Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?

The New Testament Evidence

James D. G. Dunn

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780281059287
• eBook ISBN: 9780281065004
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Christians today accept that Jesus is God and worship him as part of the Trinity. But what did the New Testament writers say about worshipping Jesus? Did they portray him as God, someone whom we should worship? Or did they see him as a great prophet like Moses or Elijah?

Here, James Dunn introduces readers to the key New Testament passages that must be examined when trying to understand this important topic. He argues that we find a clear sense that Jesus enables worship, that Jesus is in a profound way the place and means of worship. Equally, for the first Christians Jesus was seen to be not only the one by whom believers come to God, but also the one by whom God has come to believers.

1

The language of worship

What does the word ‘worship’ mean? What does the use of the word say about the one ‘worshipped’? The question arises immediately for us since we are concerned with the worship of Jesus. If the first Christians did ‘worship’ Jesus what does that tell us about the status that they accorded to him? One way of defining ‘worship’ would be to confine its application to deity – worship as religious devotion paid to a god, or in the words of The Concise Oxford Dictionary, as ‘reverence paid to God or god’. To ‘worship’ someone or some being would be to affirm their deity, to recognize that the someone or some being is God or a god. The problem, however, is that the term ‘worship’ is also used more widely. In the British legal system judges have regularly been addressed as ‘Your Worship’. In the marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer the words are to be used, ‘With my body I thee worship’. Everyday speech uses phrases like ‘hero worship’. In these cases the language of course signals respect for someone regarded as of higher status and/or worthy of such respect. But such language does not indicate the deity of the one being thus ‘worshipped’.

So we must reflect on the language of worship to help clarify what our central question means, or what its use in relation to Jesus expresses of Jesus’ status or of the worshippers’ regard for him. Both Hurtado and Bauckham marshal a good deal of the evidence regarding the language of worship used in relation to Jesus. But a more extensive and detailed study of the range of meaning of the word(s) usually translated as ‘worship’ in the New Testament seems to be called for, and this should help us to define what the first Christians understood by ‘worship’ more accurately and more fully.

We also need to take account of the range of near synonyms or alternatives to ‘worship’ – reverence, venerate, praise, glorify, adore, express devotion to, and so on. Here we run into a similar quandary. For just as a judge may be addressed as ‘Your Worship’, so in the history of Christianity, members of the clergy have often been addressed as ‘Your reverence’. So too in the Church of England archdeacons have the title ‘Venerable’, and in Roman Catholic tradition ‘venerable’ is used of those whose sanctity is thereby recognized but who have still to be canonized, or recognized as ‘saints’. We must also take note of the earlier debates within Christianity as to whether certain of these near synonyms or alternatives to ‘worship’ could be used in reference to the saints or the Virgin Mary. The clarification required to answer our question satisfactorily would seem to be more extensive than was first apparent.

1.1 To worship

The word most often translated as ‘worship’ in the New Testament is the Greek term proskynein. In turn, in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) proskynein is the regular translation of the Hebrew shachah. Shachah in the Hebrew Bible has the basic meaning of ‘bow down, prostrate oneself, make obeisance before’. It denotes the act of homage before a monarch or a superior, or prostration before God in worship. For example, Jacob prostrates himself before his brother Esau (Gen. 33.3); Joseph’s brothers do obeisance to Joseph, governor of Egypt (Gen. 42.6; 43.28); and various individuals make obeisance before King David.¹ In 1 Chronicles 29.20 the whole assembly (ekklēsia) ‘worshipped (prosekynēsan) the Lord and the king’.² Obeisance is made before angelic beings;³ and above all, obeisance is made before God.⁴ Repeatedly, particularly in Deuteronomy and Isaiah, Israel is forbidden to make obeisance to any other gods or idols;⁵ the Lord God alone was to be worshipped (Deut. 10.20).⁶

Similarly in the New Testament, Bauer-Danker defines proskynein as ‘to express in attitude or gesture one’s complete dependence on or submission to a high authority figure, so “(fall down and) worship, do obeisance to, prostrate oneself before, do reverence to, welcome respectfully”’.⁷ The Greek term too is used in reference to human beings, the proskynēsis (the matching noun) signifying the acknowledgment of the person’s sovereign power in relation to the one making the proskynēsis. So in Jesus’ parable of the king settling his accounts with his slaves (Matt. 18.23–34) the slave falls down, prostrating himself before the king (18.26). Notably, two verses later, when the forgiven slave then threatens a fellow slave in his debt, the fellow slave ‘falls down’ but does not offer proskynēsis (18.29). In Mark’s account of Jesus’ humiliation by the Roman soldiers, ‘they fell on their knees in homage (prosekynoun) to him’, mocking the reverence that could have been his as ‘king of the Jews’ (Mark 15.18–20).⁸ Strikingly, in his account of the conversion of the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10), Luke writes, ‘falling at his [Peter’s] feet, he [Cornelius] worshipped (proskynēsen) him’. Peter’s response was to lift Cornelius to his feet and gently rebuke him: ‘Stand up; I am only a human being’ (10.25–26). In the letter to Philadelphia in Revelation 3, the promise is made that their opponents will prostrate (proskynēsousin) themselves before the Philadelphians’ feet (Rev. 3.9). The probability is that we should read the accounts of various individuals coming and prostrating themselves before Jesus during his mission in Galilee in the same light: the leper coming to Jesus for his help, prostrating himself (proskynei) before Jesus (Matt. 8.2); the ruler of the synagogue (Jairus) similarly bowing down before Jesus (proskynei) to ask for his help (Matt. 9.18); the Syrophoenician woman making similar appeal on behalf of her daughter (again proskynei) (Matt. 15.25); and the mother of the disciples James and John similarly falling before Jesus (proskynousa) to petition him on behalf of her sons (Matt. 20.20).⁹

In all these cases proskynein clearly implies the appropriate mode for making a petition to one of high authority who could exercise power to benefit the petitioner. That the power could be and probably was thought of as heavenly power in most of the cases cited did not carry with it the implication that the one who exercised the power was divine (note again Peter’s gentle rebuke of Cornelius). But the authority and power was due the deepest respect, the petitioners evidently regarded themselves as wholly dependent on the favour of the one petitioned, and the obeisance expressed that depth of respect and sense of complete dependence.

More typically in the New Testament, proskynein is used of the worship (prostration) due to God, and to God alone. We should recall once again the rebuke of Jesus to the tempter: ‘(You shall) worship (proskynēseis) the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve’ (Matt. 4.10/Luke 4.8).¹⁰ In John’s Gospel Jesus looks for a time when people will worship (proskynēsousin) God, the Father, in Spirit and in truth (John 4.21–24). In Acts we hear of the Ethiopian eunuch who had come to Jerusalem to worship (proskynēsōn) the God of Israel (Acts 8.27). Paul looks for incomers to the assembly of believers to ‘fall on their faces and worship God’ (1 Cor. 14.25). And in the Revelation of John, God is regularly the focus of worship (proskynein).¹¹ Moreover, it is not only false worship of the beast that is rebuked,¹² but also any worship of other than God: the interpreting angel explicitly rebukes proskynēsis offered to him by the seer, and says emphatically, ‘Worship (proskynēson) God’ (Rev. 19.10; 22.8–9).

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Table of contents

• Cover page
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Title-page
• Imprint
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The language of worship
• 2. The practice of worship
• 3. Monotheism, heavenly mediators and divine agents
• 4. The Lord Jesus Christ
• Conclusion: The answer
• Bibliography
• Search items of biblical and ancient sources
• Search items of modern authors
• Search items of subjects