News

In this excerpt from his forthcoming book, The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs, who was born Jewish, but raised in an agnostic household, begins his quest to understand the relevance of faith in the modern world. Following the most arcane laws he can find in a waist-high stack of Bibles - stoning adulterers, avoiding clothes made with mixed fibres, playing a 10-string harp - Jacobs' year-long journey into biblical literalism reveals some surprisingly relevant wisdom within the most ancient texts.

As I write this, I have a beard that makes me resemble Moses. Or Abe Lincoln. Or Ted Kaczynski. I've been called all three.

It's not a well-manicured, socially acceptable beard. It's an untamed mass that creeps up toward my eyeballs and drapes below my neckline.

I've never allowed my facial hair to grow before, and it's been an odd and enlightening experience. I've been inducted into a secret fraternity of bearded guys — we nod at each other as we pass on the street, giving a knowing quarter smile. Strangers have come up to me and petted my beard, like it's a Labrador retriever puppy or a pregnant woman's stomach.

I've suffered for my beard. It's been caught in jacket zippers and been tugged on by my surprisingly strong two-year-old son. I've spent a lot of time answering questions at airport security.

But I mean no harm. The facial hair is simply the most noticeable physical manifestation of a spiritual journey I began a year ago.

My quest has been this: to live the ultimate biblical life. Or more precisely, to follow the Bible as literally as possible.

To obey the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love my neighbour. To tithe my income. But also to abide by the oft-neglected rules: To avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibres. To stone adulterers. And, naturally, to leave the edges of my beard unshaven (Leviticus 19:27). For the next year, I will try to obey the entire Bible, without picking and choosing.

Month One: September

Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.

— Ecclesiastes 12:13

It's the first day, and I already feel like the water is three feet over my head.

I have chosen Sept. 1 to start my project, and from the moment I wake up, the Bible consumes my life. I can't do anything without fearing I'm breaking a biblical law. Before I so much as inhale or exhale, I have to run through a long mental checklist of the rules.

It begins when I open my closet to get dressed. The Bible forbids men to wear women's clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5), so that comfortable Dickinson College sweatshirt is off-limits. It was originally my wife's.

The Bible says to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibres (Leviticus 19:19), so I have to mothball my poly-cotton Esquire magazine T-shirt.

And loafers? Am I allowed to wear leather? I go to the living room, click on my PowerBook and open my Biblical Rules file. I scroll down to the ones about animals. Pigskin and snakeskin are questionable, but it looks like regular old cow leather is permissible.

But wait — am I even allowed to use the computer? The Bible, as you might have guessed, doesn't address the issue specifically, so I give it a tentative yes. Maybe some time down the road, I could try stone tablets.

And then I stumble. Within a half hour of waking, I check the Amazon.com sales ranking of my last book. How many sins does that comprise? Pride? Envy? Greed? I can't even count.

I don't do much better on my errand to Mail Boxes Etc. I want to Xerox a half dozen copies of the Ten Commandments so I can Scotch tape them up all over the apartment, figuring it'd be a good memory aid.

The Bible says those with good sense are "slow to anger" (Proverbs 19:11). So when I get there at the same time as this wiry 40ish woman, and she practically sprints to the counter to beat me in line, I try not to be annoyed.

And when she tells the Mail Boxes Etc. employee to copy something on the one and only functioning Xerox machine, I try to shrug it off. And when she pulls out a stack of pages that looks like the collected works of J. K. Rowling and plunks it on the counter, I say to myself: "Slow to anger, slow to anger."

After which she asks some complicated question involving paper stock …

I remind myself: Remember what happened when the Israelites were waiting for Moses while he was up on the mountaintop for 40 days? They got impatient, lost faith and were struck with a plague.

Oh, and she pays by cheque. And asks for a receipt. And asks to get the receipt initialled.

I don't have time for this. I have a 72-page list of other biblical tasks to do.

I finally make it to the counter and give the cashier a dollar. She scoops my thirty-eight cents of change from the register and holds it out for me to take.

"Could you, uh, put the change on the counter?" I ask.

She glares at me. I'm not supposed to touch women — so I am simply trying to avoid unnecessary finger-to-finger contact.

"I have a cold," I say. "I don't want to give it to you."

A complete lie. In trying to avoid one sin, I committed another.

Month Two: October

When a woman has a discharge of blood, which is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening.

—Leviticus 15:19

Day 34. In case you were wondering, Julie, my wife, got her period yesterday — which is bad news in two senses. First, it means that our attempt to be fruitful and multiply has failed yet again. Second, it ratchets up the biblical living to a whole new level of awkwardness.

The Hebrew Bible discourages the faithful from touching a woman for the week after the start of her period. So far in my year, adhering to this rule has been only mildly uncomfortable, nothing worse. In fact, it's got an upside: It dovetails quite nicely with my lifelong obsessive-compulsive disorder and germaphobia, so it's turned out to be a brilliantly convenient excuse to avoid touching 51 per cent of the human population.

A female friend will come in for a cheek kiss, and I'll dart my head out of the way like Oscar De La Hoya. A colleague will try to shake my hand, and I'll step backward to safety.

Julie, however, finds the whole ritual offensive. I'm not loving it either. It's one thing to avoid handshakes during flu season. But to give up all physical contact with your wife for seven days a month? It's actually quite exhausting, painful, and lonely. You have to be constantly on guard — no sex, of course, but also no hand holding, no shoulder tapping, no hair tousling, no good-night kissing. When I give her the apartment keys, I drop them into her hand from a safe height of six inches.

"This is absurd," she tells me, as she unlocks the door. "It's like cooties from seventh grade. It's theological cooties."

I tell Julie that I can't pick and choose what I follow in the Bible. That'd negate the whole point of my experiment. If I'm trying to get into the mindset of the ancient Israelites, I can't ignore even the most inconvenient or obscure rule. I also point out that I didn't send her to a red tent.

She's not amused. "I feel like a leper."

Julie walks out of the room. When she's annoyed, she walks with heavy, stomping footsteps. I felt magnitude-five tremors throughout the apartment.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

— Exodus 20:8

Day 45. It's the seventh Sabbath of my biblical year. Well, actually, it's the day after the seventh Sabbath. I couldn't type this entry on the Sabbath itself because the Bible tells me not to work.

Before my biblical year, I was among the biggest Sabbath violators in America. I'm a workaholic. It's a trait I got from my father, who scribbles away on his law books without ceasing. If the apocalypse comes, there's no doubt he'd work right on through, looking up to take note of the rising rivers of blood before returning to his case study. I'd probably do the same.

We'd have a lot of company. In the post-BlackBerry age, is there really a boundary between the weekday and the weekend, between work hours and overtime? We work on Saturday, the Jewish Shabbat. We work on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. We put in more hours than the God of Genesis himself.

Unlike the rabbis, the Bible itself gives few detailed instructions on how exactly to refrain from work. And the ones it does give apply only to farmers and reality-show contestants: no kindling of fire, no gathering sticks, no plowing or harvesting.

So I have to figure this one out myself. Since my work is writing, I decide I need to abstain from writing, of course. But also researching, phoning colleagues and scouting the newspaper for ideas. The thing is, going cold turkey terrifies me. I want to wade into this ocean cautiously, like a Sarasota retiree.

The first week, I told myself: no checking of e-mail. I lasted all of an hour, after which I told myself, well, I won't open the e-mails themselves. I'll just scan the subject headers. That doesn't count as working. So I clicked on the mail. Hmm. An e-mail from my mom. The Bible does say to respect your parents. And maybe it's urgent. Plus, I have another 51 Sabbaths to get it right. I clicked on it. It's a joke about five blondes and a blind man in a bar.

Week No. 2, I tried it again. I shall open no e-mail from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. I made it past Friday night, but then broke down on Saturday morning and stole a peek again. Well, I told myself, I've still got 50 Sabbaths left. Unfortunately, I didn't improve with Sabbaths three to six.

This week I vowed to make it all the way. I felt optimistic. At 6 p.m. on Friday night, the sun officially dipped below the New York horizon. I snapped shut my computer, shoved all my books in the corner, silenced the electronic cowbell on my cellphone that I've been meaning to change anyway — and did a little fist pump. Something clicked in my brain. It was a school's-out-for-summer feeling. A wave of relief and freedom. No matter how much I want to, I cannot work. I have no choice.

It was a beautiful moment. And short lived. An hour later, my brain clicked back, and I started to suffer pangs of withdrawal every time I walked past my idle PowerBook. What e-mails are piling up in my inbox? What if the editor of The New Yorker sent me a surprise job offer? On Saturday at noon, I broke down. I checked. Who's going to know?

I was too embarrassed to tell Julie. Julie loves that I'm trying to break the seven-day work cycle — the Sabbath is her favourite part of my experiment. So I keep my failure a secret.

Worse, I then use the Sabbath to weasel out of household tasks.

"Can you put the papers in the recycling bin?"

"I really shouldn't. I'm not allowed to carry a burden outside of my house."

As she took out the papers herself, I could hear her footsteps thump down the hallway corridor.

From The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs. Copyright © 2007 by A.J. Jacobs. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster Inc.