I did some research trying to answer the question of a Christian friend as to whether “Raboni” in the Gospels should be transliterated “Rabooni” as the Greek has it.
I couldn’t answer her question so I answered another one:
Hi Jane,
The titles Rav, Rabbi, Rabban appear in Jewish Rabbinic sources for scholars teachers and leaders, mostly a bit later than Jesus’ time, but some contemporary with Jesus.
If you look at Mishna Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) you can see the progession in the development of the titles of the early Jewish teachers. The Jewish teachers of the period recorded by the Mishna, the Tannaim, are initially referred to simply by their name eg Hillel (died 10CE) and Shammai (c. 50 BCE – c. 30 CE) who lived overlapping the time of Jesus. Some with their father’s name, or an epithet eg “Shimon the righteous” or “Antigonous a man of Socho”.
https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.1
It’s not until two generations after Hillel and Shammai that the title Rabban first appears for Hillel’s grandson, Rabban Gamliel (died 52CE). He was head of the Sanhedrin court and was effectively a combination of the Chief Rabbi and the President of the Board of Deputies in modern Anglo-Jewish terms. The representative of the Jewish people in Palestine to the Roman governors. The title “Rabban“ seems to have been reserved for the head of the Sanhedrin. Other teachers are then given the title “Rabbi” (in Palestine) or “Rav” in Babylon.
I imagine “Rabban” as meaning “master” rather in the way my son is taught to refer to his Tae Kuan Do teacher as “Master” or the Shaolin Monk disciple in the Kung Fu movie refers to his abbot with that title. It’s a reverential title that would have been given to the spiritual teacher/leader at the top of the hierarchy.
The telling in John and Matthew that uses the title Rabbouni/Rabboni feels like perhaps an anachronism or retrospectively giving Jesus a very respectful title, but possibly not. It could conceivably be contemporary usage.
“Rabban” is Aramaic and is spelled,
according to Jastrow’s dictionary,
רַבָּן
That would be pronounced in modern Sephardi and Israeli Hebrew as “Rabban” and in modern Ashkenasi Hebrew as “Rabbon”. Add the Hebrew possessive and you have “Rabbani” or “Rabboni”.
I have never heard “Rabbooni” in any Jewish texts or usage.
However, I am beginning to question whether the “i” suffix may not be the possessive but simply a dialectical variant in the Aramaic or Mishnaic Hebrew used at the time. So perhaps the word just means “Master” whether Rav or Rabbi or Rabban or Rabboni? (One source I found said “Rabbi” is a “construct” but I don’t get that as what is it a construct in relation to?). So I asked around.
There’s a great article on the ins and outs of dialects of Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew by Yochanan Breuer here
https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0164/ch1.xhtml
Breuer says that “i” is the posessive suffix in Hebrew whereas in Aramaic it was an Alef.
“The common explanation of this difference is that the title Rav was given to sages who were not ordained (the Babylonian sages), therefore it is inferior to Rabbi, which was given to those who were ordained (the Palestinian sages). This explanation is difficult to accept, for many reasons. Indeed, the first to mention this explanation is Rashi; in the writings of the Geonim it is still absent. We conclude that the title Rav evolved from the dropping of the final vowel of Rabbi, a phenomenon typical of Eastern Aramaic, and this is why only the Babylonian sages were called Rav. The assumption that there is a difference in importance is based on the aforementioned view: since the tannaim are believed to be more important than the amoraim, it is natural to assume that Rabbi is greater than Rav. According to this explanation, Rabbi and Rav are, originally, one and the same word with the same semantic value, the difference being of dialect only.”
(From the summary of Yochanan Breuer’s article.)
So “Rabbi” meant my master/teacher in Palestine where Mishnaic Hebrew was spoken alongside Aramaic, but in Babylon the suffix dropped off and the same word and meaning “my master/teacher” became “Rav”.
I would deduce the same was true of the even more respectful “Rabboni/Rabbooni”
It meant “my Lord/Teacher” but in Babylon and in the title of the head of the Sanhedrin just “Rabban” was used (“Lord/Teacher”).
I assume Raboni or Rabooni is the transliteration into Latin or Greek of the Aramaic first century title “my Lord/Teacher” (in the sense of spiritual master or teacher) generally only used in the first and second century of the top Jewish spiritual and communal leader.
The readers of Mark and John spoke Greek and were not familiar with Aramaic, as is shown by the fact it had to be translated by the writer. Was Aramaic even a first language for the writers of the Gospels?
How “Rabboni” was pronounced in Roman-occupied Jewish Palestine in Aramaic in the first century is anybody’s guess I would think, barring time travel back with a sound recording device.
Maybe a scholar can shed some light on it.
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