Five-minute study · Day 28 · Mark 14
Mark 14:36
A word worth stopping on: Abba ἀββα abba
Gethsemane. Midnight. Jesus falls to the ground and speaks a word that none of his followers expected to hear from the mouth of the Messiah. Abba. An Aramaic word for father that had never, in any recorded Jewish prayer before this moment, been used to address God directly. Jesus prayed it. Paul tells us the Spirit teaches believers to pray it. And for decades, scholars misunderstood what it actually conveyed.
Word study: Abba
- Aramaic/Greek
- ἀββα
- Pronounced
- abba
- Strong's
- G0005
- Definition
- Father. An Aramaic term of direct, personal address used within the family for one's father.
For years, Joachim Jeremias argued that abba was baby talk, the Aramaic equivalent of 'Daddy.' The claim became enormously popular. It appeared in sermons, books, and devotionals worldwide. Then James Barr published 'Abba Isn't Daddy' in the Journal of Theological Studies (1988) and demonstrated that the evidence did not support the claim.
Abba was used by adult children addressing their fathers, by students addressing their teachers, and in formal family contexts. It carried warmth and intimacy, but also gravity. A grown son speaking to a father he honored. Familiar reverence, Barr called it. Close enough to be personal. Serious enough to carry weight.
What made Jesus' use extraordinary was not the word's tone but its context. The Mishnah and Talmud preserve thousands of Jewish prayers. None of them use abba to address God. Jesus introduced a directness in prayer that his contemporaries did not practice. In Gethsemane, facing the cross, he addressed the Almighty with the same word a son would use across the dinner table. Personal. Direct. Unmediated.
Historical context · First century AD
The Word No One Else Used in Prayer
Mark preserves the Aramaic abba alongside the Greek ho pater ('the Father'). This bilingual pairing, Aramaic followed by Greek translation, appears only three times in the New Testament: here, in Romans 8:15, and in Galatians 4:6. In both Pauline passages, the Spirit is the one enabling believers to cry 'Abba, Father.' The early church preserved the Aramaic word itself, even in Greek-speaking congregations, because it carried the sound of Jesus' own prayer.
Geza Vermes, in 'Jesus the Jew,' documented that while charismatic Jewish figures like Honi the Circle-Drawer addressed God with intimate language, the specific use of abba in direct prayer was distinctive to Jesus and the movement that followed him. The rabbis addressed God as Avinu, 'our Father,' in liturgical formulas. The first-person singular directness of abba was different.
The Gethsemane prayer is the only place in the Gospels where we hear Jesus use this specific Aramaic word. Mark, writing for a Roman audience, kept it untranslated, then added the Greek. The original sound mattered. The early church wanted to pray the word Jesus prayed, in the language he prayed it.
For reflection
Say 'Abba' aloud. Slowly. Let it sit in the room. Jesus used this word at his most vulnerable, face down in a garden, asking for the cup to pass. What would it take for your prayers to carry that kind of unguarded directness?
The barrier is rarely theological. It is usually emotional. What are you protecting when you keep God at formal distance?
Sources: BDAG Lexicon; Barr, 'Abba Isn't Daddy' (JTS 1988); Vermes, 'Jesus the Jew'