of harshness, superiority, and impersonality that sometimes attach to the use of the idiom in Classical Greek are lacking in the almost sixty NT examples.26 One finds ὁ θεός μου rather than θεέ μου (cf. Matt. 27:46)27 because the expression is parallel to and therefore influenced by ὁ κύριός μου.28 The article is used with θεός not merely because a vocatival nominative is commonly articular in Hellenistic Greek but in particular because when a possessive pronoun follows a vocatival nominative,