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" As his author archive on Esquire.com can attest, A.J. Jacobs is a man of many, many words. For the last year, Mr. Jacobs has somehow managed to generate even more of those words, writing a book about the year he spent living his life according to biblical law. These words have been collected into book form, given the catchy title of The Year of Living Biblically, and can be found on sale in a bookstore near you for the low, low price of $25. This is an interview -- again with even more of those words he&amp;#039;s so famous for -- in which Mr. Jacobs shamelessly self-promotes this book in a blatant attempt to get you to click that link right up there and buy a copy. Books? Who reads books nowadays? Why not engrave it on tablets?  An excellent question. I still think books are a great way to spend time in between rounds of Wii boxing. (By the way, if you are unfamiliar with this concept of &amp;quot;books,&amp;quot; the best way to describe them is that they are very much like Sony&amp;#039;s Reader, but without the battery.)  What the worst part of living biblically for an entire year? Granted, this sounds like turf you probably cover in your book, but again, this reading books thing is new to us. Working at Esquire wasn&amp;#039;t easy. I love Esquire, but it&amp;#039;s not always the most biblical of magazines. And my bosses decided to up the ante by making me interview the extremely hot actress Rosario Dawson. The idea was Tempt the Bible Guy. I had to conduct the entire interview while averting my eyes. And I should have brought ear plugs because Rosario, God love her, has the dirtiest mouth in Hollywood. I had to listen to her describe the sounds her boyfriend made in bed.  I also had to rent her movies. Which was a dilemma, because they were full of coveting and harlotry. I actually joined a Utah-based service that cuts the naughty bits out of movies. They sent me Oliver Stone&amp;#039;s Alexander, which co-starred Rosario. Well, I think she co-starred. In the version I saw, she barely appeared at all. So I can only imagine what she was doing in the unexpurgated version. (Incidentally, I also rented Kill Bill. It was like seven minutes long. All Bill, no Kill.) Once you stopped living biblically, what was the first not biblical thing you did?  Probably shave off my beard. By the end, it had taken on Kaczynski-esque proportions. Oddly, I felt kind of sad shaving it -- it had become a member of the family. Like a household pet. I decided to keep it in a Ziploc bag. I have it in the cabinet under my sink in case you want to see it.  Did writing this book help you know your wife better in a, um, &amp;quot;biblical sense&amp;quot;?  I actually investigated getting to know a second wife in the biblical sense. Because in the Old Testament, polygamy is completely accepted. (King Solomon had an impressive 700 wives, for instance.) I called the head of the polygamy movement in the U.S. to see if he had any advice. &amp;quot;Polygamy is an interesting idea,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;But how do I get my first wife to agree to let me marry a second wife?&amp;quot; His wisdom? Secretly marry the second wife, consummate the marriage, then go back and tell the first wife. Then it&amp;#039;s a done deal. A preemptive strike. There&amp;#039;s a better chance your first marriage will survive. Those polygamists have cojones, I tell you.  Many towns still have ridiculous laws from a bygone era, ones that make it illegal to do things like, say, eat ice cream on Sundays. Does the Bible do this as well?  The Bible does have a multitude of head-scratching laws. You shall not wear clothes made of mixed fibers (Leviticus 19:19). You shall not take our wife&amp;#039;s sister as your second wife (Leviticus 18:18). If two men are in a fight, and the wife of one of the men grabs the private parts of his opponent, then her hand shall be cut off. (Deuteronomy 45:11). I spent the year avoiding getting in fights with men whose wives looked like they might have a strong grip, so I wouldn&amp;#039;t have to chop off any hands.  Part of the fascinating challenges of my year was to try to decode the strange laws and figure out what their relevance was then (and even if they might have relevance now). Like this one: You cannot eat any insects -- with the exception of locusts, grasshoppers and crickets. Those you can eat (Leviticus 11:22). But you have to wonder, why would the Bible allow locusts? Well, if you think about it, if there was a plague of locusts, then they would eat all the crops. There would be nothing left to eat but the locusts themselves. So it&amp;#039;s actually a wise law.  I ate a cricket, just because I could. My main impression: Crunchy.  It&amp;#039;s impolite to ask a lady her age, but you appear to be in your thirties. At this point, a year is roughly three percent of your life. If you were hit by a bus tomorrow and killed, do you feel like your year of clean, God-fearing living, makes you a lead-pipe cinch to make it to heaven?   In the interest of biblical honesty, I am 39 years old. As for heaven, a humble man never assumes he is going there, of course. Plus, I&amp;#039;m still a sinner. I&amp;#039;m just less of a sinner. I covet about 30 percent less, lie about 35 percent less, and gossip maybe 40 percent less. If you charted my sins during my year, the drop would be about Nasdaq circa 2000 era.  For The Know-It-All, you read the entire encyclopedia. For this book, you lived according to biblical law for an entire year. What is your next intellectually punishing assignment?  A lot of people tell me that I should do a year living by the Koran. I&amp;#039;m not sure that&amp;#039;s the best idea. I&amp;#039;ll have to have a long discussion with Salman Rushdie about that one.  In addition to being an author, you&amp;#039;re also an employee of Esquire, which makes this interview little more than crassless self-promotion. Given the number of Jews in the media -- including both of us! -- the Bible&amp;#039;s gotta be cool with that, right?  Absolutely. If Zadok the priest had the stone tablet equivalent of a blog, he&amp;#039;d have given huge plugs to Solomon&amp;#039;s Proverbs. As Leviticus 27:5 says, Thou shalt not shy from helping thy fellow writer promote his book, and thou shalt also provide a link to buy it, and perhaps a link to his Today show appearance as well. A link to purchase A.J. Jacobs&amp;#039;s The Year of Living Biblically A link to A.J. Jacobs&amp;#039;s appearance on the Today show. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a3634/shameless102407/>