Well that's what you're assuming. You're saying 'It clearly refers to divine worship 70% of the time when the meaning 'divine worship' is explicit, so it must refer to divine worship the other 30% of the times, when the meaning 'divine worship' is not explicit'.
No, that isn't my argument at all. I never claimed it must refer to divine worship in every case in which it refers to Jesus. I claimed it is absurd to think that it refers divine worship in every single instance it is used in the NT EXCEPT when it refers to Jesus, and then in EVERY case there, it refers to the simple paying of respect.
Why would it cause confusion?
Because the authors of the NT have been exclusively using the word to refer to divine worship. If they then use the word with reference to their main topic in a totally different sense, you can thoroughly expect their readers to misunderstand the change in usage.
I don't actually have Wallace's GGBB here, but I doubt exceedingly that he makes the same argument you do. If he does, please quote here exactly what he says.
I'm hoping you are just not near your book, then. You remarked earlier that you use GGBB along with BDAG whenever you work with the Greek. Rather than waste time here, I'll let you refer to your own copy. As it happens, mine is in my car, and my car is in the shop for the rest of this day.
Can you give me any evidence for this? . . . No you can't. You would have to show me lexical evidence first. You would have to start with a lexical entry from a standard lexicon . . . Remember, I'm not the one appealing to statistics, you are. I don't have to appeal to statistics to disprove your claim regarding THEOS, I just have to point you to the lexical data, and your case collapses. You can't put it in the semantic range without lexical evidence that it belongs there. You have to start with the existing lexical entry.
No, you don't have to start with a lexical entry. I would have thought better of someone with an education in the language. A lexical entry is a
conclusion based on a series of studies. You can't start with a conclusion. In other words, if I challenge the lexical meaning of the word, you can't appeal to the lexicon as evidence I am wrong. Of course, I would have a MAJOR task on my hands in proving my assertion, but that is as it should be.
Again, if you and I were to construct a lexicon, after we got our list of words, we would do studies on each one. We would examine their meaning in every context we could find it, construct a semantic domain, and based on that, provide a lexical entry. The problem, Fortigurn, is that this process is by nature inductive. If tomorrow a new manuscript is found in which the word is used in a different way than we have provided, or if someone presents a good case that we have misunderstood the meaning in one of the usages we examined, then we must modify our lexicon.
So, while I agree with you that an appeal to a standard, accepted lexicon is a good practice for academic work, and while I agree that it saves us the long, grueling task of doing in depth word studies on every word we want to talk about, I don't agree that we have to START with a lexical meaning.
So if the word PROSKUNEO appeared in the New Testament 100 times, and 80 of those times it referred to non-divine honour given to men and the other 20% of the times it referred to God, would you say that those other 20% are obviously cases in which non-divine honour is being given to God?
Of course not, because I'm not arguing that the word can only be used one way in the NT.
Yes that's correct. What we don't say is 'Well it appears in 5,000 texts we have, and in 80% of them it means X, so in the other 20% it must also mean X'. As you say, its use and meaning is determined by context, not statistics.
Of course not, because I'm not arguing that the word can only be used one way in the NT.
We can only say that once that has been determined. It may be that the word means X or Y in a certain author's writings. It may mean X, Y or Z in the New Testament as a whole. It may be only used with the meaning Y in the broader koine literature. Those are statistics which are gathered by examining the word in each context in which it appears. It's the examination of the word in context which determines our understanding of the semantic domain. If we find a new koine text and we find that word in it, we can't say 'Oh, well in every other koine text we have the word means X, so it must mean X here'. It may mean Y in this place. It may mean Z. We can't determine the meaning by statistics, we have to determine the meaning by examining its use in context.
Of course not, because I'm not arguing that the word can only be used one way in the NT.
I don't believe that's true:
* Matthew 2:2: Did the wise men really come to pay divine worship to the baby they believed was the king of the Jews?
* Matthew 2:8: Did Herod say that he wanted to come and pay divine worship to the baby the wise men said was the king of the Jews?
* Revelation 3:9: Are those of the 'synagogue of satan' really going to fall at the feet of the saints and pay them divine worship?
The first two are a reference to the "worship" of Jesus. They aren't under consideration. The last I've already dealt with. Don't pull a PL on me and not read my words, Fortigurn.
No it doesn't only have the simple meaning of 'to pay respect to' in the LXX.
Did I say it did? No, I said, "it appears to have the simple meaning of to pay respect to in the LXX." I don't see the word "only" in my statement . . . if you are going to read into my words here such a silly idea, I don't suppose I should be surprised that you believe I am arguing that a word can only be used one way in the NT.
You can't use statistics to determine how a particular word is used in a particular context, without examining the context. You cannot say that just because it was used with the meaning X in other texts it must have the meaning X here.
Of course not, because I'm not arguing that the word can only be used one way in the NT.
I'm sorry, but when you say 'it wasn't in John's semantic range', do you mean to claim that he just didn't understand the full semantic domain of the word? Are you claiming that he thought it only meant 'divine worship'?
No, and no. It is an obvious fact that different people have different styles of writing. Some writers use certain word constructions. Some are prone to short sentences, some to long. Some are more polished, some more vulgar. Some use certain words in certain ways. For example, Baptists like to use the word "save" to mean "go to heaven." So, when you read a baptist theologian and you see that word, you know immediately what he means. Others, like myself, would not use the word in that sense, both for theological and stylistic reasons.
The same thing is true in the biblical texts. Paul used the word "to justify" when talking about the moment of salvation; John used the word "eternal life." As we have it, the word
proskuneo is used 60 times in the NT, and 35 of those usages were by John. He only used the word ONE time in connection to Jesus (I made a mistake earlier in my color coding). This is the same author who used the word with reference to men, God, angels, Satan, and idols. In EVERY case, he used the word to mean divine worship.
Does this mean that John was unaware of the word's other meanings? Of course not. But it does tell us that John was careful how he did use the word. Considering his purpose in writing, it is far from surprising. So when we come to the one reference to Jesus, it is not at all suprising that the word, contextually, conveys the same idea of divine worship.
Put differently, if we were to construct a lexicon of
proskuneo based on John's writings, we would have one entry: "to worship."
The argument can be generally extended to the rest of the NT as well. Are there instances where it most likely refers to honoring someone? I think so. Matthew seems to use the word in both ways, but this is hardly surprising, either. Of his 13 usages, a whopping 11 of them are with reference to Jesus. And since he is painting a portrait of Jesus as King, His
proskuneo will be a major theme. Some will
proskuneo Him (right) as God. Others (both rightly and wrongly) as man.
In the end, my original argument still stands will all the force it ever did. Excluding the references to Jesus,
every occurrence of proskueno in the NT refers to divine worship. It is absurd to think that
every occurrence of
proskuneo with reference to Jesus, then, would have a different usage.
