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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Heb. 1:6 "All angels of God worship him" KJV

Heb. 1:6

At Heb. 1:6 the KJV (and many other trinitarian translations) says: "And again, when he [the Father] bringeth in the first begotten [Jesus] into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship [proskuneo] him."
  
However, when we look up this scripture in the Old Testament (the trinitarian New Oxford Annotated Bible; New American Standard Bible [Ref. ed.]; The NIV Study Bible; and Dr. W. F. Beck [Lutheran] in his New Testament in the Language of Today [1964] all refer Heb. 1:6 to Deut. 32:43 in the Septuagint). And we find that Deut. 32:43 does not refer to the Father bringing his firstborn Son into the world and, in fact, in the Septuagint, instructs the angels to worship God (Jehovah, the Father) with no reference to Christ or the Son whatsoever.
  

So there is the distinct possibility that Heb. 1:6 is saying that all the angels worship the Father at that time. But even if the writer of Hebrews is saying the angels "worship" [proskuneo] the Son, it certainly doesn't have to mean "worship" in the highest sense of the word.

Even these trinitarian translations admit as much in their renderings of Heb. 1:6 -
The New English Bible; Revised English Bible; New Jerusalem Bible; An American Translation, Smith-Goodspeed; Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible; The Letter to the Hebrews - The Daily Study Bible Series, Dr. William Barclay; the Byington translation; The Twentieth Century New Testament

For more, see:

Worship (as used in Scripture) (Examining the Trinity)

Worship or Obeisance? (Bible Translation and Study)

PROSKYNEO-Always "Worship"? (In Defense of The New World Translation)






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