Forthcoming Book, Movie Show Man ‘Living Biblically’

Writer A.J. Jacobs has a mission: to obey the Bible literally for a full year.

The senior editor at Esquire magazine will share the results of that endeavor in The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Obey the Bible As Literally As Possible, which Simon & Schuster plans to publish in fall 2006.

 

Hollywood trade publication Variety also recently reported that Paramount Pictures has acquired the film rights to the book.

 

In Living Biblically, Jacobs will trace his attempt to steep himself “in the rules of the Old and New Testament,” according to Variety.

 

Humor associated with literal interpretations of the Bible has dotted the netscape for several years. An e-mail poking fun at media personality and psychiatrist Dr. Laura Schlesinger achieved particularly wide circulation after she publicly cited a passage in Leviticus calling homosexuality an abomination.

 

The e-mail contemplated, tongue-in-cheek, the best ways to follow certain Levitical “rules” like selling children into slavery, working on the Sabbath and cutting one’s hair.

 

The book marks Jacobs’ second contract with Simon & Schuster, the first being The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. Published last year,

Know-It-All chronicled Jacobs’ attempt to read all 32 volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanica.

 

That critically adored book is also being turned into a film, Variety reported, with Jacobs himself writing the adaptation.

 

Jacobs also wrote America Off-Line and The Two Kings: Jesus and Elvis.

 

Cliff Vaughn is culture editor for EthicsDaily.com.