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

AJ Jacobs is the New York Times best-selling author of the book The Year of Living Biblically in which he lived out an entire year adhering to the laws of the Bible.

And one of them I think was about your year of living biblically where you didn't wear mixed fabrics and you didn't sit on a chair that your wife had sat on while menstruating.

I wanted to understand religion because I knew nothing about it grew up very secular.

And the way I like to understand things is by walking the walk talking the talk wearing the robe grow in the beard throw in the pebbles. Yeah, and I love it.

And that was one of my favorite books to write the year of living biblically.

It was a year. That's a long to year. Oh my God.

It's funny because my first thought was your wife must be a very patient woman to have put up with that.

I tried to get extra lives because you know in the Old Testament, you can have 12, 15 but she put the kebash on that.

I mean, it really did make me realize that in biblical times they didn't have this idea of an individual. It was all about the community, like respect your elders, like you have to stand when an old person comes into the room.

And we are all about the rights individual rights. I have the right to everything. And I think there's a balance and I think we've gone too far to the individual side.

One was a year of living biblically so he followed the Bible as literally as possible.

I grew up with no religion at all. As I say in the book, I'm Jewish, but I'm Jewish in the same way the olive garden is Italian.

I thought one way to learn about the Bible might be to actually live it and dive in and sort of follow in the footsteps of our forefathers.

I got a board of spiritual advisors. I had rabbis and ministers and scholars and then I wrote down every single rule in the Bible and there are hundreds. And I wanted to follow the famous ones like the Ten Commandments and love your neighbor but also the weird forgotten rules like don't shave the corners of your beard.

Not lying seems very tough. I talked about that with Sam Harris here on the show, not lying anymore. It's extremely hard because white lies count and untruths and omissions all of us have counts.

he's been to year of his like dressing like George Washington like oh no yeah he was living living by the constitution that's what he was doing he has he has the most patient wife in the world yeah like the year of living biblically yes also an amazing book so good