JSON was heavily inspired by Rebol - http://www.rebol.com/article/0423.html

However unlike JSON, Rebol is more than just a data interchange format because it's like Lisp in being a full homoiconic programming language.

For eg: Here are andolanra's excellent Scheme/Lisp examples in Rebol:

  >> some-code: func [n] [either n = 1 [1] [compose [(n) * (some-code n - 1)]]]
  
  >> some-code 4
  == [4 * 3 * 2 * 1]
  
  >> do some-code 4
  == 24
  
  >> do replace/all some-code 4 '* '+
  == 10

And it's this that makes the difference between JSON+Javascript compared to something like Rebol/Scheme/Lisp.