Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§16.2 How Did Jesus See His Own Role?
claim is that it was not so much Jesus' use of abba in his prayer which was distinctive,
but the fact that abba was his consistent and almost unvarying form of
address to God.
The significance of Jesus' use of abba in address to God is not much
doubted, though it has also been exaggerated. By common consent, abba was a
family word, expressive of a family relationship of some intimacy. This is presumably
why it was so little used in contemporary Jewish prayer: it was regarded
as too familiar, bordering on presumption. 49 In contrast, it is hard to avoid the opposite
deduction, that Jesus used this prayer form because he regarded it as appropriate;
that is, his prayer was expressive of his sense of his own relationship
towards God. Like Hanina, he prayed to God 'like a son of the house'. We can
even begin to deduce that Jesus could have prayed so consistently only if he had
experienced his relationship with God as an intimate family relationship. 50 And
to that extent we can begin to see how this broader category (God's son) began to
be filled with a new significance which Christians subsequently took further.
One other point. The implication of Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer is
that Jesus taught his disciples also to say abba to God as a distinguishing badge
of their discipleship (Luke 11.1-2). This, however, does not constitute a weakening
of the conclusion regarding the distinctiveness of Jesus' Abba prayer. For,
as with Rom. 8.15 and Gal. 4.6, it is precisely disciples of Jesus who are encouraged
so to pray, and as a mark of their discipleship. There is a clear sense on
each occasion, then, that the disciple's sonship expressed in the Abba prayer is
not somehow independent of Jesus' sonship but is precisely derivative from Jesus'
sonship. The point is of a piece with the observation that Jesus chose twelve
disciples (to represent Israel). He did not choose another eleven so that he with
them might represent Israel, he being one of the twelve. He set himself in some
measure over against the twelve, distinct from them, as the one who called
them. This observation fits too with the older point that Jesus is often remembered
as saying 'my Father' and 'your Father', but never as joining with his dis-
111 (1992) 611-30 (particularly 614-16). See also my earlier response to Morton Smith on this
point in Christology 27-28.
49. In m. Ta'an. 3.8 Simeon ben Shetah seems to criticize Honi for such presumption.
But the point should not be overstated: J. Barr, 'Abba Isn't Daddy!', JTS 39 (1988) 28-47;
Vermes, Religion 180-82.
50. 'Jesus was aware, in a peculiarly intense and intimate way, that God was his father'
(Barrett, Jesus 29); 'Jesus' uniqueness in his relation to God undoubtedly lies in its unaffected
simplicity' (Schillebeeckx, Jesus 260, also 268); 'an unusual directness' (Stuhlmacher,
Biblische Theologie 1.85-87); 'He regarded his relationship with God as especially intimate'
(Sanders, Historical Figure 239); Caird, Theology 403; Goshen-Gottstein, 'Hillel and Jesus'
50-53; see also and further McKnight, New Vision 49-65; with proper hesitation, Thompson,
Promise 30-32, 69-70, 78-82. Witherington notes that Barr does not dispute that abba is the
language of intimacy {Christology 218).
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