King James Bible: The last word in books

• Shipyard joiner Norman Smith reads his copy of the King James Bible at Finnieston crane in Glasgow Photograph: Robert Perry

The special collections department of Glasgow University contains more than 400,000 documents, many of them rare and very precious. By the university library's standards, the 1611 Bible is rather commonplace; they own eight. Still, I'm excited at the thought of laying eyes, if not hands, on the book.

It is the biggest-selling title in the world, having sold at least 2.5 billion copies and counting. Far greater than its commercial success, however, is its cultural, social and linguistic influence, the way it has shaped so many minds, hearts and tongues.

Language and stories from the KJV ("v" for version), as it is known, have found their way into everything from Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited ("Oh God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son.'") to Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, to our everyday chatter as we discuss falls from grace, flies in the ointment and casting pearls before swine. Our culture is permeated by the King James Bible - both the phrases themselves and the morality and civilisation they promote. These are the aspects being celebrated in a series of events taking place this year to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication.

One notable event will be Precious Light, a huge exhibition of sculpture and collages of biblical scenes at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh by the Scottish artist David Mach. You'll have to wait till July for that. However, today Radio 4 devotes over seven hours to readings from the King James Bible and introductions to the various chapters from speakers including Archbishop Rowan Williams and arch-lexophile Will Self.

Glasgow University's special collections department is on the top floor of the towering concrete library building. The King James Bibles are kept, like the other books, in custom-built quarters designed to protect them from those most biblical of threats - fire and flood, not to mention being nicked and sold doon the Barras.

"As you can see, it's quite hefty," says the librarian Sarah Hepworth, a slender young woman making a visible effort to lug the King James Bible on to a cushion of protective foam.

The book is 16 inches long, and half a foot thick. It is bound in black leather - Bible black, I suppose - and has some damage around the spine. How much does it weigh? "I'm not sure," laughs Hepworth. "More than my niece."

This particular book was bequeathed to the university in 1874 by William Euing, a Glaswegian insurance underwriter known for his magnificent collection of early Bibles. Euing also left to the university a copy of the New Testament by preacher and scholar William Tyndale, who was put to death in 1536 for the heresy of translating the Bible into English from Greek and Hebrew. He was choked with an iron chain, but his voice was not silenced. It is thought that around 80 per cent of the King James Bible is his work; certainly, he wrote lots of the memorable phrases and figures of speech still in common usage today: "salt of the Earth"; "my brother's keeper"; "filthy lucre"; "gave up the ghost"; "the signs of the times" - these and many, many more are Tyndale's.

The King James version was not, then, the first Bible in English. But it was an attempt to establish a standard text which would be better than those which had gone before, and it was endorsed - indeed commissioned - by the first British monarch, Jamie the Saxt of Scotland who ascended to the English throne as James I in 1603. The first readers of the new Bible would have been left in no doubt that this book was made possible by the Union of the Crowns; a design of intertwined roses and thistles formed part of the illustration.

It is possible to examine a first edition online at kingjamesbibletrust.org, but there really is no substitute for being in its physical presence. For one thing, you get a sense of its heft. It was very much a Bible intended for being read from the pulpit. The precise provenance of this particular book is unknown, but as Sarah Hepworth turns the pages from Genesis to Revelation, it's easy and oddly pleasurable to imagine the words being intoned by some coal-eyed minister as his congregation, perhaps in Dundee or Dunvegan, looks upwards and listens from cold, hard pews.

The typeface - a thick, black gothic - and the archaic spellings add to this stern, wintry mood. However, this is countered by the visual beauty of the book, in particular a wonderful family tree of Noah's descendants literally sprouting from the Ark; all those mysterious Old Testament names - among them Nimrod, Magog, Japheth and Ham - hang from the tree like ripe exotic fruit.

Then, of course, there is the language. "In the beginning God created the Heaven, and the Earth. And the earth was without forme, and voyd, and darkenesse was upon the face of the deepe." That's how it starts and how it goes on - an unmistakable, elemental, sonorous, deeply serious, and seriously deep mantra-like style and tone and beat. It booms and echoes, soars and sighs. Compare this with the slight, chatty Good News Bible: "In the beginning, when God created the universe, the Earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness."

Sadly, the King James Bible is not much heard these days. Hardly any British churches use that version of the Bible, considering its language and syntax to be archaic and user-unfriendly. The Church of Scotland has no official Bible; its ministers speak from a range of modern editions including the New Revised Standard, The Message, and the Good News.

The text of the KJV was assembled by around 50 learned translators based in London, Oxford and Cambridge. But the origins of the book - its own genesis, if you like - are in Scotland. On 16 May, 1601, the assembly of the Church of Scotland was held at the kirk in Burntisland. There, James VI was asked by the clergy to create a new English translation of the Bible which would make its teachings more accessible to the common folk.

I visit Burntisland Parish Church on a deathly cold day. Through a window, past the kirkyard, across the glittering Firth, the steeples of Edinburgh poke through the morning mist.

This church has been somewhat written out of the story of the King James Bible, but they are quietly proud of the connection here. The same democratic and didactic impulses which led to the Bible's creation is apparent in the architecture of the building. The seating is arranged on all four sides of the pulpit, the better to hear the word. There's also a strong sense that this was built as a place for busy people to communicate with God in the midst of their working lives; one of the box pews is wider than the rest, the better to accommodate the shepherd's dogs. This is a very beautiful church and it feels a little sad, given its history, to see the Good News lying on the pews. As one outraged tourist from Yorkshire puts it in the visitors book: "What! You don't use the KJV in the church known as ‘Kirk Of The Bible.' USE THE KING JAMES BIBLE!!!"

Later, back in Glasgow, I meet a man who has never used anything else.

Norman Smith, a 58-year-old joiner working in the shipyards, is a member of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing). The King James Bible, referred to by them as the Authorised Version, or AV, continues to be used in all Free Church services. I meet Smith, a gently spoken and polite man, in the back room of the church he attends in Partick. We sit close to the gas fire. Sombre black and white photographs of former ministers look down from the walls.

Smith was raised on Lewis. He grew up with the AV in the home and sabbath school where he was expected to learn a chapter and a psalm each week. The Bible featured at his wedding, during the baptisms of his children, and will be used at his funeral - "Oh, without a doubt," he laughs. "There will be nothing else. I wouldn't allow it." He reads from it at home each morning and evening. "I've gone through my life with this Bible," he says, tapping its black cover. "It's very precious to me."

He considers the language of scripture beautiful, and even more so in Gaelic. I ask if he would mind reading the start of Genesis in his native tongue and he agrees, fetching down a copy from an old wardrobe. "An toiseach cruthaich Dia na namhan agus an talamh," he begins.

Listening to him read, suddenly self-absorbed, his words not much louder than the hiss of the fire, is really quite a moving experience.

Outside, the worldly world goes on. Drunks outside pubs on the Dumbarton Road blow smoke towards the guttural traffic, while McDonald's golden arches glow bright against the gloaming.

Here, though, in the small back room of a small church in a small country, it's just one man and a 400-year-old text, the word of God like black ink staining every synapse and DNA spiral.

"Bitheadh solus ann: agus bha solus ann," Smith says, and there's a quiet joy on his face when he looks up at last. "That means, ‘Let there be light. And there was.'"