Call No Man Abba

Jesus called God by the ordinary Aramaic word for father — and forbade giving that word to men. His followers did both the opposite ways.

The verse

Matthew 23:8–10. Three bans in a row: Do not be called Rabbi, for you have one Teacher. Call no one on earth your father, for you have one Father, in heaven. Do not be called leaders, for you have one Leader. Rabbi, Father, Master — a list of religious titles, introduced by verse 7: "they love to be called Rabbi." The middle ban is the same kind of sentence as the first and third. It targets a title, not a parent; Jesus himself says "your father Abraham" without contradiction.

The word

The Aramaic behind "father" is ab; its emphatic form is abba. The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (cal.huc.edu), entry ʾb / ʾbʾ, lists the senses: father; honored senior, chief, master; and — as its own listed sense — "Heavenly, i.e. God," attested in Palestinian Targumic, Christian Palestinian and Syriac Aramaic. God is a dictionary meaning of the word, the way "a powerful ruler" is a dictionary meaning of god in English. One entry, several senses; the sentence tells you which is meant.

The Jews used it that way before the Christians did. b. Taʿanit 23b: children tug at Ḥanan ha-Neḥba's cloak crying "Abba, Abba, give us rain," and he prays for those who cannot tell "the Abba who gives rain from the Abba who does not." The Mishnah's phrase is "our Father in heaven" (Soṭah 9:15; Avot 5:20; Yoma 8:9). When Jesus said "one is your Father in heaven," he was quoting the synagogue.

The honorific

Abba was also a title given to sages: Abba Saul, Abba Ḥilqiyya, Abba Ḥanan. John Gill (1748) on Matthew 23:9: the scribes "were called not only by the name of Rabbi, but Abba, Father… a name of honour, even as Rabbi." B. W. Johnson (1891): "The scribes delighted to be called 'Abba', 'father'. So the priests of the Roman Catholic Church." The Seventh-day Adventist commentary: "Jesus here seems to refer to a technical use of the term, comparable in its implications to rabbi."

What happened next

Paul: "in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel" (1 Cor 4:15). Then monastic orders; desert elders addressed as Abba; the abbot named from it; priests called Father. What Jesus reserved for God, tradition handed back to men.

The other side

Muslims refuse the word Jesus used for God, though the Qur'an never bans it — every Qur'anic objection is to walad, begetting, never to ab — and though the Prophet gave the same three bans: "do not exalt me as the Christians exalted the son of Mary" (Bukhārī 3445); "let no slave call his master rabb" (Muslim 2249); "the Sayyid is God" (Abū Dāwūd 4806).