Coming to a thread pretty late again!
"My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes." - Psalm 119:48
"Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." - Psalm 138:2
"It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." - John 6:63
Other than worshipping the ink and paper, I am not sure how you could idolize Scripture, and the ink and paper isn't the Scripture anyway (just as no specific instance of a word or book "is" the word or book itself). The closest I would say would be a faith healer "healing" someone by hitting them with a Bible.
Anyway you wouldn’t be worshipping the Word of God if you were disobeying it, so if it is wrong to worship the Word then “worshipping the Word” would be self-contradictory.
I have found that the KJV is not a perfect translation by the same standards by which the corrupt modern translations are rightly rejected: the translators did not believe in full preservation. But because the KJV was translated from uncorrupted texts it is at least far less corrupt than modern versions: here is a pair of articles I wrote on this.
One can become proud about the knowledge they have, but I think the right path is not to value knowledge less, but to value it more, to the end that the idea of not knowing is so reprehensible that knowing is nothing to boast of. Those who treat it as something extra or some singular thing that they have knowledge grossly undervalue it. If a person thought it a great honor for him to even look at someone, would that really be honoring to that person? If someone had true reverence, he would not act as if it was exceptional to study and ponder and amass as great an amount of good knowledge as he could.
“What hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” - I Corinthians 4:7
“When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” - Luke 17:10
“And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” - I Corinthians 8:2
In a similar vein, one way people think they are honoring the Bible is by saying we cannot know God or anything about him or be saved without reading the Bible. The problem is, this blatantly contradicts the Bible, which says:
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” - Romans 1:20
(This is one place it states this explicitly, but most of the doctrines of the Bible are directly based on the principle that all men are accountable for whether or not they follow God, whether they have access to Scripture or not.)
But the fault again is in not valuing the Bible enough through not valuing it rightly: we do not deserve a single word from God, yet he has given us an unbelievable wealth of it, through his infinite grace. People say we “need” his word in order to obey him, but what it boils down to is claiming it is owed to us, rather than being a gift so beyond our need as to be unthinkable: that God himself, and even in person as Christ, would speak to us, and directly urge us to accept the most completely basic and undeniable things as God’s eternal power and godhead. Just as he holds all men responsible to repent of their sins and accept his mercy, yet only revealed to some, after thousands of years, what that mercy cost him. Those who do not know of his sacrifice have less than no excuse, and those who do know the dreadful and eternally inexpressible thought that God died and rose again to save us are so beyond being without excuse that it would be hysterical if it was not so unfathomably sobering.
On the discussion of whether the Pharisees worshipped the Bible, I would point out that the depiction of Pharisees most popular in this culture is a myth that is the opposite of what is read in Scripture. Their official doctrine was sound, so you could be called a Pharisee and still be a true servant of God, but as a group they were not “strict observers of the law” who “followed the letter of the law exactly” but failed to have some kind of emotional attachment type of relationship to God with which some people try to replace the obedience God teaches. In this thinking they all but make it a virtue to sin from time to time.
The Bible specifically says the Pharisees did not do what they told others to do. They were hypocrites not in “doing the right thing but being proud about it”, but in the very simple sense that they would not do what they commanded others to do, breaking the very law they taught. Even in the open they replaced God’s Word with their own laws, and in secret they were murderers, thieves, liars, and committing all uncleanness were children of the Devil and Hell. Think about it: they agreed together to use bribes and false witness to murder an innocent man so that they could maintain their nice position in the eyes of gentile Rome. Who says they got all the motions right, and just missed the emotions?
That being said, if hypothetically there was a group of people who put study and knowledge of the Scriptures above obeying them, and basically cared more about reading and scholarliness than about holiness and righteousness, then you could of course say this is wrong. But saying they are “worshipping” Scripture doesn’t make sense, because the whole point is that they don’t actually care about what they are reading at all, just about reading it.
“But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” - Isaiah 66:2
“At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow,” and, “Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.”
"My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes." - Psalm 119:48
"Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." - Psalm 138:2
"It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." - John 6:63
Other than worshipping the ink and paper, I am not sure how you could idolize Scripture, and the ink and paper isn't the Scripture anyway (just as no specific instance of a word or book "is" the word or book itself). The closest I would say would be a faith healer "healing" someone by hitting them with a Bible.
Anyway you wouldn’t be worshipping the Word of God if you were disobeying it, so if it is wrong to worship the Word then “worshipping the Word” would be self-contradictory.
I have found that the KJV is not a perfect translation by the same standards by which the corrupt modern translations are rightly rejected: the translators did not believe in full preservation. But because the KJV was translated from uncorrupted texts it is at least far less corrupt than modern versions: here is a pair of articles I wrote on this.
One can become proud about the knowledge they have, but I think the right path is not to value knowledge less, but to value it more, to the end that the idea of not knowing is so reprehensible that knowing is nothing to boast of. Those who treat it as something extra or some singular thing that they have knowledge grossly undervalue it. If a person thought it a great honor for him to even look at someone, would that really be honoring to that person? If someone had true reverence, he would not act as if it was exceptional to study and ponder and amass as great an amount of good knowledge as he could.
“What hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” - I Corinthians 4:7
“When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” - Luke 17:10
“And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” - I Corinthians 8:2
In a similar vein, one way people think they are honoring the Bible is by saying we cannot know God or anything about him or be saved without reading the Bible. The problem is, this blatantly contradicts the Bible, which says:
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” - Romans 1:20
(This is one place it states this explicitly, but most of the doctrines of the Bible are directly based on the principle that all men are accountable for whether or not they follow God, whether they have access to Scripture or not.)
But the fault again is in not valuing the Bible enough through not valuing it rightly: we do not deserve a single word from God, yet he has given us an unbelievable wealth of it, through his infinite grace. People say we “need” his word in order to obey him, but what it boils down to is claiming it is owed to us, rather than being a gift so beyond our need as to be unthinkable: that God himself, and even in person as Christ, would speak to us, and directly urge us to accept the most completely basic and undeniable things as God’s eternal power and godhead. Just as he holds all men responsible to repent of their sins and accept his mercy, yet only revealed to some, after thousands of years, what that mercy cost him. Those who do not know of his sacrifice have less than no excuse, and those who do know the dreadful and eternally inexpressible thought that God died and rose again to save us are so beyond being without excuse that it would be hysterical if it was not so unfathomably sobering.
On the discussion of whether the Pharisees worshipped the Bible, I would point out that the depiction of Pharisees most popular in this culture is a myth that is the opposite of what is read in Scripture. Their official doctrine was sound, so you could be called a Pharisee and still be a true servant of God, but as a group they were not “strict observers of the law” who “followed the letter of the law exactly” but failed to have some kind of emotional attachment type of relationship to God with which some people try to replace the obedience God teaches. In this thinking they all but make it a virtue to sin from time to time.
The Bible specifically says the Pharisees did not do what they told others to do. They were hypocrites not in “doing the right thing but being proud about it”, but in the very simple sense that they would not do what they commanded others to do, breaking the very law they taught. Even in the open they replaced God’s Word with their own laws, and in secret they were murderers, thieves, liars, and committing all uncleanness were children of the Devil and Hell. Think about it: they agreed together to use bribes and false witness to murder an innocent man so that they could maintain their nice position in the eyes of gentile Rome. Who says they got all the motions right, and just missed the emotions?
That being said, if hypothetically there was a group of people who put study and knowledge of the Scriptures above obeying them, and basically cared more about reading and scholarliness than about holiness and righteousness, then you could of course say this is wrong. But saying they are “worshipping” Scripture doesn’t make sense, because the whole point is that they don’t actually care about what they are reading at all, just about reading it.
“But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” - Isaiah 66:2
“At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow,” and, “Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.”
