The canonical gospels often portray Christ as limited in various ways, for example, with respect to knowledge. But how could Christ be divine yet fail to know certain true propositions? One prominent answer is known as kenoticism, the view that upon becoming incarnate Christ ‘emptied’ himself of certain divine properties, including omniscience. A powerful objection to kenoticism, however, is that it conflicts with Anselmian intuitions about divinity. Specifically, kenoticism implies that Christ was not the greatest conceivable being. I articulate a modified version of kenoticism that avoids this powerful objection while remaining faithful to the depiction of Christ found in the gospels.

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Matthew's Gospel is known for its long, flowing discourses. The speeches in Luke, by contrast, are shorter and scattered throughout his narrative. Some believe this difference is evidence against the so-called ‘Farrer hypothesis’ – the view that Luke used both Mark and Matthew as sources. One response, however, is that Luke wanted to bring his speech lengths into closer conformity with the literary standards of Greco-Roman bioi. An analysis of seventeen representative bioi suggests that Matthew's speeches were exceptionally long for medium-sized biographies such as his own. This fact provides a plausible literary motivation for Luke to abbreviate Matthew's discourses.

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Matthew’s crucifixion narrative recounts the opening of tombs, the raising of long-deceased saints and their entrance into Jerusalem. One odd feature of the story is that it contains a strange time gap: the saints are raised when Jesus dies, but they exit their tombs only after his resurrection. Scholars have tried to explain away this time gap in several ways, but none convinces. I advance a new proposal: the time gap is a natural consequence of Matthew’s theological narrative. Drawing on Ezek. 37.1-14, Matthew connects the moment Jesus gives up his breath with the raising of the saints, and he links Jesus’ resurrection with the saints’ entrance into Jerusalem. The time gap, therefore, is a natural and unproblematic result of the way Matthew tells his story.