Thus Christ may well be spoken of as the second Adam, but not as a second Aaron. The lines of Bishop Wordsworth's hymn, ' Now our heavenly Aaron enters, Through His blood within the veil,' can be defended onlv in so far as the name Aaron is synonymous with high priest. The personal name suggests just those limitations which the generic name avoids, and which the writer of Hebrews expressly warns us must on no account be attributed to our great High Priest who has passed into the heavens. So far as the doctrine of Christ is concerned, it is well to follow Scripture usage and to speak of Him as our Eternal High Priest, rather than to press an analogical or typical relation to Aaron, which fails at many cardinal points.
Literature.— For the further discussion of the subject see Westoott and A. B. Davidson on Hebrews, especially the detached note of the latter on the Priesthood of Christ ; also Milligan's Baird Lectures on The Ascension mid Heavenly Prieithond of our Lord, and the art. of Dr. Denney on ' Priest- hood in NT' in Hastings' DB, vol. iv. W. T. DAVISON.
ABBA.— An Aramaic word preserved by St. Mark in our Lord's prayer in Gethsemane (14* 'A/3(3a 6 Trarrip, Tvavra Svvari. aoi), and given twice in the same association with 6 Trarrip by St. Paul (Ro 8" iXa^ere Trvev)i.a vloSefflas iv V Kpo-^o/Mef, 'A/3/3a 6 Trar-np ; and Gal 4" iiairiartCKev 6 0ebs rt> Xlvfu^a -rod vlou avToO els rds Kapdlas ^M""" Kpa^ov, 'A/3/3a 6 Trarrip). A difficulty arises both as to the spelling and the pronunciation of the word Abba, and also as to its being found in all the above passages joined to 6 Trar-fip.
1. Abba (dj3/3a) corresponds to the Aramaic n;n abbd, which is the definite state of as Mh (con- struct state 3N abh), and means ' Father,' unless it is used for ' my Father ' (k?>< for '5!«) as in Gn 19'*' (Targ. of Onkelos and jjseudo-Jonathau ; see Ual-
ABBA
man, Aramiiisch-Nculiebruisrlics Wbrtci-huch, s.v., Gramm. p. 162, and Words of Jesus, p. 192 [Dal- man says that the sufiix of 1 yers. .siiii,'. is ' ilelihci- ately avoided with dn and is supiilied by the de- terminative form']). It is not, however, quite certain that tlie word was pronounced abhd in Palestine in our Lord's time. As the points were not invented till many centuries after, we cannot be sure that nbbil was then the definite state rather than ah/ui as in Syriac ; and we have no indication except the Greek transliteration that the b was then doubled. But the fact that, when points were first used ( A.D. 700 ?), the daghesh was emi)loyed for the definite state of this word in the Targuniic litera- ture, coupled with the doubling of the ^ in the Greek, aflbrds a presumption that the b was hard and doubled in this word at the beginning of our era [Dalman gives for the definite state n:>< Gn 44", or K3 Nu 25", or in Palestinian Targum also N3N ; with other pronominal suffixes A\e have 'nnx etc., and the pi. definite state is NrCi?S]. The Syriac, on the other hand, has b aspirated through- out, »o] abh, |i| abhd (pron. av, avd, or «?(', aivd), etc., and the distinction between (ii| abd, a sjnritual father, and |o( avA, a natural father,
which the grammarians make, appears not to be founded on any certain basis, nor to agree with the manuscripts (Payne-Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus,
S.V.). The proper name |i] also in Syriac has always aspirated b, while Dalman (Wbrterbuch) gives for Targumio N3N, and says it is an ab- breviation of n;3N. In Mk 14'^ (Peshitta) Pusey
and Gwilliam give ]i| as in Massora 1 in the
British Museum (Codex Additionalis 12138, Nes- torianus, A.D. 899); the American edition prints
lisl (i.e. with ,^) in all three NT places ; but this
13 rather a following of the grammarians than of good manuscripts. It is very noteworthy, however, that the ^larkleian version in the Markan passage
spells the word l*^*^], transliterating the Greek directly back into Syriac, rather than using the Syriac word itself.
John Lightfoot {Horce ffebraica; on Mk 14**) remarks that the Targum, in translating the OT, never renders a ' civil' father, i.e. a master, prince, lord, etc., by n?x, but only a natural father, or a father who adopts ; in the former sense they use some other word. But this throws no light on the pronunciation of Abba.
It is to be noticed that it is not certain how the Greeks of the 1st cent, themselves pronounced dp/3a, whether abbd or, as the modern Greeks pro- nounce it, avvd. The word is not found in the LXX. It passed into ecclesiastical Latin with a doubled b, and gave us such words as 'abbot,' 'abbacy,' etc.
But does it mean 'Father' or 'my Father'? If it be a Jewish fornmla or fixed manner of begin- ning jirayer, it may well be the latter. We must, however, note that whatever be the way of ac- counting for 'A^/3a 6 Tarrip (see below), the origina- tors or originator of that phrase in Greek, whether the Jews, or our Lord, or St. Paul, or the Second Evangelist, seem to have taken 'A/9;3a to mean merely 'Father.' And the same is probably true of the translators of the Peshitta. The Sinaitic