With the help of my assistants, I have examined the prayer literature of ancient Judaism…. The result of this examination was, that in no place in this immense literature is this invocation of God as “Abba, Father” to be found. Abba was an everyday word. It was a homely family-word. No Jew would have dared to address God in this manner, yet Jesus did it always in all his prayers which are handed down to us, with one single exception: the cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken