Happy Abba's Day?

God the Father (by Cima da Conegliano, c. 1515)

Would Aramaic translator Steve Caruso, who labels himself a “Full-Time Dad,” mean that to be a “Full-Time Abba” as well?

Perhaps not…

That’s because Caruso agreed (within a blog post

titled Abba Isn’t Daddy – The Traditional Aramaic

Father’s Day Discussion) that Joachim Jeremias had

misled unsuspecting congregations for all these years.

New Testament scholar Jeremias, who had lived from

1900 to 1979, theorized that the Aramaic word “Abba” was rooted in “child-babble.”  From that (unproven, it turns out) theory, Jeremias went on to surmise that Jesus’ use of the term “Abba” indicated a very special type of intimacy between Jesus and God the Father.

Now that type of intimacy may very well be the case – but it would certainly not depend upon the word “Abba” for verification.  Good thing it wouldn’t... since Caruso goes on to assert that “modern linguistic study of how children pick up speech has completely discounted his [Jeremias’] conclusions of abba as ‘babytalk.’”

Fellow blogger “Andrew” at Declaring the Word pointed out some specifics on why “Abba” isn’t akin to “Da Da.”  Andrew stated that Jeremias had worked with “a severely outdated and widely rejected understanding of word study which attempts to derive the current meaning of a word… on the basis of its history…”  Also, Jeremias engaged in the “dubious” practice of  “making presumptions about the meaning of a word based upon the way it sounds…”  Furthermore, the Aramaic examples that Jeremias worked with “are far too late to be of any help in shedding light on New Testament occurrences.”

Nevertheless, modern-day folks can send “Happy Abba’s Day!” cards on that third Sunday in June since “Abba” is still associated with fatherhood.  Caruso explained that the three instances of “Abba” in the New Testament are all followed by the Greek translation for “the father” (as opposed to “Greek diminutives of father” such as pappas).  And - interestingly enough - Caruso also reported that “Abba” in Modern Hebrew actually can mean “Daddy…”    

Resources

http://aramaicdesigns.blogspot.com/2009/06/abba-isnt-daddy-traditional-aramaic.html

http://graphe.wordpress.com/2006/10/05/does-abba-mean-daddy/

Copyright June 15, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved