ABBA

A form of the Aramaic word for “father” found in Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15; and Mark 14:36 alongside the Greek ho patēr as an address to God. The presence of ho patēr in every case (instead of the vocative pater) shows that the NT writers saw abba as a determinative form: ʾabbāʾ, “the father”; cf. Matt 11:16; Luke 10:21. Such forms are frequently used in Aramaic and Hebrew when a vocative is required: another example is talitha (Aram. ṭalyētāʾ/ṭalyĕtāʾ), rendered to korasion in Mark 5:41. Accordingly the explanation of abba as the determinative form of ab (“father”) is almost certainly correct.

Alternatively the form has been explained as a rare vocative (in which case it could just as well be Hebrew as Aramaic) or as derived from children’s baby talk (cf. “Papa,” “Daddy”). If the last explanation were right, then the use of abba as an address to God in Mark 14:36 might be thought to imply a special, indeed a unique, intimacy. This view was held at one time by J. Jeremias, but he later came to regard it as “a piece of inadmissible naivety” (1967: 63).

Wrong as it is, it deserves mention not only because of its extensive dissemination beyond the walls of academia but also because its influence can be detected even in the work of respected scholars such as J. G. D. Dunn (1975: 21–26; 1980: 22–23) and is explicit in the most recent writing of M. J. Borg (1987: 45).

Apart from the intrinsic unlikelihood of the idea that Jesus ever addressed God as “Daddy,” the suggestion is ruled out of court by one important fact: wherever abba is found with the meaning “father” or “my father” (in Mishnaic Hebrew or Targumic Aramaic), it is equally employed of the fathers of grown-up sons. One instance cited by G. Vermes (1983: 42) is Judah’s threat to his unrecognized brother, Joseph, in the Tg. Neof. version of Gen 44:18: “I swear by the life of the head of abba, as you swear by the life of the head of Pharaoh your master …” And as J. Barr (1988) emphasizes, inferences concerning the meaning of words must be based upon function, not upon origin or derivation.

There is no evidence in pre-Christian Palestinian Judaism that God was ever addressed as abba by an individual Jew in prayer. Jeremias (1967: 59) adduces two instances in the Babylonian (Talmud b. Taʿan. 23ab) from stories told of sages who lived in the 1st century b.c.; but Schelbert (1981: 398–405) has shown these attributions to be insecure, a point reemphasized by Fitzmyer (1985: 27) in the most comprehensive of all recent discussions of the subject.

Though God is frequently alluded to as the father of his people in the OT and elsewhere, the earliest attestation of abba as a personal address to God is Gal 4:6. This should not be taken to imply that the sense of God as the father of the individual supplicant was not pre-Christian: there are a few passages that perhaps indicate it: Sir 23:1, 4; Wis 2:16; 14:3. This evidence, however, is neither abundant nor strong.

The question why the Aramaic abba was retained in the Spirit-inspired prayer of Greek-speaking communities cannot be answered with certainty. But even the single attribution of the term to Jesus (in the prayer in Gethsemane) lends plausibility to the suggestion that Christian usage was prompted by an authentic tradition of Jesus’ own prayer. This is supported by Paul’s association of the prayer of the community with the divine sonship of Christ “God has sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ ” (Gal 4:6). The fact that Matthew and Luke have different renderings of Jesus’ prayer to God in Gethsemane (pater mou, Matt 26:39; pater, Luke 22:42) may be explained in one of two ways: either the memory of Jesus’ own prayer did not survive beyond the first written account; or else the use of abba in Christian prayer was no longer current in the Matthean and Lucan communities.

Finally, what are the christological implications of the use of the term by Jesus? Since the address was taken over by Christians in their own prayer, they cannot have seen it as evidence of an exclusive relationship between Jesus and God. Moreover, postbiblical usage (the only comparative material available) suggests that the nuance of abba as an address is closer to “Father” than the earlier Hebrew and Aramaic forms (ʾābı̂ and ʾăbı̂ respectively), which mean specifically “my father.”

These, like abba, can be used in speaking about one’s father as well as in addressing him; but unlike abba, they are not used of another person’s father. Besides, the Gospels portray Jesus as urging his disciples to regard God as a father and to address him as their father in prayer. Nevertheless, taken in conjunction with other gospel evidence (e.g. Matt 11:25–27 = Luke 10:21–22) for Jesus’ own awareness of God as Father, the use of abba constitutes one especially strong argument for the view that the personal sense of the fatherhood of God was a typically Christian development of the Judaic tradition, and that this probably originated in a recollection of Jesus’ teaching and of the example of his own prayer.