As Jerry Seinfeld commented on his largely overlooked Christian comedy album Highly Prophetable:

‘What’s the deal with the Bible?  I mean – seriously - what’s the deal?’

Jerry was surely going for laughs, but in this simple line of observational humour he inadvertently stumbled upon perhaps the most profound comedic critique of modern religion since Andrew Dice Clay went on his pseudo-religious ‘Cross Cunt-Tree Tour’ in ’86.

What is the deal with the Bible?  Think about it.

As far as I understand it, the deal is that no one really believes in the Bible as a practical guide to living anymore, rather viewing it as a metaphorical guidebook that has some nice ideas and values but that is also pretty outdated.  Oh, except for the Evangelicals, because they’re insane.  Enter A.J Jacobs, Senior Editor at Esquire magazine who decided to get to the bottom of it by living to the letter of the best-book-ever for a full year.  This included growing a crazy beard, stoning adulterers and not wearing clothes of mixed fibres - all of which he documents in his new book The Year of Living Biblically.

This is a clever idea, but hardly profound.  It’s already pretty widely accepted that you can’t really live by the letter of the bible, unless you want to start killing magicians. But it’s the things Jacobs explores, and the religious immersion he finds throughout his grand experiment (much like Morgan Spurlock in Supersize Me) that give meaning and significance to his satirical soul-searching.  The robes become less important than his conversations and discoveries at Evangelical museums in Ohio and Biblically immortalized deserts of Israel.  Through his dogmatic pursuit of the values of Christianity, he is actually studying the human relationship with faith and its impact on people’s lives.  

In a year swamped with books about religion and how shitty it is (see: The God Delusion, God is Not Great) Jacobs has found a novel approach for his considerable insights and delivers them with a tone that never seems, ahem, preachy.

Have a great weekend!  Read the Bible seven times!

Reggie.