"Abba" as an Aramaic family address (8:15; Mark 14:36; Gal 4:6)

Says Believers received the Spirit "by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”" (8:15, BSB). Jesus prays "“Abba, Father,”" in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36), and God sent "the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”" (Gal 4:6). In each place the Aramaic word stands with its Greek rendering, ὁ πατήρ (ho patēr, “the Father”).

Dalman says that the Aramaic behind ἀββᾶ (abba) is אַבָּא (abba'), which "is just the definite form, and therefore means strictly ‘the Father’", but it "became the regular form for ‘my Father,’" and of Jesus’ address to God he writes, "The usage of family life is transferred to God" (Words of Jesus, 191–192).

Jeremias argued that Jewish prayer literature never addresses God as Abba, so Jesus’ use of it was new. He also rejected as naive the idea that Jesus was borrowing a small child’s speech (Prayers of Jesus, essay “Abba”). Barr argued against the popular reading that abba meant “Daddy”: in his view it was an adult’s address to a father, more solemn than childish, and the New Testament writers understood it simply to mean father (JTS 1988).

Wesley suggested that the pairing of the Aramaic (his “Syriac”) and Greek words points to the joint cry of Jewish and Gentile believers (on 8:15).