1
High-Context and Low-Context Communication Styles and Their Implication for
Biblical Interpretation
ETS Annual Meeting B Colorado Springs, CO, November 14, 2001
Glen L. Thompson, Martin Luther College, thompsgl@mlc-wels.edu
I begin with a quotation from Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh's Social-Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress, 1992). They write:
A
The New Testament was written in what anthropologists call a Ahigh-
context@ society. ...writers in such societies usually produce sketchy and
impressionistic texts, leaving much to the reader=s and hearer=s imagination.
They encode much information in widely known symbolic or stereotypical
statements@ (p.11).
The role of culture in understanding the message of Scripture and in sharing that message is a
hot topic today, and has been among cross cultural missionaries for decades. Sociological
studies of ancient cultures are now being used regularly as part of the exegetes toolkit.
Recent hermeneutical studies, such as William Webb=s Slave, Women and Homosexuals:
Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis,
1
have made it clear that serious
hermeneutics must also be grounded in serious cultural study. And yet, while there have
been a tremendous amount of study in areas such as discourse analysis, literary analysis and
rhetorical analysis, I have yet to see an in depth biblical study that zeros in on what has
become one of the accepted fundamentals in crosscultural communications B high-context
and low-context communication styles (often referred to simply as "contexting"). This paper
will give a summary of the state of contexting theory, and then raise the question as to
whether this concept might provide insights for the biblical exegete, suggesting areas where
further research might be done. As a result I will prudently raise more questions than I will
answer.
The Theory of Contexting
1
IVP, 2001.