In a tin by his desk, Freddie North has strings of No. 2 pencil stubs taped together like tiny fence posts.

There are 463 there and scattered around his Clarkesville apartment, each one worn down over the past three years and seven months as North copied the Bible, verse by verse, by hand.

It all started on May 7, 2007, and ended 1,706 sheets of paper later on Dec. 14.

North is an unassuming man with a stocky frame, wrinkled hands and few words. He started to copy, he said, simply because he felt a divine inspiration to make better use of his life.

“I went and got me some pencils and paper and started,” he said.

With bandages wrapped around his fingers to avoid callouses, he started writing three chapters a day in hopes that he could finish in a year. The small books went first — Jude, then second John, then first John. Isaiah took the longest and spanned 133 copied pages, front and back.

About 8 months in, he realized his goal of finishing in a year wasn’t manageable, and he stopped transcribing.

“I said, ‘I can’t do this,’” he said. “... But then one day I said, ‘You’ve got to get back. You’re almost done.’”
So he started again, writing hunched over a table near his couch or at an old dark-wood desk near a window.

He wore through three manual pencil sharpeners — which he keeps on a table in his living room — before buckling down and buying an electric one. When he finished a chapter, he bound the pages in a colored folder and wrote the name of on the front.

He had to use pencil, he said, not pen. Otherwise he’d have to throw out the entire page if he made a mistake.

Now, he keeps all 27 finished folders, holding the nearly 1,200 chapters of the New International Version Bible, in a tote bag by his desk. The Bible he copied is worn and cracked, held together with strips of transparent tape.

North had read the book cover to cover before.

But he said meticulously moving through it word by word brought him a better understanding of its meaning.
“It brought me closer to God and gave me more understanding of the Bible,” he said.

He was especially inspired by Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

Mike Franklin, North’s pastor at The Torch in Demorest, said he wasn’t sure what to think when first heard about the undertaking. Never in his life, he said, had he heard of such a unique way of internalizing the scriptures.

“The reason it takes you by surprise is, who would ever have thought of doing that?” he said. “... But I will tell you this, when you do something like that there’s a tremendous amount of knowledge that you gain ... because when you read it and write it you retain a whole lot more of it.”

The task wasn’t easy, North said, and he wore out about 10 pairs of reading glasses in the process. He wouldn’t recommend that other people try what he did.

“If they want to take the challenge, let them do it,” he said. “... It’s a challenge. But I do recommend that people read their Bibles.”

He finished the last scripture on Dec. 14. Later that day, he started copying the King James version.

Not for pride. It was just something he wanted to do.