In an article I wrote earlier this year, Joseph Smith Worship? Responding to Criticisms of the Role and Status of the Prophet Joseph Smith in Latter-day Saint Theology, I addressed the claim that the respect Latter-day Saints have for Joseph Smith, exemplified by the hymn, Praise to the Man, is anti-biblical. In the paper, I show that the Bible exalts humans beyond what Latter-day Saints do for Joseph Smith, including 1 Chron 29 where Solomon receives the same worship as Yahweh and sits on the divine throne.
As another example, one scholar in a recent volume dealing with the Christology of the Synoptic Gospels, noted the following about the Davidic King and Psa 72:
In Psalm 72 wild creatures and enemies, kings and nations, all bow down and serve the king (vv. 9-11). The pairing of the roots חוה and עבד in verse 11 is precisely the pairing of words that one finds in the commandment forbidding the adoration of idols (Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9). Thus, while it is possible to separate cultic worship from courtly obeisance, we have begun to seen enough of the confluence of idealized human figures and actions and ascriptions typically reserved for God to keep us from being able to rule out “worship and serve” reserved for God to keep us from being able to rule out “worship and service” of the king as a rite appropriate even for Israel’s monolatrous belief and practice. The Priestly creation story has already opened up the possibility that idealized, original humanity stands as the image of God that grounds the prohibition of images made by human hands. It is no great leap from such a creational theology of idealized human figures to such a figure playing precisely the role of God’s proxy in worship and service, such that what is forbidden to images made by human hands is allowed to the image formed by God. The idea would be that God is worshipped through this service because God stands behind this king.
In the succeeding verses, the king is deemed worthy of such adoration because he is deliverer (v. 12), savior (v. 13), and redeemer (v. 14). And so the king’s name, like God’s own glory, is celebrated as something that should last forever (v. 17). “The psalm seems to hold out the possibility that a king might be granted life to a fuller and greater extent than an ordinary human being. Here again, the Judahite conception of divine kingship is less explicit and exalted than what we find in Egypt . . . but it still has a mythical dimension that goes beyond the common human condition” (Collins and Collins, King and Messiah, 23). Even beyond this, the petition that the king’s name flourish “before the sun” (לִפְנֵי־שֶׁמֶשׁ, v. 17) became an opening for the idea that the name of the king existed before the sun. (J.R. Daniel Kirk, A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2016], 101-2)
