Biblical storytellers place themselves in line with the oral tradition of the Biblical time-period, understanding that the normal mode of engaging with the Bible during this time was through the public reading of scripture or in the retelling of stories. Modern Biblical storytelling as a discipline may be traced to Tom Boomershine, a longtime professor at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio who experimented with the idea of memorising stories in the Bible and performing them during his years in seminary. In 1977, he together with Gil Bartholomew (now Adam Bartholomew) then went to begin the Network of Biblical Storytellers (NBS). Biblical storytelling guilds began to form internationally, with one forming in Australia in 1990, one in Canada in 1996, and later ones in the United Kin