As an American-Jewish agnostic, AJ Jacobs began to wonder if he was missing out on part of being human, “like a guy who goes through life without ever hearing Beethoven or falling in love”. It was an interesting starting point to a year-long experiment in which he attempted to live by all the rules he could identify in the Bible, some 72 pages of them.

However, before long you’re wishing for a bit more satirical bite and substance: the caustic spirit of Mark Twain, rather than the benign Bill Bryson-style Jacobs as your guide. He meets one Dr Ralph Blair, a committed, evangelical, Bible-based, openly gay preacher. “The Bible does not talk about loving same-sex relationships as they exist today,” weasels Blair. “Jesus would have no problem with two men committed to each other.” Look, Ralph, Jesus had problems with a man and a woman committing to each other, let alone two men, promising us that in heaven there would be no such thing as marriage (Luke 20.35). But does Jacobs tackle him on his contradictory beliefs? Nope.

He encounters some Orthodox Jews who insist on pretearing their lavatory paper on a Friday night, so as not to have to on the Sabbath. And what about that business of not wearing mixed fibres (Leviticus 19.19)? Amazingly, Jacobs manages to find a Mr Berkowitz, who is an official mixed-fibres clothing arbiter, a shatnez tester, and books him for a visit. Soon enough, Berkowitz appears on his doorstep with his bottle-bottom specs, a slightly wonky yarmulke, a microscope and some “vegetable flakes” (strictly kosher, one hopes) and starts going through the author’s wardrobe. A little man inspecting your wool suits for stray threads of linen in the name of supposed godliness, is surely giving God a bad name. Jacobs at least asks him why we should still be worrying about this peculiar law in the 21st century. Berkowitz’s answer is that we don’t know why. But in Orthodox Judaism, observing the chukim, those laws that have no rational explanation, is a sign of great faith.

There are plenty more laws that give Jacobs “problems”. Exodus 23.13 states plainly that not only must we not worship other gods, we mustn’t even use their names. So he can’t discuss the latest tennis triumph of Venus Williams without careful circumlocution. Nor, presumably, should he mention Nike trainers, Apollo space missions, Mars Bars, Gaia theory, Hermès scarves or Flora margarine.

We reach rockier ground with stoning. Considering that this punishment is still practised in countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, it demands some seriousness. But Jacobs contents himself with throwing little bits of gravel at a man on a park bench who admits to adultery, and listening to a patient explanation from another Orthodox Jew, saying that “in ancient times, stoning wasn’t barbaric”. This just isn’t good enough. Stoning was and is a foul, cruel, slow death meted out on some convenient scapegoat by a vicious, self-congratulatory mob, according to strict biblical or koranic injunctions.

The Year of Living Biblically might have been an amusing magazine article, but it ducks too many big issues to make a satisfactory book. There is, though, an unexpected and oddly appealing conclusion. Jacobs sees himself as a “reverent agnostic” now, and has started praying, especially prayers of thanksgiving, to a God who, he cheerfully acknowledges, may or may not exist. Sure, he doesn’t have to pray any more (the stunt is over, the royalties have been cashed), but he’s got the habit.

THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY by AJ Jacobs
Heinemann £12.99 pp388

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