Humble Quest To Follow The Bible As Possible, By A. J. Jacobs

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, written by A.J. Jacobs, is precisely what the title states: one man documenting his year of living the ultimate biblical life. Jacobs grew up officially Jewish, though he was “…Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. Which is to say: not very,” (4). In this book, he takes on the challenge of following every rule of the Bible, to the letter. Jacobs dives down to the core of biblical life by taking each meaning literally, or so he hopes.

Though this book has the potential to alter one’s opinions on divisive religious topics such as evolution versus creationism and the ethics of eating meat, my personal opinions did not change. There is no doubt that I found book to be relatable, since I also grew up with a secular worldview, but it did not persuade me to convert to Judaism or Christianity. However, this book did change my opinion of religion in general. Before reading The Year of Living Biblically, I was rather closed-minded about religion, due to a lack of spiritual upbringing and poor personal experiences in church. I now have a better

I find the faults to be few, but they are indeed there. The most bothersome flaw that I noticed is that Jacobs has a tendency to reference his previous book, The Know-it-All, many times. Since he is trying to follow the Bible in this book, this can be taken as vanity. He does recognize this problem though. On pages 151-152, Jacobs writes “…I must, absolutely must, stop self-Googling… This is all very unrighteous, very vain.” He also skips a few key encounters and discusses them later in the book. I prefer it if everything is written in the order that it happens, even if the events fit better with different ones down the line. These are just small issues that do not really affect the quality of the book, but I noticed