The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

I picked up this book for a couple of reasons. It just seems as if the book is being the way it was intended to be read so you don't miss any of the humor or the emphasis in certain sections. Read moreįirst off, I LOVE when authors read their work for the audiobook. 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.

Jacobs’s extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah’s Witnesses. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. 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. His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. Jacobs’s quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All. 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. 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. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J.

Jacobs chronicles his hilarious and thoughtful year spent obeying―as literally as possible―the tenets of the Bible. Now a TV series Living Biblically streaming on CBS All Access!įrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Know-It-All comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs