The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

 When A.J. Jacobs has an idea for a book, he goes full bore. For his 2005 bestseller The Know-It-All, he read all 33 volumes and 44 million words of the Encyclopedia Britannica. For his next book, The Year of Living Biblically, he attempted to follow the Good Book as literally as possible.

Why the Bible? Why not something more fun like the Kama Sutra?

I grew up with no religion—I’m Jewish in the way that the Olive Garden is Italian—but wondered if I was missing something or if Richard Dawkins is right and half the world is deluded. I decided to dive in head first and live the Bible as best I could, following everything from famous rules like the Ten Commandments to lesser-known ones, such as the instruction not to wear clothes made of mixed fibers. Technically the mixed fibers are wool and linen, so polycottons were okay.

You discuss how, while many Americans take the text of the Bible literally, the definition of "literal" varies widely.

There is a long history of people taking it even more literally than I did. For example, there’s a line that says you must be a eunuch to enter the kingdom of heaven. I stopped short of anything that required extreme physical harm, such as plucking my eyes out. It was a challenge to determine the original intent of some rules, so I assembled an advisory board of rabbis, priests and ministers. The rabbis taught me that there is a huge difference between what the Bible says and how the rabbis interpret it. For instance, the Bible says you cannot cook a baby goat in its mother’s milk. I thought that would be easy enough to avoid but the rabbi said the larger meaning is to not mix milk and meat, like with a cheeseburger. There is an interesting loophole in Leviticus that says you can eat locusts and grasshoppers so I snacked on a chocolate-covered cricket.

You stopped shaving and grew an impressive beard.

I heard every beard reference in the history of beards: Abe Lincoln, the Unabomber, Moses, ZZ Top. The movie Knocked Up has a line about the guy with a beard—someone said he looked like Robin Williams’ knuckles. Toward the end of the year my wife stopped kissing me. She tried covering up every part of her face but her lips but gave up on that.

Did she have any other problems with your devotion?

There is a tradition among conservative Jews to build a hut to honor our forefathers who had to wander through the desert. So I built a hut in our living room. That didn’t go over well. There are also purity laws that say I could not touch her during her menstrual cycle, or sit in a chair an “impure” woman has used. That was a problem on the subway so I started carrying my own portable Handy Seat. My wife purposely sat on every chair in the apartment while she was impure.

You call lust one of your “biggest failings.”

It was difficult to completely rid myself of lust. A medieval rabbi once suggested it could be done if a man imagined every woman he met to be his mother. I went around our apartment and put tape over anything that might tempt me, such as photos in which my wife’s friends show too much cleavage. It’s surprising how much food packaging uses alluring women. However, the tape wasn’t effective because whenever I saw it, I imagined what it was covering up. I did find that sublimation made me more productive. I wrote two-thirds of the book while trying to not lust.

What stands out as the most difficult part of “living the ultimate Biblical life”?

Avoiding the little sins, such as gossiping, lying and coveting. While I’m no Gandhi or Angelina Jolie, I have cut back. It also got harder near the end after I began wearing full Biblical garb—robe, sandals and walking stick—everywhere I went. (See photo above.)

Did the experience change you spiritually?

In the beginning I was agnostic and by the end I had become, in the words of a minister friend, a reverent agnostic. Whether or not there is a God, I like the idea of sacredness and rituals.