A few weeks ago I submitted a paper proposal for this year’s annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), scheduled for November 21–24 in Denver, Colorado. Today I heard back from the Matthew Section (the group that focuses on the Gospel according to Matthew) that my proposal was accepted. Praise God!

The working title is “The Risen Son of Abraham.” Here’s the abstract that I submitted for the proposal:

This paper challenges the common interpretations that “Son of Abraham” in Matthew 1:1 functions primarily as an ethnic marker (e.g., Heil 2017), a generic messianic title (e.g., Albright and Mann 1971), or a cipher for gentile inclusion (e.g., Carter 2004; cf. Boxall 2019). Alongside these and other readings (e.g., Huizenga’s [2009] Isaac typology or the Opus Imperfectum‘s priest-king typology), I argue that Matthew deploys “Son of Abraham” as part of a programmatic thesis that anticipates Jesus’s resurrection as the necessary reconstitution of Abrahamic sonship after the rupture of exile.

A composition-critical analysis of all explicit references to Abraham (1:1–17; 3:9; 8:11; 22:32) reveals a coherent narrative logic. The genealogy climaxes not simply in Davidic fulfillment but in the unresolved problem of “the deportation to Babylon” (1:17), which signals covenantal curse and the apparent severance of the Abrahamic seed-and-land promises. John the Baptist’s warning that God can raise up children for Abraham from stones (3:9) reframes Abrahamic descent as an act of divine re-creation rather than natural genealogy. The metaphor of being “raised up” (ἐγείρειν) anticipates the resurrection, by which Jesus becomes Son of Abraham in a climactic, final sense. The banquet saying (8:11) and the appeal to the God of Abraham in the resurrection dispute (22:32) confirm that Abrahamic sonship is associated with participation in resurrection-life.

Thus, Matthew’s heading (βίβλος γενέσεως) signals not mere origins but a new “genesis” in which Jesus, the Son of Abraham, overcomes exile by being raised from the dead, thereby restoring the Abrahamic promises in their full covenantal scope. This reading reframes debates about date, community, and Matthew’s relation to Paul by foregrounding resurrection as the hermeneutical key to Abraham in Matthew, and it invites renewed dialogue about covenantal history and narrative theology in Matthean studies.

I’m excited to work on this more during the summer! I have largely written the paper, but I’d like to polish it for publication (Lord willing) and then figure out how best to condense it for presentation.

I also submitted this proposal, and another in addition, to the Evangelical Theological Society. I won’t know whether they have accepted it until mid-May.