Man takes the Bible literally for a year-and lives to tell

RNS’ Shona Crabtree profiles author A.J. Jacobs, who spent a year following 800 Biblical rules as literally as possible, in this week’s full-text article, linked above.

Quote:

Some rules proved more difficult than others.

“I think there were two types of rules that were hard to follow,” said Jacobs, an editor at large at Esquire magazine. “The first was avoiding sins that we commit every day, all the time, like lying, gossiping, coveting, even stealing. … I work in the media, and I live in New York so that’s like 90 percent of my day right there. …

“Trying not to covet was a huge challenge. I coveted everything, you know, the iPhone. I do covet that.”