Explore "The Greatest Story Ever Told" by Fulton Oursler on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
PeopLe in Nazareth said that Joseph was like his great ancestor, the favorite son of Jacob. It was true that the carpenter of Nazareth, with his small golden beard, so different from his black-haired neighbors, was a dreamy, quiet-spoken man, looking more like a scholar than a craftsman.
His uncle who brought him up had taught the orphan boy his trade. With those great knotty hands of his Joseph could build a house or a fence, fashion a chair or a bench, hang a door, mend a wheel, build a new plow or yoke. On the high street in Nazareth, his little shop with its earthen floor had a clean, constant smell of shavings and sawdust. In the back was a cot and near by a grate on which Joseph, the bachelor, cooked simple meals. On long evenings he would sit on his heels at the open door and sew a rent in his smock or stand outside and breathe deep of the cool air. Later, by the yellow flame of a rush burning in an oil lamp, he would read for hours from borrowed scrolls.