Jesus’ Unique Relationship with Yhwh in Biblical Exegesis: A Response to Recent Objections

This essay examines the apostle Paul’s citations of Jewish scriptures featuring the divine name YHWH/kurios where Paul takes kurios to refer to Jesus. Capes argues that this intertextual linkage of Jesus with the God of Israel is so strong that we must conclude that, already at the beginning of the Christian movement, influential figures such as Paul considered Jesus to be constitutive of God’s unique identity. Capes considers recent objections (e.g., from J. R. Daniel Kirk) to this interpretation of the evidence and defends his own case for the novelty and profundity of Paul’s citation practice.