Riddle me this about Acts 7:59.
OK, so last night I pulled out the 1985 Kingdom Interlinear and just started perusing through it. After a while, I arrived at Acts 7:59 where Stephen "appealed" to Jesus. This is what I also found:
-In the 1985 edition, they used the word "appeal", BUT with an asterisk next to it. The asterisk leads you to a footnote, and the footnote states something like this: 'or "invocation, prayer" '.
But:
-In the 1969 edition, they also used the word "appeal", with no footnote.
-The NIV bible uses the word "prayed".
So my question is this: Did the Watch Tower shoot themselves in the foot by adding this little footnote to their 1985 edition? Because according to the May 15, 2008 WT, page 31, they posed this question/answer:
Was Stephen praying to Jesus? No, he was not. One's worship-and therefore one's prayers-should go only to Jehovah God. (Luke 4:8; 6:12) Under normal circumstances, Stephen would have appealed to Jehovah in the name of Jesus. (John 15:16) In this instance, though, Stephen had a vision of "the Son of man standing at God's right hand." (Acts 7:56) Fully aware that Jesus had been given the power to resurrect the dead, Stephen spoke, but did not pray, directly to Jesus, asking Him to safeguard his spirit. -John 5:27-29.
(I also noticed that they capitalized the word "Him" instead of just "him" when they referred to Jesus in the above paragraph... isn't that also odd? I thought they only did that when referring to Jehovah.)