Biblical sources of croatian or serbian and german proverbs

Abstract

This article deals with the question of how Biblical sources from the New Testament are taken over into Croatian/Serbian and into German. There are 4 ways of using Biblical sources which can be ascertained in these two languages. A chosen body of 39 proverbs arc compared with their Biblical sources. The conclusion to be drawn from these comparisons is that proverbs in Croatian/Serbian arc composed in most part according to the C type of taking over, while the German proverbs use [he B type. This means that German is more »faithful« to the Biblical source while in Croatian/Serbian this same Biblical source succumbs to considerable lexical change, as well as modification of content. As a working hypothesis, this can be explained by the fact that the Croatian/Serbian proverb is composed more by a retelling of the Biblical source, while German cites and then takes over the orginal source.