storytelling

70:3.9“Guest friend­ship” was a re­la­tion of tem­po­rary hos­pi­tal­ity. When vis­it­ing guests de­parted, a dish would be bro­ken in half, one piece be­ing given the de­part­ing friend so that it would serve as a suit­able in­tro­duc­tion for a third party who might ar­rive on a later visit. It was cus­tom­ary for guests to pay their way by telling tales of their trav­els and ad­ven­tures. The sto­ry­tellers of olden times be­came so pop­u­lar that the mores even­tu­ally for­bade their func­tion­ing dur­ing ei­ther the hunt­ing or har­vest sea­sons.

139:3.3Though James was in no sense moody, he could be quiet and tac­i­turn one day and a very good talker and sto­ry­teller the next. He usu­ally talked freely with Je­sus, but among the twelve, for days at a time he was the silent man. His one great weak­ness was these spells of un­ac­count­able si­lence.

126:2.6This year it be­came the cus­tom for the neigh­bors to drop in dur­ing the win­ter evenings to hear Je­sus play upon the harp, to lis­ten to his sto­ries (for the lad was a mas­ter sto­ry­teller), and to hear him read from the Greek scrip­tures.

130:7.1Most of the time en route to Carthage Je­sus talked with his fel­low trav­el­ers about things so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and com­mer­cial; hardly a word was said about re­li­gion. For the first time Gonod and Ga­nid dis­cov­ered that Je­sus was a good sto­ry­teller, and they kept him busy telling tales about his early life in Gal­i­lee. They also learned that he was reared in Gal­i­lee and not in ei­ther Je­ru­sa­lem or Da­mas­cus.

139:6.4In many re­spects Na­than­iel was the odd ge­nius of the twelve. He was the apos­tolic philoso­pher and dreamer, but he was a very prac­ti­cal sort of dreamer. He al­ter­nated be­tween sea­sons of pro­found phi­los­o­phy and pe­ri­ods of rare and droll hu­mor; when in the proper mood, he was prob­a­bly the best sto­ry­teller among the twelve. Je­sus greatly en­joyed hear­ing Na­than­iel dis­course on things both se­ri­ous and frivolous. Na­than­iel pro­gres­sively took Je­sus and the king­dom more se­ri­ously, but never did he take him­self se­ri­ously.