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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I really enjoyed this, and it was a quick read. The author has a great sense of humor, which would definitely help in undertaking an effort of this magnitude! A little disappointed in how his experiment ended, but overall it’s great!
Very interesting book
A. J. Jacobs likes to give himself some challenges, beginning with “The Know-It-All” wherein he decides to best his father and read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year. In “The Year of Living Biblically”, he decides to take a year to explore and follow literally the tenets of the Bible. He is both earnest in his project and also humorously aware of the effect his adherence to Biblical laws has on his long-suffering wife and friends. Both thought-provoking and hilarious. I look forward to Jacobs’ next explorations.
Not as good as The Know-It-All but still original and very entertaining.
I really enjoyed listening to The Know-It-All, which was the book that initially introduced me to A.J. Jacobs. From there, I went to our public library, which was still open at the time, and checked out THIS book. I have been reading it since the library closed, a few days later, because of the Coronavirus scare. I am glad I stocked up. I also, after reading this book, decided to go find out, “What does A.J. think of all this? I mean, he lives in New York, and these are some deadly germs. What MUST he be doing?” So I went to his website and read an article he wrote. I like this book most because I am a Christian, and although I don’t know where you would find me in the scheme of all that, but I’m the kind that believes the Bible is all true and all relevant for all time, and Jesus is the one and only way to heaven. He’s the Savior who came to the world to show us how to live a life of servanthood and to know him and make him known to others by sharing the Truth of the gospel with them, so they can know too, because He wills that none should perish. I’m the Pro-Life kind and a Baptist, so label me how you want. I really hoped, found myself PRAYING, that by the end of the year, or really BEFORE the end of the year, A.J. would get saved, be born again, ask Jesus to forgive him of His sins and realize the new life he can have because of Christ’s great plans for us and his sacrifice, paying for our sins on the cross. I wanted A.J. to understand what it’s like to be free, forgiven of his sins. That didn’t happen in his year, but he learned a lot of stuff, and he was very brave, and funny, and I am not even disappointed in this book. The thing about this book and the Know-it-all is that it leads you to so many OTHER books you want to read, and they’re all noted and biblio-whatevered and cited easily so you CAN find them nicely when you’re done reading the book you’re on. What a weird, interesting, funny, insightful year he must’ve had, and pretty cool that he went to the work and trouble of everything involved in making it into a book for us to read. So happy about those twins, by the way. Congrats! (especially after reading/hearing The Know-it-all). I never thought it was a bad thing that a couple of your things were repeated from one book to the other. It’s not a repeat, it just makes you happy you “already knew what he was talking about,” and makes you feel a little “like you know a guy.”
This was amusing, educational, and a little inspiring. The author is an agnostic, non-practicing Jew. He decides to live according to all the rules of the Bible for one year to see if it impacts how he lives his life and what he believes in the long run. He is fruitful and multiplies (his wife gets pregnant with twins), smashes idols (an Oscar statuette), and stones adulterers (throwing pebbles at their shoes). After the year ends, he has learned how to be thankful and to take life more easily and ‘spiritually’, although he is still agnostic — albeit one who now respects his heritage and his faith.
Jacobs has made a career as a writer that embarks on real-life trails, such as “living biblically” and chronicling it as he goes. Always entertaining and thought-provoking.
This was a delightful read. I love AJ Jacobs as an author. A little irreverent humor for religion but enjoyable and I did not find it offensive to religion.
The first thing to say is that A.J. Jacobs’ wife deserves a medal. Seriously. If my husband told me he was going to stop shaving for a year (we’re not talking about a tidy little Abe Lincoln beard here; we’re talking terrorist facial hair), wear only white garments (sometimes in the form of a shepherd’s robe), carry around his own seat (one of those old and infirm cane-with-built-in-seat contraptions) so as not to sit anywhere “impure,” carry unleavened bread upon his back (even if only for a day), and eat no fruit grown on tree less than five years old, there is a distinct possibility that I would file for divorce. I would certainly insist he have his mental health examined. And that’s before you consider the constant nattering about the Bible, amending “God willing” to virtually every future-tense statement, or replacing certain choice words with “sugar” or “fudge.” That his wife merely takes to whistling the theme song from The Andy Griffith Show is a testament to at least one virtue, patience. I’m sure it helps that this quest was undertaken for the purposes of writing a book, which undoubtedly pays a good many bills.
That said: The Year of Living Biblically was referred to several times in Good Book, I like The Know-It-All (A.J. Jacobs’ previous book about reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from a-z) well enough, and Clio recently listened to it on tape and heartily recommended it. All good enough reasons for me to pluck it from the library shelves. Parts of it were definitely laugh-out-loud funny. Even greater parts were head scratchingly bizarre. But, I’m sure because I read them so close together, I couldn’t help but compare these two Bible books, both written by secular East Coast Jews, and sprinkled liberally with humor and irony, as well as Biblical scholarship. In a head-to-head contest, Good Book comes out ahead, although I can recommend them both, but maybe not in immediate succession.
Both Jacobs and Plotz note that their religious studies/immersion/projects changed them intrinsically in ways they couldn’t necessarily articulate, but which definitely were spiritual in nature. This phenomenon, if you will, makes me curious about earlier decades, when society was, on a whole, more religious. Essentially, my question is this: Were people simply more religious because they spent more time with the Bible? And did they spend more time with the Bible simply for lack of Nintendo Wii and the Internet, or was there something inherently different about them? My guess is the former, but I think I’ll pass on undertaking the research myself. I wouldn’t want to turn into a Bible thumper.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2013/01/the-year-of-living-biblically-one-mans.html)
Author Spent most of the time in the Old Testament and took on the role of a Pharisee. Very Legalistic. Very interesting perspective.
A clever, entertaining read. Easy to read but with some good insights.
I am reading this book casually. In other words, it is one I pick up, read a little, then put down. It is very entertaining and fun to read. Any Christian (or not?) with a good sense of humor should enjoy this book.
Just a bout half way through, great read and funny.
The author has serious and funny stories about obeying the Old Testament laws exactly.
I reaqlly enjoyed this book. This author looks at things in a deeper way and is down to earth and makes you laugh. It is a good read.
Interesting read.
By the middle of the book I was ready for it to end.
Very entertaining an easy too read.