My Year of Living Biblically (TV show)

Author and TED speaker A. J. Jacobs (the-eg.com, Dec. 2007); Sheldon S., Seth Auberon, Dhr. Seven, Shauna Schwartz (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Change your behavior, and your mind will follow.

My year of living biblically | A.J. Jacobs

The Year of Living Biblically

(TED) Speaking at the EG conference, author, philosopher, prankster, and journalist A.J. Jacobs talks about the year he spent living biblically -- following ALL the rules in the Bible as literally as possible.

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

From a New York Times bestselling author comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible. A.J. Jacobs chronicles his hilarious and thoughtful year spent obeying ― as literally as possible ― the orders of the Bible.

Raised in a secular Jewish family in New York but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, 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

• 

  This is a religion? This is what the Bible says?

  [and presumably murder children who disobey their parents,
• to allow rape so long as the rapist pays a fine to the victim's parent and then marries the victim,
• (See the marry-your-rapist law), and so much more].

Moses on child-rape in name of God

The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make readers see history’s most influential book with new eyes [and perhaps a little more skepticism that they are not reading the actual word of God but an altered, in some places forged, text cobbled together over a long time, beginning with the Sumerians].

Jacobs’s quest transforms his life radically: His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top.

Hollywood ruins everything good, producing schlock and schlimazel!

It's not just the Old Testament

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 21st-century brain.

Author A.J. Jacobs was humble following Bible

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. Too much trouble to read? That's okay: It's now a TV series, Living Biblically, streaming on CBS All Access.

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