Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- If you don't know much about the Bible, go live it. That's what A.J. Jacobs did. ``The Year of Living Biblically'' chronicles the time he spent adhering literally to the rules of the Bible.

Jacobs, an editor at Esquire, is ``as Jewish as the Olive Vine is Italian,'' he says. He's also agnostic, secular and the opposite of a biblical scholar, having rarely cracked the Good Book. Now he's attempting to pursue what he's lacked in the first 38 years of his life: a spiritual path and a connection to his ancestry.

So, to determine whether religion is for him, he goes whole hog. (Or not quite, since eating pork is banned by Old Testament laws.) He stops shaving and cutting his hair and creates an alter ego, Jacob, who parades through Manhattan's Upper West Side clad all in white, meticulously following the Ten Commandments.

Jacobs's book is equal parts dry wit, sit-com humor and family drama, with a dollop of introspection. It's a good read for anyone (like myself) who likes a breezy narrative about a serious subject topped with some Larry Davidesque humor.

His best material turns on the culture clash between the biblical strictures and his carefree, capitalistic urban-middle- class lifestyle. ``I have two heads, two sets of eyes, two moral compasses,'' he says at one point.

The endeavor produces some laugh-out-loud moments, as when he tries to build a Sukkah (a hut commemorating the festival of the harvest) in his two-bedroom Manhattan apartment, or when he treats a stranger at Starbucks to a free latte in an effort to fulfill the biblical injunction to generosity.

Graven Images

How to say hello to old friends when adhering to the Bible's prohibition against contact with members of the opposite sex? How to draw pictures for his 2-year-old son when adhering to the Bible's prohibition on graven images?

However funny, though, these conflicts lead to some shopworn conclusions about the Bible. (Its ``meaning is so frustratingly slippery.'') Jacobs is more reporter than thinker, a trait that becomes evident on his field trips to observe other strict followers of biblical regulations.

These are the real Bible devotees -- the Amish, Hasidim and Jerry Falwell acolytes -- who don't have book contracts to write about their experiences and don't stop living biblically after a 12-month study term.

He drops in on a harmonica-playing farmer in Amish country, attends a ritual Hasidic chicken sacrifice in Brooklyn and visits a snake handler in Del Rio, Tennessee. He even journeys to Israel to herd sheep and visit a Samaritan community.

Missing Moments

I would have liked to know how he felt when he visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of Judaism's holiest sites. Instead we get this: ``Jerusalem is like the Galapagos Islands of religion -- you can't open your eyes without spotting an exotic creature.''

Jacobs lets too many of these moments whiz by, treating them, in biblical fashion, as brief stories in a catalog of seemingly symbolic anecdotes. He doesn't detail the way these visits affected his inner journey. It's more like spiritual window-shopping than soul searching.

``The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible'' is published by Simon and Schuster (388 pages, $25).

(Carlyn Kolker is a legal reporter for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Carlyn Kolker in New York at ckolker@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 30, 2007 00:04 EST