In A Cultural History of Aramaic, Holger Gzella comprehensively describes the history of Aramaic and its socio-cultural underpinnings as an ongoing linguistic evolution between its emergence and the spread of Arabic through the Near East (ca. 1000 BCE-700 CE).

Holger Gzella, Habilitation (2004) in Semitics, Heidelberg, is Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at Leiden University. He was formerly trained at Oxford, Münster, and the Biblicum (Rome), has published widely on Semitic languages, and is a member of The Young Academy.