.

The germ of the idea came from my own family: my uncle Gil. Or ex-uncle, to be exact. Gil married my aunt and divorced her a few years later, but he remains the most controversial member of our family. If the rest of my relatives are ultrasecular, Gil makes up for it by being, quite possibly, the most religious man in the world. He's a spiritual omnivore. He started his life as a Jew, became a Hindu, appointed himself a guru, sat for eight months on a Manhattan park bench without speaking, founded a hippie cult in upstate New York, turned into a born-again Christian, and, in his latest incarnation, is an ultra-Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. I may have missed a phase — I think he was into Shinto for a bit. But you get the idea.

At some point along his spiritual path, Gil decided to take the Bible literally. Completely literally. The Bible says to bind money to your hand (Deuteronomy 14:25), so Gil withdrew three hundred dollars from the bank and tied the bills to his palm with a thread. The Bible says to wear fringes on the corners of your garment (Numbers 15:38), so Gil bought yarn from a knitting shop, made a bunch of tassels, and attached them to his shirt collar and the ends of his sleeves. The Bible says to give money to widows and orphans, so he walked the streets asking people if they were widows or orphans so he could hand them cash.

About a year and a half ago, I was telling my friend Paul about Gil's bizarre life over lunch at a sandwich shop, and I had my epiphany. That's it. I needed to follow the Bible literally myself. I needed to do it for several reasons.

First, since the Bible requires me to tell the truth (Proverbs 26:28), I must confess that part of the reason is to write this book. A couple of years ago, I came out with a book about reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all of it, from A to Z — or more specifical, from a-ak (East Asian music) to Zywiec (a town in southern Poland known for its beer). What could I do next? The only intellectual adventure that seemed a worthy follow-up was to explore the most influential book in the world, the all-time best seller, the Bible.

Second, this project would be my visa to a spiritual world. I wouldn't just be studying religion. I'd be living it. If I had what they call a God-shaped hole in my heart, this quest would allow me to fill it. If I had a hidden mystical side, this year would bring it out of the closet. If I wanted to understand my forefathers, this year would let me live like they did, but with less leprosy.

And third, 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 naïveté, 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.

I told my wife, Julie, my idea, and warned her it might affect our life in a not-so-minor way. She didn't gnash her teeth or tear out her hair. She justemitted a little sigh. "I was kind of hoping your next book would be a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt or something."

Everyone — family, friends, coworkers — had the same concern: that I'd go native. That I'd end up as a beekeeper at a monastery, or I'd move into my ex-uncle Gil's spare room in his Jerusalem apartment.

In a sense, they were right to worry. It's impossible to immerse yourself in religion for twelve months and emerge unaffected. At least it was for me. Put it this way: If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they'd get along OK, but they'd both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, "That guy is kinda delusional."

As with most biblical journeys, my year has taken me on detours I could never have predicted. I didn't expect to herd sheep in Israel. Or fondle a pigeon egg. Or find solace in prayer. Or hear Amish jokes from the Amish. I didn't expect to confront just how absurdly flawed I am. I didn't expect to discover such strangeness in the Bible. And I didn't expect to, as the Psalmist says, take refuge in the Bible and rejoice in it.

The Preparation

And he shall read in it all the days of his life...

— Deuteronomy 17:19

On the admittedly random day of July 7, 2005, I begin my preparations. I pull out a Bible that is tucked away in the corner of my bookshelf. I don't even remember where I got it, but it looks like the Platonic ideal of a Bible. Like a Bible they'd use in a fifties Western to stop a bullet from piercing the hero's chest. On the front, it says "Holy Bible" in faded gold embossing. The tissue-thin pages remind me of my beloved encyclopedia. The black leather cover smells exactly like my parents' 1976 Plymouth Valiant. It feels good, comforting.

I crack open the Bible. The title page says, "This Bible is presented to..." and then, in handwritten bubble letters, the name of my ex-girlfriend. Huh. Somehow I had inadvertently pilfered my ex-girlfriend's childhood Bible. I hope inadvertently. It's been a decade since we broke up, and I can't remember. Regardless, that's not a good sign. At the very least, I need to return it when I'm done.

I've read bits and pieces of the Bible before, but never the whole thing, never straight through from Genesis to Revelation. So that's what I do for four weeks, five hours a day. Luckily, I'm used to marathon reading from my Britannica project, so it felt pleasantly nostalgic.

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.

This is going to be a monster project. I need a plan of attack. I need to make some decisions.

1. Which version of the Bible should I use?

The Bible I pulled from my bookshelf is called the Revised Standard Version, which it turns out is a well-respected translation, an offspring of the famed King James Version from 1611, but stripped of most of the "thee"s and "thou"s.

It's a good start. But it's just one of many, many versions — an estimated three thousand of them in English alone. One of my goals is to find out what the Bible really says, so I decide I can't rely on any single translation. I want to compare and contrast at least some of those three thousand.

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.

I leave the store with two shopping bags packed with Scripture. But my buying spree isn't over. When I get home, I click on Amazon.com and get several Jewish translations of the Bible, and a half-dozen Bible commentaries. To be safe, I order The Bible for Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Bible — anything aimed at those with a sub-80 IQ.

That's not to mention the Bibles sent to me by friends. One gave me the waterproof Outdoor Bible so that I could study the Scripture even during floods and other Old Testament weather patterns. Another sent me a hip-hop version, where the Twenty-third Psalm reads "The Lord is all that." (The more traditional translation is "The Lord is my shepherd.")

In short, I've got the proverbial stack of Bibles, almost waist high.

2. What does it mean to follow the Bible literally?

To follow the Bible literally — at face value, at its word, according to its plain meaning — isn't just a daunting proposition. It's a dangerous one.

Consider: In the third century, the scholar Origen is said to have interpreted literally Matthew 19:12 — "There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" — and castrated himself. Origen later became a preeminent theologian of his age — and an advocate of figurative interpretation.

Another example: In the mid-1800s, when anesthesia was first introduced for women in labor, there was an uproar. Many felt it violated God's pronouncement in Genesis 3:16: "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children." If Julie and I ever have another child, would I dare get between her and the epidural needle? Not a chance.

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.

3. Should I obey the Old Testament, the New Testament, or both?

Many, perhaps most, of the teachings in the two testaments are similar, but some are significantly different. So I've decided to split up my quest.

I will devote most of my year — eight months or so — to the Old Testament, since that's where you'll find the bulk of the Bible's rules. The Old Testament consists of thirty-nine books that mix narrative, genealogy, poetry, and lots and lots of laws. The first five books alone — the books of Moses — have hundreds of decrees, including the crucial Ten Commandments, as well as some of the more seemingly atavistic ones about executing homosexuals. That's not to mention divinely inspired advice in later Old Testament books. The Proverbs — a collection of King Solomon's wisdom — offer guidance on child rearing and marriage. The Psalms tell you how to worship. I'll be abiding by everything. Or trying to.

Being officially Jewish, I feel much more comfortable living and writing about the Old Testament. (Or, as many Jews prefer to call it, the Hebrew Bible, since old implies "outdated," and new implies "improved"). But in the final four months of my year, I want to explore — in at least some way — the teachings of the Christian Bible, the New Testament.

To ignore the New Testament would be to ignore half of the story. The evangelical movement and its literal interpretation of the Bible hold enormous sway, both for the good (they were powerful advocates for aiding Darfur) and, to my secular mind, the not-so-good (far-right fundamentalists are driving the creationism movement).

Naturally, there's the most famous of all Christian literalists — the conservatives in the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson mold. I plan to meet them later this year. But I also want to look at evangelical groups such as the "Red-letter Christians," which focus on what they see as literal adherence to Jesus's teachings about compassion, nonviolence, and the redistribution of wealth.

It's debatable whether the New Testament even has a legal code — it depends on your definition of "law" — but it has many teachings that have been followed with varying degrees of literalness, from Jesus's "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemy" to the Apostle Paul's decree that men should have short hair. Frankly, I haven't hammered out all the details of my New Testament plan but hope to figure it out once I get my spiritual footing.

4. Should I have guides?

The Bible says, "It is not good for the man to be alone." Plus, I'm flying blind here. So over the course of a couple of weeks, I assemble a board of spiritual advisers: rabbis, ministers, and priests, some of them conservative, some of them one four-letter word away from excommunication. Some are friends of friends, some are names I stumbled upon in Bible commentary books. I'll be talking to them as much as possible.

Plus, I make a pledge to get out of the house. I'll visit a bunch of groups that take the Bible literally in their own way: the ultra-Orthodox Jews, the ancient sect of Samaritans, and the Amish, among others.

My guides will give me advice and context. But they won't be the final word. The Bible will. I don't want to follow any single tradition exclusively. As naïve or misguided as it may be, I want to discover the Bible for myself, even if it entails trekking down some circuitous paths. "DIY religion," as my friend calls it. Perhaps I'll find the beauty of a particular tradition fits me best. Or perhaps I'll start my own sect of Judeo-Christianity. I don't know.

As I expected, not everyone thinks my project is a great idea. My aunt Kate — who has remained an Orthodox Jew even after her divorce from the controversial Gil — told me I was, as our people say, meshuga.

I first floated the idea by Kate in early August. We were at my grandfather's house sitting around his big dining room table. Kate had just finished changing after a dip in the pool. (She won't wear a bathing suit for modesty reasons, so she plunged in with her long, black billowy dress, which impressed me. The thing looked heavy enough to sink a lifeguard.) When I explained the premise of my book, her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "Really?" she said.

Then she laughed. I think part of her was happy that someone in our godless family was showing some interest in religion.

After which she got concerned: "It's misguided. You need the oral law. You can't just obey the written law. It doesn't make sense without the oral law."

The traditional Jewish position is this: The Bible — known as the written law — was composed in shorthand. It's so condensed, it's almost in code. Which is where the oral law comes in. The rabbis have unraveled the Bible for us in books such as the Talmud, which are based on the oral teachings of the elders. When the Bible says to "rest" on the Sabbath, you need the rabbis to tell you what "rest" means. Can you exercise? Can you cook? Can you log on to drugstore.com?

Without the rabbis, I'm like the protagonist of the early eighties TV show The Greatest American Hero — he found a bright red suit that gave him all these superpowers, but he lost the instruction manual, so he was always flying into walls.

Some conservative Christians were also baffled by my undertaking. They said I couldn't truly understand the Bible without accepting the divinity of Christ. They said that many of these laws — like the ones about animal sacrifice — were nullified by Jesus's death.

And I did start to have doubts. These were good points. I felt torn, anxious about my approach, my monumental ignorance, my lack of preparation, about all the inevitable blunders I'd make. And the more I read, the more I absorbed the fact that the Bible isn't just another book. It's the book of books, as one of my Bible commentaries calls it. I love my encyclopedia, but the encyclopedia hasn't spawned thousands of communities based on its words. It hasn't shaped the actions, values, deaths, love lives, warfare, and fashion sense of millions of people over three millennia. No one has been executed for translating the encyclopedia into another language, as was William Tyndale when he published the first widely distributed English-language edition of the Bible. No president has been sworn in with the encyclopedia. It's intimidating, to say the least.

Fortunately, I got a couple of pep talks from two of my favorite advisers. The first was Reverend Elton Richards, my friend David's father, who just retired as minister of his Lutheran congregation in Des Moines, Iowa. He calls himself a "pastor out to pasture." I told him about the doubters.

"You just have to tell them that you have a hunger and a thirst. And you may not sit at the same banquet table as them, but you have a hunger and thirst. So they shouldn't judge you."

I love the way he talks. By the end, perhaps I'll be able to speak in majestic food metaphors like Reverend Richards.

I also had breakfast with Rabbi Andy Bachman, a brilliant man who heads up one of Brooklyn's largest synagogues, Congregation Beth Elohim. He told me a midrash — a story or legend that is not in the Bible proper, but which deals with biblical events. This midrash is about the parting of the Red Sea.

"We all think of the scene in The Ten Commandments movie with Charlton Heston, where Moses lifted up his rod, and the waters rolled back. But this midrash says that's not how it happened. Moses lifted up his rod, and the sea did not part. The Egyptians were closing in, and the sea wasn't moving. So a Hebrew named Nachshon just walked into the water. He waded up to his ankles, then his knees, then his waist, then his shoulders. And right when water was about to get up to his nostrils, the sea parted. The point is, sometimes miracles occur only when you jump in."

So I did. And here is what happened.

Copyright © 2007 by A. J. Jacobs