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Though he sets out to prove what he calls the "righteous idiocy" of religious legalism, there is considerable irony here. In some ways, Jacobs' project is itself a fundamentalist one. Like a fundamentalist, he begins from the premise that it is not only desirable, but also possible, to filter past centuries of interpretation to excavate a "real" biblical truth. In that sense, Jacobs' project is an anti-modern manifesto that even Alexander Campbell could embrace: he wants to return to a primitivist biblical reality, without all the pesky accretions of interpretation.
Except, of course, that he can't. What distinguishes his quest is his early realization that "when it comes to the Bible, there is always—but always—some level of interpretation, even on the most seemingly basic rules." It is this level of self-awareness that rescues Jacobs' project from being merely quixotic or entertaining and elevates it to something beautiful. "I'm growing more and more skeptical that I'll ever hit Biblical bedrock and discover the original intent," he confesses in month five. "The Bible's meaning is so frustratingly slippery."
He also realizes that his quest is inherently Protestant, even though he himself is an agnostic Jew. The idea that an individual could strip all the layers of interpretation away to attain a pristine and plain truth is the quintessence of Protestantism: it is, he openly acknowledges, DIY Bible. William Miller would have felt right at home with this mission, based as it is on the elementary Protestant principle of sola scriptura.
In particular, Jacobs' project bears the mark of an undiagnosed and lingering strain of American Puritanism. As he scrutinizes every article of his clothing under a literal microscope, it serves as a metaphor for the entire project of religious self-examination. Just as American Puritans engaged in relentless assessments of their own actions, filling their commonplace books and journals with seemingly endless analyses of behavioral minutiae, so too does Jacobs offer up every aspect of his private life: family relationships, sexuality, fertility, even his innermost (and often unflattering) thoughts. But because the book is so wonderfully funny, we don't immediately realize Jacobs is standing in a modern-day Puritan's self-directed confessional booth for one.
Despite the individualism of Jacobs' task and focus, the haunting and glorious truth of the book is that his most significant spiritual experiences all happen not as part of his solitary year-long quest, but in community. He dances exuberantly with the Torah scrolls with hundreds of black-hatted Hasidim on Simchat Torah, celebrating the joy of the Bible in a way he never did on his own. He delves into Jewish family rituals, like the bat mitzvah of his niece or the circumcision of his twins, because he has decided that indeed, it is not good that man should be alone (Gen. 2:18). He assembles a sort of spiritual advisory board and tries to meet with or talk to at least one member of that group each day. Along the way, he discovers that a vital part of religion is belonging in community, whether or not we always understand (or agree with) why that community does what it does. One of the book's most illuminating moments, in fact, comes when Jacobs tries to think like a biblical creationist and realizes that despite its abuses of science, creationism is actually about a theology of human relationship:
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