The New Testament incidence of the word proskunein (generally, ‘to do obeisance’), is not a completely reliable guide, if one is looking for evidence as to when Jesus came to be worshipped like God; but it does provide a pointer. The Old Testament, for instance, although it uses proskunein = hištaḥawôṭ mainly for worship of God (or of false gods), does, on several occasions, use it for a gesture before a man. On the other hand, it seems to have been regarded as an exceptional and extravagant gesture when offered to a man. Jacob performs elaborate acts of obeisance before Esau (‘he… bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came to his brother’, Gen. 33: 3); but then he is deliberately trying to propitiate him (32: 21, Eng. verse 20), and he even says (33: 10), ‘I have seen thy face, as one seeth the face of God.’ Similarly, in the book of Esther, it is the arrogance of an oriental potentate like Haman that expects inferiors to prostrate themselves before him, and is indignant when Mordecai refuses (Esther 3: 2); and, although Jewish exegesis made difficulties over this (see the texts quoted in loc. in the ICC commentary – I owe this observation to my friend Dr B. A. Mastin), Josephus and Philo were aware that it was a servile gesture if made towards a fellow-man. Josephus, Ant. x. 211, describes Nebuchadnezzar as falling on his face and hailing Daniel ‘in the manner in which men worship God’ (hō(i) tropō(i) ton theon proskunousi).