In 2004, London artist Neva Elliott produced a work of art
called “The Elliott Condensed Bible”: It was a Gideon’s Bible,
condensed into four easy-to-use, imperative chapters: “Do,” “Do Not,”
“Shall,” and “Shall Not.” Following the common reading of the Bible as
a book of literal, holy commands, Elliott made it simple for readers
and did away with all the “begats” and fairy tale elements.
In The Year of Living Biblically, author A.J. Jacobs goes one
(huge) step further: For the duration of a year, he lived out every
biblical rule, no matter how tough or arcane, to the best of his
ability. This memoir of Jacobs’ skeptically holy experiment is one of
the most enjoyable and funny books I’ve read all year.
That Jacobs—who penned the mildly annoying book The
Know-it-All, about reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica start to finish—is an agnostic Jew is one reason his book works
so well; the other is that he approaches his material with an
open-minded curiosity that leads him to live out some of the Bible’s
most bizarre dictates.
Over the course of his biblical year, Jacobs wears olive oil in his
hair, doesn’t touch his wife during her period, wears only white,
paints his doorframe with blood, eats insects, strikes his child with a
(Nerf) rod, and stones an adulterer in Central Park. This is in
addition to the more well-known commandments about praising god and all
that: Jacobs earnestly tries prayer and strives for a spiritual
experience throughout his adherence to the Bible’s “sillier” rules.
Blame cognitive dissonance or blame spiritual thirst, but over the
course of the book, Jacobs—to his surprise—begins to have
what most would describe as religious awakenings. He prays constantly;
he looks for evidence of God’s compassion; he begins to appreciate the
wisdom of biblical teachings. He never makes peace with the Bible’s
homophobia, but he does take away one valuable lesson after another
upon completing almost every seemingly bizarre biblical order.
The Year of Living Biblically could have been shaved down by
a quarter without losing its effect, but Jacobs’ dedication to his
project, combined with his own ambivalence to the Bible, make this book
one of the surprise hits of the fall.