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From bart Ehrman, yes jesus was a historical person a apocalyptic preacher.
And your bases is that the gospels are eyewitness accounts which they are not.
Should Jesus be worshipped?
by Melody 20 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Melody
Sea breeze
Thank you. Those verses are very helpful.
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aqwsed12345
The question of whether Jesus of Nazareth ought to receive the cultic devotion that the New Testament directs exclusively to the God of Israel can scarcely be adjudicated by appealing to isolated proof-texts or by counting lexical occurrences. A cogent answer requires an integrated consideration of (1) the semantic range of the Greek worship-verbs proskuneō and latreuō, (2) the literary strategy by which the canonical authors embed Jesus within the unique divine identity, (3) the continuity between the earliest post-apostolic liturgy and the New Testament witness, and (4) the history of interpretation behind the Watch Tower Society’s ever-shifting stance. When these lines of evidence are allowed to converge, the cumulative case for the propriety—and indeed the necessity—of worshipping Christ emerges with overwhelming clarity.
Any lexical inquiry must begin with proskuneō, a term whose basic sense in Hellenistic Greek is “to fall down before” a superior. Because the act could be rendered to God, an exalted human, or even an idol, the context alone determines whether the gesture is mere courtly homage or cultic worship. The New World Translation’s policy of rendering proskuneō as “obeisance” in every Christological context but as “worship” when the recipient is God, demons, Satan, or idols therefore begs the very question at issue; it is not exegesis but theological circularity. Standard critical lexica (BDAG, LSJ) recognize no semantic bifurcation that would justify this selective translation practice, and reputable modern versions (e.g., NRSV, NASB, ESV) translate the verb uniformly as “worship” in, for example, Matthew 2.11; 14.33; 28.9; John 9.38; Hebrews 1.6. Crucially, in those pericopes Jesus either formally accepts the act (John 9.38), implicitly approves it by silence (Matt 14.33), or is identified by a heavenly voice as the proper object of angelic proskunēsis (Heb 1.6 citing LXX Deut 32.43). By contrast, when Cornelius prostrates himself before Peter (Acts 10.25-26) or John before an angel (Rev 19.10; 22.8-9) the gesture is explicitly rejected. The literary trope is transparent: Jesus belongs on the recipient side of worship, apostles and angels do not. The Watch Tower position that proskuneō directed to Jesus reduces to polite homage is therefore unsustainable.
Latreuō, frequently invoked as the decisive counter-argument because the verb never describes service rendered to Christ, provides no refuge. First, the distribution is readily explained by genre: latreuō is the Septuagintal and New Testament term of art for the temple cult, and the resurrected Christ does not serve as sacerdotal locus upon earth within the narrative horizon of the Gospels or Acts. Second, Hebrews and Revelation deliberately transpose latreuō heavenward: the final scene pictures “the throne of God and of the Lamb” with “his servants [hoi douloi autou] latreuousin autōi” (Rev 22.3), where the singular pronoun logically embraces both Father and Son under a single divine sovereignty. Third, the semantic argument overlooks that New Testament authors routinely apply to Christ titles, functions, and honours that the Hebrew Bible reserves for YHWH alone—Creator (John 1.3; Col 1.16-17), universal Judge (Matt 25.31-46; 2 Cor 5.10), object of prayer (Acts 7.59-60; 1 Cor 1.2), source of saving name invoked in baptismal confession (Acts 2.38; Rom 10.9-13 echoing Joel 2.32). Richard Bauckham’s programmatic work on divine identity has shown that such inclusion is the Second-Temple Jewish criterion for recognizing who is truly God; latreuō therefore cannot be isolated as the sole litmus test.
The attempted analogy with 1 Chronicles 29.20, sometimes marshalled to prove that a human king could be “worshipped” in a merely civil sense, collapses under textual scrutiny. The Masoretic Hebrew employs the verb shachah for both God and David, but shachah corresponds in the Septuagint not to proskuneō but to a broader semantic field, and modern critical translations judiciously render the second object “did homage to the king.” No Israelite author confuses the veneration of a mortal monarch with the cultic service owed to YHWH; indeed, the Chronicler’s theological agenda is to underscore that David’s throne functions only as the earthly extension of divine kingship. By contrast, the throne imagery of Revelation seats the Lamb on the very throne of God (Rev 5.6-14; 7.17; 22.1-3), signifying not delegated but shared sovereignty.
A further objection claims that Matthew 4.10 (“You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only”) precludes the worship of Jesus because Jesus himself quotes the Shema to repel satanic temptation. Yet Matthew’s narrative logic achieves precisely the opposite. Having affirmed that only the Lord is to be worshipped, the evangelist proceeds within the same Gospel to portray the disciples offering Jesus proskuneō (14.33; 28.17) and to frame the climactic resurrection scene with a Trinitarian baptismal command (28.19). Matthew knows no contradiction because he identifies Jesus with the divine prerogative rather than setting him over against it.
The historicity question, periodically raised to evade theological implications by denying that the Jesus of faith corresponds to a historical personage, has been addressed decisively in contemporary scholarship across the critical spectrum. Bart Ehrman, a self-described agnostic, insists that Jesus’ existence is “abundantly attested in early sources”; Paula Fredriksen, Géza Vermes, and E. P. Sanders agree. While the canonical Gospels are technically anonymous, external attestation and internal evidence converge on the traditional attributions by the early second century, and the chronological gap between event and composition—roughly forty to sixty years—is well within the horizon of reliable ancient historiography. Moreover, the uncontested corpus of Pauline letters, written within a generation of the crucifixion, already presupposes a devotional pattern centered on the risen Lord that includes liturgical hymns (Phil 2.6-11; Col 1.15-20), eucharistic acclamation (1 Cor 11.26), and doxology (Rom 9.5). Thus, the worship of Christ is not a late Hellenistic accretion but belongs to the earliest stratum of Christian piety.
Patristic evidence corroborates this trajectory. Ignatius of Antioch—in undisputed letters dated c. 110 CE—calls Jesus “our God” (Eph. 18.2) and urges believers to “sing in unison a song to the Father through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 4.1). Justin Martyr’s First Apology (mid-second century) describes Christian liturgy as rendering “praise in word and prayer” to the Father and to the Son (Apol. 1.67). The substratum is entirely incompatible with any hypothesis that early Christians regarded Jesus as a creature who must not be accorded worship.
Against this broad consensus, the Watch Tower Society’s internal doctrinal oscillation stands in stark relief. From its inception under C. T. Russell until 1954, the movement explicitly encouraged prayer to—and worship of—Jesus, as documented in Zion’s Watch Tower (15 July 1898; 15 May 1906) and in the Society’s own Charter (amended 1945) which states that one corporate purpose is “the public Christian worship of Almighty God and Christ Jesus.” Only after the release of the New World Translation did the official teaching pivot, with the January 1 1954 Watchtower reclassifying worship of Jesus as idolatrous. The hermeneutical key, evidently, was not a newly discovered manuscript but an internally produced translation retrofitted to the Society’s evolving theology. The principle of “new light” invoked to justify such reversals cannot secure doctrinal stability, for by definition today’s light may be tomorrow’s darkness. A community whose governing authority claims the prerogative to redefine so central a datum as the proper recipient of worship forfeits any epistemic warrant to censure Trinitarian orthodoxy as later corruption.
In sum, the New Testament discloses a Christology that appropriates the language, prerogatives, and honors of Israel’s God for Jesus without compromising monotheism. Worshipping Jesus is not an optional devotional flourish but the liturgical enactment of that revelation. Attempts to restrict proskuneō or latreuō on lexical grounds unravel under critical analysis, and appeals to a supposed gradation of homage fail to respect the narrative logic by which Scripture itself demarcates acceptable from blasphemous veneration. The theological grammar of divine identity, the witness of the earliest post-biblical sources, and the unstable history of the Watch Tower’s own teaching together testify that withholding worship from Christ is not fidelity to the God of Abraham but a departure from the faith once delivered to the saints. To honor the Son is, as John 5.23 insists, the indispensable mode of honoring the Father, for the Father has chosen to make Himself known and to be glorified irrevocably in the face of Jesus Christ.
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slimboyfat
The question of whether Jesus of Nazareth ought to receive the cultic devotion that the New Testament directs exclusively to the God of Israel can scarcely be adjudicated by appealing to isolated proof-texts or by counting lexical occurrences.
Neither can it scarcely be settled by asking AI to write pile of text in flowery language to buttress your preferred position.
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slimboyfat
A quick scan of the AI text shows at least one shockingly misleading comment:
The attempted analogy with 1 Chronicles 29.20, sometimes marshalled to prove that a human king could be “worshipped” in a merely civil sense, collapses under textual scrutiny. The Masoretic Hebrew employs the verb shachah for both God and David, but shachah corresponds in the Septuagint not to proskuneō but to a broader semantic field, and modern critical translations judiciously render the second object “did homage to the king.”
In fact the LXX does use proskuneō in this verse. The above is just a pile of flowery nonsense. How many more factual errors and distortions I cannot be bothered to begin working out. What a waste of everyone’s time it would be if anyone was actually reading these stupid AI posts, which apparently they are not in any case.
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aqwsed12345
@slimboyfat
The NT presents a coherent and internally consistent theology of Christ’s cultic status that cannot be flattened into the sub-divine categories proposed in contemporary Arian restorations such as those circulated by the Watch Tower Society. Central to this debate is the semantic and theological weight of προσκυνέω (proskuneō) and λατρεύω (latreuō), as well as the canonical pattern of doxological coordination in which the Father and the Son are yoked under a single divine sovereignty. When the relevant texts are allowed to speak in their own literary and historical context, three conclusions emerge: (1) the early Christian writers consciously ascribed to Jesus the worship reserved in Second-Temple Judaism for the one God of Israel; (2) the Watch Tower’s lexical strategy—rendering proskuneō as “obeisance” whenever Jesus is the recipient—represents a theologically motivated mistranslation; and (3) the doctrinal trajectory of the Society itself confirms that its current negation of Christ-directed worship is a late innovation, rather than a recovery of apostolic practice.
Hebrews opens the discussion by framing the Son’s identity against the backdrop of Israel’s strictly monotheistic confession. The entire catena of OT quotations in chapter 1 culminates in the Father’s decree: “Let all the angels of God proskuneō Him” (Heb 1:6). No linguistic contortion can evade the force of the verb. Within Hebrews the angels are λειτουργικὰ πνεύματα, subordinate ministers who render service; they are nowhere depicted as objects of cultic honor. Conversely, the Son is enthroned, addressed as “God,” and acclaimed as the eternal creator whose scepter of righteousness anchors the cosmos. By commanding the heavenly host to worship the Firstborn, the author transfers to Jesus the prerogative that Deuteronomy and Isaiah reserve for YHWH alone. The text does not merely tolerate reverence for Christ; it demands it as the fitting response of the entire supernatural order.
The Apocalypse of John intensifies the pattern. In the throne-room vision of chapters 4–5 the same concentric liturgy that crescendos in hymns to the Creator is repeated verbatim in honor of the Lamb. Whereas proskuneō might in some settings denote courtly homage, Revelation removes all ambiguity by embedding the Lamb within the divinely occupied throne, assigning to Him the seven-horned omnipotence and seven-eyed omniscience that define God’s exhaustive sovereignty, and receiving from every creature “the blessing and the honor and the glory and the dominion for ever and ever” (Rev 5:13). The claim that verse 13 reflects merely relative honor collapses on grammatical and canonical grounds. John employs the singular pronouns “Him” and “His” while explicitly naming both “God” and “the Lamb,” signaling not a division of worship but a shared divine identity. Throughout the book attempts by humans or angels to receive worship are rebuked, whereas the Lamb’s reception of universal praise is narrated as the final act of unpolluted eschatological worship.
The lexical objection—that proskuneō is a neutral gesture of obeisance rather than worship—is linguistically unsustainable. Septuagintal usage repeatedly links proskuneō with sacrificial cult (e.g., Exod 20:5; 34:14) and distinguishes it from mere subservience by its exclusive orientation to deity. Early Jewish translators had at their disposal verbs such as προσπίπτω or κάμπτω to mark respectful bowing. Their consistent choice of proskuneō in monolatrous contexts reflects a theological judgment that the term entails recognition of deity. The Watch Tower’s own interlinear testament betrays the inconsistency: demons, the Beast, and even idols receive the rendering “worship,” whereas every Christological occurrence is down-graded to “obeisance.” Such selectivity cannot be justified philologically; it is a priori dogma imposed on the text.
Latreuō, the Watch Tower’s second line of defense, fares no better. The verb’s OT matrix evokes priestly service at the sanctuary, and its Christian transposition locates that service in the heavenly temple where “His servants shall latreuō Him; they shall see His face” (Rev 22:3–4). The singular pronoun again binds God and the Lamb as co-occupants of the one throne. Hebrew 9–10 explicitly contrasts earthly cultus, rendered obsolete, with the latreia Christ performs as High Priest in the true tabernacle. To argue that absence of the verb latreuō in reference to Jesus proves His ontological inferiority disregards the author’s logic: Christ does not receive priestly service because He Himself is the cosmic Priest who elicits the same worship directed to the Father.
Historical considerations reinforce the exegetical evidence. For more than six decades the Watch Tower literature openly encouraged prayer to and worship of Christ, and the Society’s 1945 charter defined one of its corporate purposes as “the public worship of Almighty God and Christ Jesus.” Only in 1954—subsequent to the release of the New World Translation—did the governing body reverse course, retroactively stigmatizing Christ-directed devotion as idolatry. This trajectory exposes the fragility of the Arian proposal: if worship of Christ were self-evidently illicit, how did the movement’s founders, editors, and legal charter uphold it for the greater part of their history without censure from the divine “channel”? The progressive diminution of the Son within Watch Tower theology reflects institutional revision, not apostolic continuity.
The earliest post-biblical witnesses corroborate the NT pattern. Ignatius, writing scarcely a decade after Revelation, speaks of “Jesus Christ our God” and envisions the church “singing with one voice a song to the Father through Jesus Christ.” Polycarp’s dying confession blesses Christ as the Paschal victim “through whom” glory is given to the Father. Such unselfconscious Christological devotion emerged within a rigorously monotheistic environment. It is explicable only on the premise that the earliest believers experienced the risen Jesus not as an exalted creature but as the embodied disclosure of Israel’s God.
The charge of “flowery nonsense” dissolves once the textual data are handled with the same precision demanded in any philological debate. Yes, the Old Greek of 1 Chronicles 29:20 does in fact employ προσκυνέω twice: καὶ προσεκύνησαν τῷ Κυρίῳ καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ. My earlier point—perhaps expressed too tersely—was not that προσκυνέω is absent, but that its semantic force cannot be decided merely by noting the verb’s presence. In the Septuagint corpus προσκυνέω functions across a spectrum that ranges from courtly obeisance (Gen 33:3; 4 Kings 1:13 LXX) to exclusive cult directed to God (Exod 20:5; Isa 66:23). Distinguishing where a particular instance falls in that range requires attention to literary context, syntactic construction, and, crucially, the wider canonical theology that prohibits Israel from offering cultic worship to any figure other than YHWH.
First Chronicles 29 frames the scene as a dynastic acclamation: the assembly “blessed the LORD, the God of their fathers, and bowed low and prostrated themselves before the LORD and the king.” David, despite the conspicuous honor, neither receives sacrificial rites nor hears a doxology that conflates him with God. The narrative immediately records his handing the throne to Solomon and dying like all mortals (29:23–28), underscoring the qualitative gulf between royal homage and divine worship. Modern translations that render the second object “paid homage to the king” (NRSV, NJPS) or “prostrated themselves…before… the king” (NET) capture this differentiation not by denying that προσκυνέω appears, but by recognizing its elasticity.
The contrast with the NT cult of Christ is therefore not lexical but configurational. In Revelation 5 the heavenly liturgy places the Lamb on the divine throne, assigns to him the seven-horned omnipotence and seven-eyed omniscience that the same book attributes to God, and elicits from every creature a single ascription of εὐλογία, τιμή, δόξα, and κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. No king of Israel—or of any other nation—is ever enthroned in that manner or enveloped in that form of universal doxology. The Lamb’s reception of worship is embedded in a narrative framework that otherwise prohibits angelolatry (Rev 19:10; 22:8-9) and idol worship. The conclusion drawn by the Seer’s first readers, steeped as they were in Jewish monolatry, was not that Jesus inhabits a lesser, civil sphere of honor but that he mysteriously shares the very prerogatives of the one God.
Consequently, the appeal to 1 Chronicles 29 does not advance an Arian construal of Christ. It merely reminds us that προσκυνέω is a polyvalent verb. What distinguishes the Johannine Lamb from David is not the presence or absence of that term but the narrative location in which it is deployed: a shared throne, a unified doxology, and the voluntary acquiescence of all creation. Those elements constitute worship in the strict sense that Second-Temple Jews reserved for YHWH alone. Lexical arithmetic cannot erase the theological architecture built into the text.
In sum, the linguistic, canonical, and historical data converge on a single verdict: the Son is to be worshipped. Any theology that demotes Christ to the status of archangel or created mediator must either excise or mistranslate swathes of Scripture, alter the liturgical voice of earliest Christianity, and retroject its own twentieth-century innovations onto the first century. The prophetic command still stands—“Kiss the Son lest he be angry”—and the doxology of the redeemed will eternally resound: “To Him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion for ever and ever.”
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slimboyfat
Can’t be bothered reading that. Do you anywhere address why you lied about proskuneo in the LXX? And can you explain why should I bother reading any of the AI text you post when it is laced with falsehoods? You can answer in a sentence or two no need for all the diversionary verbiage.
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TTWSYF
Jesus never existed?
Question-what year is this?
Answer- The year of our Lord 2025.
Never existed? Not according to the rest of the whole world.
The
Truth
Will
Set
You
Free
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aqwsed12345
@slimboyfat
I didn’t deny that προσκυνέω appears in 1 Chr 29:20; I said its presence there proves only courtly homage, not cultic worship—the very point I clarified in the follow-up. If you read the few lines comparing that scene with Revelation 5, you’ll see why lexical overlap does not erase the theological gulf between bowing before a mortal king and the cosmic doxology offered to the enthroned Lamb.
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Vanderhoven7
Definitely Yes!
This is exactly what Jehovah’s witnesses are missing. They have no life or assurance because they have missed any kind of a personal relationship with the Saviour. They cannot even say Thank you Lord for dying to free me from sin and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness.
Witnesses argue that Jesus Christ is not entitled to the unqualified or unlimited worship due the Father. But by denying the Son reverent homage or service paid to God they can only ascribe to Him instead, recognition, honor, respect given to men.
Relative honor to God through an angel was reproved in these words: "Be careful! Do not do that!...Worship God." Revelation 19:10; 22:8, 9, NWT) 'Let God Be True', 1952 edition p. 151
The distinctions Witnesses make in worship due the Father and Son are totally extra-biblical and not in keeping with Apostolic teaching and practice.
What is it that distinguishes that Christ is not to be genuinely worshiped as the Father is worshiped?
Language of Scripture:
"Proskyneo" is consistently translated as "worship" in the King James. "Proskyneo" is applied 21 times to the Father and 17 times to the Son. The only fair conclusion we can come to here is that the language of scripture does not distinguish that Christ is not to be genuinely worshiped as the Father is worshiped.
Scriptural Example:
There is not one example of the disciples or anyone else in scripture limiting their expression of worship of Christ. Jesus never rebuked the disciples for improper proskyneo of Himself. Only the self proclaimed religious authorities objected to Jesus being honored as the Father was honored. They proclaimed vigorously, saying such things as, "You make yourself equal with God" and "Only God can forgive sins" etc. To them, no man should claim the attributes or prerogatives of God. So not only does scriptural language, but also scriptural example fails to distinguish that Christ is not to be genuinely worshiped.
Scriptural Instruction:
There are no proscriptive instructions defining relative proskyneo of Christ, nor are there restrictive commandments, limiting the proskyneo of the Son. So the alleged distinction in meaning of proskyneo of Father and Son is not clarified by a distinction in scriptural terminology or by scriptural example or by scriptural commandment either prescriptive or restrictive. All restrictions proposed by any religious authority are really extra-biblical (i.e. the commandments of men). The truth is that ALL MEN SHOULD HONOR THE SON EVEN AS THEY HONOR THE FATHER (Jn.5:22, 23). Christians can and the disciples could, never honor Jesus too highly.
Witnesses argue that Matthew 4:10 excludes unqualified worship of the Son. "You shall worship the Lord your God and him ONLY shall you serve". (Matt 4:10) That is simply not true. The exclusive element of this instruction rests on the last phrase and yet we are called to be servants of Christ. If we substitute the word "Honor" for worship in Matthew 4:10, so that it read "You shall honor the Lord your God and him only shall you serve", would the verse inform Christians that they should not give identical honor to the Son?
Form and Content:
"...to worship Christ in any form cannot be wrong." (W.T. March 1880. p.83)
Can the alleged distinction in meaning of 'proskyneo' when applied to the Son be established by the form or content of worship displayed by the disciples/apostles? Do not the following constitute elements of proskyneo in terms of form and content that can legitimately be a part of the proskyneo rendered to the Son:
a. bowing the knee to Jesus while confessing Him as Lord? Phil.2:9-11
b. prostrating oneself completely before Jesus? Rev.5:8
c. fellowship or commune with Jesus, sharing our personal aspirations and hopes? I Jn.1:3
d. coming to Jesus for relief of personal burdens and cares? Mat. 11:28
e. calling on the name of Jesus, addressing Him personally as Lord? Acts 9:14, I Cor.1:2
f. praying personally to Jesus, petitioning Him for self and others? Acts 7:59-60 Jn.14:14
g. glorifying Jesus by praise? Ps.50:23 Jn.16:14, Mat.21:14-16
h. honoring Jesus verbally by ascribing worth to Him?
eg."To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever. Rev.5:13 NIV.
i. honoring Jesus by shouting or even singing His praises?
e.g. In a loud voice they (angels) sang: Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain to receive power and wealth and Wisdom and strength and HONOR AND GLORY AND PRAISE. Rev.5:12 NIV.
j. verbally ascribing to Jesus absolute worth?
e.g. JESUS: Lord of Lords and King of Kings; Alpha and Omega, The First and the Last, The beginning and the end. Rev.20:12
My Lord and my Ho Theos. Jn.20:28 Your name is to be praised O Emmanuel, Ho Theos with us! Mat.1:23 All power in heaven and earth is Yours; You created all things; and without you there was nothing made. Jn.1:3
And Your throne Ho Theos is forever. Heb. 1:8 May all angels and men worship you continually. Heb.1:6 Even so come Lord Jesus: Rev.22:20 Amen.
k. Worship of Lamb in heaven by all creation
“And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and underneath the earth and on the sea, and all the things in them, saying: “To the One sitting on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing and the honor and the glory and the might forever and ever.” The four living creatures were saying: “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.” Rev. 5:13-14 NWT 1961
WHICH ELEMENTS OF PROSKYNEO (ABOVE) DO YOU PRACTICE?
Whether or not one acknowledges an ontological unity between Father and Son, it is clear that Jesus accepted the title God (Ho Theos) as part of worship of himself. (Jn 20:28) and we should feel free to address and worship Him as such. Anything less would be to reduce the honor due His name; the name above all names; the name to which angels must bow and to which the Father declares: Thy throne O God (Ho Theos) is forever. After all, Jesus Christ is our Creator. Why would we not worship our Creator as God?