In the beginning, New York resident Phillip Patterson decided to write out every word in the Bible.

Now, four years after starting with Genesis, the 63-year-old Hudson Valley man has copied out more than 2,400 pages and is close to completing the job. Patterson will finish up the final lines of the Book of Revelation during a ceremony at his church, St. Peter’s Presbyterian in Spencertown, on May 11.

Patterson might seem like an unlikely scribe for the King James version of the Bible. The retired interior designer is neither monkish nor zealous. He goes to church but has never been particularly religious. Health issues — including AIDS and anemia — have sent him to the hospital and slowed the work.

But he says he has always been curious.