Abba Again<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It is now two weeks since we finally dived into the details of the Lord's Prayer in my Sunday school class. Moving at our usual fast pace, we covered one\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/abba-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Abba Again\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is now two weeks since we finally dived into the details of the Lord's Prayer in my Sunday school class. 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{"id":18746,"date":"2013-11-24T08:22:52","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T13:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=18746"},"modified":"2013-11-24T08:22:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-24T13:22:52","slug":"abba-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/abba-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Abba Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It is now two weeks since we finally dived into the details of the Lord\u2019s Prayer in my Sunday school class. Moving at our usual fast pace, we covered one word on that occasion: Father.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>I highlighted the evidence for Jesus have addressed God as abba<\/a><\/em> in Aramaic, and the misconception that abba<\/em> meant \u201cdaddy\u201d<\/a> was mentioned. And so I explained \u2013 as I also sought to do on the BLT blog recently<\/a> \u2013 that abba<\/em><\/a> simply is not an equivalent of \u201cdaddy.\u201d It may be that Aramaic abba<\/em> and Greek pater<\/em> overlapped with our English word \u201cdaddy\u201d in terms of their semantic domains, just as the English word \u201cfather\u201d overlaps with the meaning of \u201cdaddy.\u201d But that is something very different. Abba is not a diminutive form, it simply is the Aramaic for \u201cthe father.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not to say that there isn\u2019t an intimacy in addressing God as \u201cfather.\u201d There certainly is \u2013 indeed, while the divine name is mentioned in the next line, God is not addressed by that name. And arguably \u201cfather\u201d is more intimate than the use of a name, just as we address our own parents not by their names but by such titles.<\/p>\n

Presumably the significance of Jesus addressing God as \u201cabba\u201d was that it was in Aramaic, the language of ordinary speech, and not in Hebrew. The closest parallel that I can think of that might be familiar to some readers is the shift to addressing God in English after being accustomed to using Latin for such purposes.<\/p>\n

We also discussed gender-inclusive language, abusive parents, and other considerations relevant to thinking about or addressing God as \u201cFather.\u201d That topic also came up on the BLT blog recently<\/a>, and they shared this sample of a gender-inclusive translation:<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"