Description: This book investigates the influence of Semitic languages in the fourth Gospel. For the first time Arabic and Aramaic dialects from the western Levant region were taken into account in order to better identify colloquial features within the Semitisms of the fourth Gospel. Based on a thorough investigation of 54 Semitic transliterations and 704 Semitic syntagms, the former consensus, namely that Hebrew was only an artificial literary and/or scholarly language in the time of Jesus, whereas Aramaic was the daily colloquial language, is questioned. In particular, the frequent use of anti-/synthetical Hebraisms, which stand closely in line with the Old Testament book of Proverbs and to a lesser extend also with Ben Sira, favour an early dating and Judean provenance of the fourth Gospel. Through the employment of recent sources from Qumran and the Judean Desert as well as the incorporation of electronic syntax databases, a more precise and refined picture of Semitisms in the fourth Gospel is traced than in previous studies.
