Storytelling: Remembering and Celebrating

Savor the Story Series

Appreciating the stories in the Bible involves more than critical study. In this series of occasional posts, Gordon Raynal engages Bible stories as works of literature to enjoy. He invites a playful and imaginative approach to the stories. Not assuming that the Bible is literal fact can free creativity in hearing and interacting with its stories. Rev. Raynal is a religious leader well-read in critical scholarship with a lifelong engagement with Bible stories. This series will offer examples of how we can allow biblical stories to engage our imaginations in a deeper appreciation of biblical texts. Links will be provided in the future for critical scholarship that relates to the passages mentioned.

For more about the series, check out the interview with Gordon Raynal, Podcast 5 on the Podcast page.

Storyteller Figure, 100–800 CE, Jalisco, Ameca Valley, Mexico. Ceramic and pigment. Art Institute of Chicago. Photo: Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Homo Fabulator (Storytelling Human)

The scientific name for our species is Homo Sapiens, “wise human.” Needless to say, calling ourselves “wise” sounds rather arrogant if it refers to our typical thoughts and behaviors! Perhaps this name expresses our species’ abiding quest to grow in a richer, ever more informed, and deeper sense of living. Homo Sapiens describes who we hope to be.

A more accurate name for our kind might actually be Homo Fabulator, “storytelling human.” With articulate speech, we humans can tell stories. Yet we can do more than vocalize our stories. We can write them down. Storytelling is one marker of what differentiates us from other life forms on the planet. In storytelling we share the wonder and the joy of the gift of living. Storytelling makes us human. Stories have the power to gather us in common understanding and common delight.

Gathering Voices to Remember

The first post in this Savor the Story Series included an exercise about experiencing the story. See “Creation Stories as Creativity Stories: At Play with the First Origin Story.” That post also noted that the word creation now commonly means thinking about the subject of origins using tools of reasoned knowing. Scientific investigations of origins produce knowledge based on the best reasoned analysis of the best available evidence. The Bible simply does not have any creation narratives of that sort.

Rather, the Bible is packed with stories to be heard, stories that invite listeners into a sensual, emotional, and thought-provoking experience. These narratives were created for group listening, group recitation, and group singing. Telling the stories worked to unite groups in an experience. As groups hear, speak and sing the story together, they experience their beginnings afresh in the moment of uniting their voices in the telling. To read and hear these stories today is to gather for a moment with those who recited and sang about their living identity over the ages.

After such a moment of participation in one of these stories, you may well decide not to be part of that story. You may decide that you would not have claimed that story at the time it was created. It may not be a valid story for you. Yet whether you identify with the story or reject it, such a narrative has stirred your serious consideration about your own identity in the present. That’s the true power of the stories, poems, songs, and group prayers that lift up remembrances of beginnings.

Once again, the Bible has no scientific accounts of creation. Rather it is packed with narratives about beginnings that invite the reader or reciter to experience something right now. The first creation narrative in the Bible invites us to experience the world of nature and to discover afresh its wonder and its rest (shalom). The story actively invites readers to go out and experience those beginnings in the present. Doing so can join us with all humans who are seeking refreshment and rest in taking in the marvel of the creativity ever about us.

Fish Stories

All of us love to tell tales. Generally as we do, the stories we tell of significant events in our lives can grow bigger and bigger. Stories about fishing adventures are notorious for exaggeration.

Fisherman With A Giant Bass 1911. WH Martin. Public Domain.

A group of friends go out for the joy of the sport of angling, to enjoy friendship and hopefully catch enough trout for a tasty meal. When the adventure is fun and the catch is good, inevitably the story gets better and better. Pretty soon a lovely time and a good catch become a whopper of a story as reports of the size of the fish and the size of the catch grow exponentially. What started out as a description of catching a mess of one pound trout can easily become the catch of a fish the size of a massive marlin.

Any actual observer would say, “Oh, he’s just fibbing!” The size of the fish is certainly a fib. Yet the size of the meaning of the experience may be true. As great experiences can grow and grow in our memories, so can our recitations of the events of those memories. The increasing size of the fish tells us about the growing significance of the original event.

The Bible is full of such stories. The historical-critical approach to reading the Bible unpacks the many layers of storytelling in the Bible. Critical scholarship discovers the earliest layers in the writings and detects the significance of the different layers as the writings developed. To appreciate biblical narratives as works of literature, we refocus on the experience of the story. We find sheer delight in the imagination of storytellers who told and retold the stories with greater and greater creativity. We can acknowledge that the size of the fish may be a fib while seeking meaning in the experience of the story.

Storytelling in Action

Today we often think of reading the Bible as a solitary activity. We may also imagine biblical authors as solitary writers. We may see them as if they are modern authors seated at desks creating stories to be read by lone readers. While we may imagine them writing by hand, not using a computer, we still have modern images of how the stories are created and distributed.

To reimagine the creativity of storytelling action, consider a scene from the 1985 apocalyptic science fiction movie “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.” You can search online for the video clip as “The Tell of Captain Walker.” Here’s one LINK. Many aspects of this scene merit discussion, but it portrays elements of the way many stories now in the Bible were probably first told.

In this scene, a large group of children who have been rescued from the worldwide nuclear war have been taken to safety at an oasis in the vast wilderness. Over time these children crafted a narrative of how they came to be where they were. Telling the story includes group participation complete with art and sound effects made by the crowd.

Whatever your opinion of “Beyond Thunderdome,” this scene vividly shows the crafting of a narrative about origins. This small scene shows how actual events of the characters’ lives merge with fabulous creative storytelling to unite the children in a common memory of their beginnings. As you watch, consider how the children participate in recreating the story. Watch what the storyteller does.

Consider how the first biblical narrative of creation in Genesis 1:1–2:4 could be told in such a setting. Imagine how the storyteller tells the narrative. Can you see the gestures? Can you hear the changes in tone and volume? How do the hearers participate? Do they hold up a number of fingers to indicate the days? Do they join in unison saying, “evening and morning?” What else?

Consider, too, the origin stories you love to tell. Are there family stories or stories about how a group you are part of came together? How do you tell these stories?