Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE QUESTION OF JESUS' SELF-UNDERSTANDING §16.2
tile Christians ('we cry', 'our hearts'). Second, these Gentile (Greek-speaking)
churches continued to use an Aramaic prayer-form. This must be because it had
become such a firmly established form in the earliest (Aramaic-speaking)
churches that the first Greek-speakers were simply inducted to it as new converts,
and thus it became a regular expression and mark of Christian devotion.
Third, in both passages the prayer is seen to express the Christians' own sonship,
which is obviously seen as a reflection of Christ's sonship. The Spirit who cries
'Abba' is the Spirit of the Son; the cry is proof that those who so pray share in his
sonship and inheritance.
The most obvious conclusion to draw from all this is that the Abba prayer
was so cherished among the first believers precisely because it was Jesus' own
prayer form. It was precisely because it was his way of praying that their use of it
served as assurance that they shared in his sonship. I have made this argument
several times, but still the importance to the case (that the Abba prayer was taken
over in Christian circles from, and in imitation of Jesus' own distinctive way of
praying) seems not to be adequately appreciated. In my judgment, the case for arguing
that Jesus regularly addressed God as 'Abba'in his prayers, a case which is
but weakly founded within the Jesus tradition itself, is in the end dependent for
its persuasiveness on the testimony of the two Pauline texts. 46
Was the Abba prayer a distinctive feature of Jesus' prayer? In giving an affirmative
answer, this was one of the places where Jeremias overreached the
data. 47 We have already noted that the same address to God (pater, 'abi) is attested
elsewhere for the time of Jesus (above, n. 17). Nevertheless, the tradition
of Christian usage attested in Rom. 8.15 and Gal. 4.6 clearly assumes that the
Abba prayer was a mark of Christian worship, and therefore, presumably, distinctive
of Christians. And by the same logic as above, it follows that they must
have regarded Jesus' Abba address as distinctive of Jesus' prayer. It also follows
that the first disciples, who in their own praying in Aramaic established the Abba
prayer as Christian, cannot have been aware of abba as a regular address in the
prayers of fellow Jews. 48 The obvious qualification thus called for to Jeremias's
46. Cf. J. A. Fitzmyer, 'Abba and Jesus' Relation to God', in Ä Cause de L'Evangile,
J. Dupont FS (LD 123; Paris: Cerf, 1985) 15-38 (here 31-32). The point is made independently
by Thompson, Promise 67-68 (citing particularly Meier, Marginal Jew 1.266).
47. Jeremias, Proclamation 63-68; but we should note that Jeremias's findings and arguments
are largely supported by Fitzmyer ('Abba and Jesus' Relation to God'). For sympathetic
restatements of Jeremias's argument see Witherington, Christology 216-21, and Thompson,
Promise 21-34.
48. It will not do simply to reply that 'Abba' may have been in more regular usage by
one or more sections of Second Temple Judaism. Deductions should be drawn from the evidence
available, though, of course, always remaining open to correction from further evidence.
Pace M. R. D'Angelo, 'Abba and "Father": Imperial Theology and the Jesus Traditions', JBL
716