I’m pleased to pass along the news that my article, “‘Lord LORD: Jesus as YHWH in Matthew and Luke,” has been accepted for publication in New Testament Studies. The article abstract is as follows:
Despite numerous studies of the κύριος [Lord] title in the New Testament, the significance of the double form κύριε κύριε occurring in Matthew and Luke has been overlooked, with most assuming the doubling merely communicates pathos. In contrast, this article argues that whereas a single κύριος might be ambiguous, the double κύριος formula always serves as a distinctive way to represent the Tetragrammaton outside the Gospels and that its use in Matthew and Luke is best understood as a way to represent Jesus as applying the name of the God of Israel to himself.
This is significant inasmuch as certain circles of scholarly orthodoxy have long held that, in contrast to the Gospel of John, Matthew and Luke do not represent Jesus as divine—or at least that Jesus never refers to himself as divine. This article challenges that perspective, suggesting that Matthew and Luke indeed identified Jesus with the name YHWH, much like Paul (Phil 2) and John.