Romans 9:5

by aqwsed12345 71 Replies latest watchtower bible

aqwsed12345
NA28: ὧν οἱ πατέρες καὶ ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα, ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν.
NA28 transliterated: hō̃n hoi patéres kaì ex hō̃n ho Khristòs tò katà sárka, ho ṑn epì pántōn theòs eulogētòs eis toùs aiō̃nas, amḗn.
KIT:
NWT: To them the forefathers belong, and from them the Christ descended according to the flesh. God, who is over all, be praised forever. Amen.
NIV, NKJV: "...Christ, who is God over all, forever praised"
KJV, NASB, NBV: "...Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever."
* * *
Even the Watchtower Society's publication'Reasoning From the Scriptures' quotes the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, which acknowledges that Romans 9:5 "...can easily and linguistically perfectly be applied to Christ. The verse would then read: 'Christ, who is God over all, blessed be forever. Amen...'".
This verse means this: As regards Christ's human nature, He comes from among the Jews; but He must not only be seen as a man, for He is also the eternally blessed God over all. With this explanation, this scriptural place attributes to Christ the name God. But some, placing the commas differently than they are commonly in the Greek text, say that a full stop must be put after 'flesh', and thus in the following words, there are the Jews' usual ancient Doxologies referring to God the Father, so this verse means: Christ comes from among the Jews according to the flesh — but God the Father is eternally blessed over all.
But this cannot be, as will be shown from these:
a) Grammatically, in this case, Paul would have arranged the Greek words like this: 'The God, who is over all, etc.' - 'Let Him be eternally blessed. Amen', as he did in 2 Corinthians 11:31, since there is no subject before it if it does not refer to Christ.
b) This Greek construction 'ο ων' means 'who is' (qui est), as in John 1:18, John 3:13, 2 Corinthians 11:51. As in these and other scriptural places, the 'ο ων' refers to the nearest subject, so here it must refer to the subject preceding these words, that is, to Christ, because with this, as a referential particle, the already begun speech is only continued, not started by it.
c) If this expression: who is the eternally blessed God, is not referred to Christ, then why does Paul mention it when he speaks exactly of Christ's birth among the Jews, that Christ comes from the Jews according to the flesh, even though everyone knew that He is human and Jewish by birth? He surely wanted to let the Jews know with these words that the Messiah was not only a man but also God, as Romans 1:3,4. 'Concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.'
d) Let us also consider that Paul does not usually use such a casual Doxology about the Father as would be the case here; but when he says this doxology about the Father, he always first puts the Father as the subject, e.g., Romans 1:25, Romans 11:36, 1 Timothy 1:17. How could he now speak of the Father, when neither the preceding nor the following verses mention Him even remotely?
e) The difficulty is also easy to clear up that nowhere in the whole Bible is it said that Christ is 'the God who is over all, forever blessed', but of the Father in Ephesians 4:6; and so here too, Paul means it of the Father. — However, those things which Paul here connects are said separately about Christ in many places in the Scriptures, e.g., John 1:1 says that He is God, Ephesians 1:22 says that all things are put under Christ's feet. Therefore, why shouldn't Paul say these things here together? If the Scriptures attribute such Divine perfections to Christ, which are attributes of the Father, isn't He then above all? Isn't He one with the Father? Indeed, isn't it clearly said of Christ that He is the Lord over all, Acts 10:36, John 3:31, 1 Corinthians 15:27, Hebrews 2:8, Titus 2:13?
The flexible sentence structure of ancient Greek and the absence of punctuation in the original New Testament text sometimes makes it difficult to recognize emphasis and clause boundaries. Translations and Greek editions primarily differ based on where they place punctuation. The sequence of words, not their meaning, is the issue in interpreting the sentence.
We have two main possibilities. (1) If we put a period after "pántōn" (all), the following clause's subject becomes "God," and it becomes an independent blessing. (2) If we look at modern editions that place a comma after "sárka" (flesh), the subject of the sentence doesn't change, and everything that follows still refers to Christ.
If Paul wanted to start a new sentence: "God, who is above...", the text could be "Ho [...] epi panton theos…" However, "ón" (being) after "ho" (who) excludes the translation "God, who...". Paul doesn't change the subject, and "ho ón" (“…who being...”) retains the previous clause's subject, Christ.
The Watchtower Society denies that the Eternal One became man in Christ, their interpretation points to the some verses, praising God's power. But this doesn't contradict Paul naming Christ as "God over all." Jesus himself said he had power over all (Mt 20:28), and the Bible calls Christ GOD (Jn 1:1), or MIGHTY GOD (Is 9:5), even THE GOD (John 20:28).
The study of Paul's blessings also helps. Greek scholars examining all of Paul's prayers found that blessings always relate to the subject of the preceding clause. In every single blessing throughout the Bible, "eulogētòs" (Blessed...) precedes "theos" (God...). In Paul's mother tongue, the first word of a Hebrew blessing is also this: "Blessed..." (Baruch...).
But I looked at one of the old, ancient translations of the Bible. You may have heard of Wulfila (Ulfilas)'s Gothic translation. It's important to note that the Goths were Arians (i.e., they denied the Trinity), so they cannot be accused of trinitarian bias. In this translation, it appears as:
"þizeei attans, jah us þaimei Xristus bi leika, saei ist ufar allaim guþ þiuþiþs in aiwam, amen."
Let's look at the relevant words:
- Xristus : Noun, proper (inflection: Noun): Christus Nominative Singular
- saei : Pronoun, relative (inflection: Pron.): the/who - Masculine Nominative Singular
- wisan : Verb (inflection: abl.V.5): to be, exist [not perfective durative] Active Indicative Present 3rd Person Singular
- guþ : Noun, common, masculine (inflection: Noun): God; Nominative Singular / Vocative Singular / Accusative Singular
According to Bruce Metzger, the Old Latin, containing no punctuation other than two suspended points surrounding "amen," is indeterminate. The same is true of the Amiatinus codex, though Metzger believes the rhythm of the text as it stands in the edition by Wordsworth and White makes the second stichos easier, in his mind, to take in reference to the Christus ("Christ") of the first stichos, rather than as an independent sentence. Metzger also presents translations from the Peshitta, Harclean Syriac, the Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic versions, the Gothic, the Armenian and the Ethiopic versions that apply the term "God" to "Christ" in Romans 9:5.
Metzger refers to several early Christian writers who apply the words of Romans 9:5 entirely to Christ. For example, he refers to Irenaeus of the second century (CE), Tertullian, Hippolytus, Novatian and a letter from six bishops to Paul of Samosata of the third century, as well as a host of writers in the fourth century (including Athanasius, Basil, Jerome and others) to show that this passage has from early times been understood as calling Christ "God".
Summary: The Bible verse calls Christ the God over all, blessed forever.
https://www.forananswer.org/Romans/Rom9_5.htm
Vidqun

Aqwsed, unfortunately Rom. 9:5 is not as clear cut as you make out. You have given one side of the argument, so I won't go into it. Grammar, Paul's theology and scribal error should all be weighed up for each to come to his own conclusion. The following is Rom. 9:5. Footnote 1 in Metzger's commentary:
Among many earlier discussions pro and con, two may be singled out for special mention as representative of the two points of view. In favor of taking the words as an ascription to Christ, see William Sanday and A. C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed. (New York, 1896), pp. 233–238; in favor of taking the words separately from the preceding clause, see Ezra Abbot, “On the Construction of Romans ix.5,” Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, 1881, pp. 87–154, and idem, “Recent Discussions of Romans ix.5,” ibid., 1883, pp. 90–112 (both articles are reprinted in Abbot’s posthumously published volume entitled, The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel and Other Critical Essays [Boston, 1888], pp. 332–410, and 411–438). For a more recent discussion, see the present writer’s contribution to Christ and Spirit in the New Testament; Studies in honour of C. F. D. Moule, ed. by Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley (Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 95–112; reprinted in Metzger’s New Testament Studies (Leiden, 1980), pp. 56–74.

On the other hand, in the opinion of others of the Committee, none of these considerations seemed to be decisive, particularly since nowhere else in his genuine epistles does Paul ever designate ὁ Χριστός as θεός. In fact, on the basis of the general tenor of his theology it was considered tantamount to impossible that Paul would have expressed Christ’s greatness by calling him God blessed for ever.

Bruce Manning Metzger, United Bible Societies, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition a Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th Rev. Ed.) (London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 459–462.
On the other hand, Paul nowhere else in his genuine epistles (that is, the letters which scholars agree were written by Paul; Titus 2:13 is generally regarded as not written by Paul) ever designates ὁ Χριστὸς as θεός. On the basis of the general perspective of Paul’s theology, it is difficult to think that Paul would have expressed Christ’s greatness by calling him God blessed for ever.

It is also possible that a copyist accidentally wrote ὁ ὥν (the one being) for ὧν ὁ (of whom). That is, the original text may have read “4 … of whom the sonship (ὧν ἡ υἱοθεσία), the glory … 5 of whom the patriarchs (ὧν οἱ πατέρες), and from whom (ἐξ ὧν) the Messiah according to the flesh, of whom God over all (ὧν ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων θεός).…” This punctuation “would make Paul assert that Christ by natural descent is a prerogative of Israel, but that God is the one who is preeminent and blest forever, in effect, Israel’s ninth prerogative” (Fitzmyer, p. 549). It should be noted, however, that there is no evidence in the manuscripts to support such a correction of the text.
Roger L. Omanson and Bruce Manning Metzger, A Textual Guide to the Greek New Testament: An Adaptation of Bruce M. Metzger’s Textual Commentary for the Needs of Translators (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006), 308–310.
PetrW

@aqwsed12345
Interesting study. (But it doesn't even attempt to prove that Jesus is παντοκρατωρ?)
Of course there are more such texts - typically John 1:1 or John 20:28 or the less cited but all the more interesting 1 John 5:20 where the grammar would suggest that ουτος εστιν...θεος refers to Christ, which of course is problematic and uncertain...
From my perspective, attempts to argue in favor of the Trinity from the Bible suffer from the fact that they usually only prove polytheism. Most of those who cite various texts from the Bible in support of the Trinity a priori assume, e.g. by arguing "I and the Father are one", that the Trinity of God (almost) follows from this union of two "entities"... Few of them make it to the stage where they prove that Jesus is God, the Father is God, and the Spirit is God, but they are not three Gods, but one God. And for any of them to apply the theological construct of the Trinity in its implications, almost no one does (e.g., the death of the Triune God on the cross and the subsequent three-day "sojourn" of the Triune God in sheol...).
However, the JWs also deserve criticism. They may have popularized antitrinitarianism, but only one of its many streams. From a religionist point of view, one could speak of JWs as non-adorative antitrinitarianism, which had already appeared once in the modern period (see Ferenc David, c. 1520-1579).
The greatest error of JWs in their antitrinitarianism is their rejection of worship and prayer exclusively to Christ. Christ received everything from the Father, even his throne and his power. Therefore Christ could say: I and the Father are one. But even though the Father was already in the body of Christ (cf. e.g., how it cannot be rationally explained by "chance" that Jesus, as a mere man, would know that if he told someone to go to the lake and cast a net that he would catch a fish that just happened to have a gold coin in its mouth - it cannot be explained except by saying that he is (almost) God, or it is mere literary fiction....), then Christ himself "presses on": the Father is greater than I, therefore expect even greater works than those which I have done in the flesh, as Christ, among you...
Christ becomes for us "our Lord and our God" (cf. John 20:28). Therefore we are to pray to him, to turn to him. If we do not do this, then we "bypass" the demand of God the Father that until everything is subject to the Son, we are truly subject to Him, as to God, because the Son will also eventually be subject to God and God will be with us.
Disrespect for the Son, in short, is the weakest point of JW-antitrinitarianism, out of the historical development of modern non-trinitarianism, JWs have chosen the weakest, least suitable variant... in JW-speak, I would expect a "new light" here, sometime in 50 or 80 years 😁✌️
Touching only lightly on the topic of κυριος in the NT text, which is related, the JWs assume that YHWH has been removed. Of course, in doing so they only demonstrate a misunderstanding of the excellent position of Christ as κυριος. Christ in the NT is the fulfillment and "extension" of what has already been communicated in Ex 23:20-21. Christians have Christ as Lord and need "nothing" and "no one" else. God the Father has not "disappeared" by this, He is still, He was and He is coming, the Father is the alpha and omega, but for a set time, Christ is the Lord.
That is why I think the removal of YHWH did not happen, or else: Christ as κυριος corresponded to the New Testament concept.
That the Trinity was later constituted is more indicative of choosing the worst possible option - much like the JWs did with their antitrinitarianism.
Just going back to JW's claim about κυριος in the NT, JW are unwittingly(?) treading on very thin ice: if I claim that the integrity of the NT text has been violated by someone changing something in it - although I have no direct textual evidence for this at present - then I am in fact questioning hypothetically every place in the NT. I can argue that there, instead of this and that term, should be this or that. By questioning one, I am questioning everything...
JW's may have a (theo)logical argument for YHWH in the NT, but that is simply not enough. I also think Ιαω is the most likely Greek form for YHWH (it's the form of the divine name mentioned by e.g. Irenaeus of Lyons, even if only in connection with the Gnostics) and which also appears on a fraction of the LXX description, but that's just not enough.
K. Aland and B. Aland in their book Der Text des Neuen Testaments, I think, convincingly demonstrate the "rigidity" and "stubbornness" shown in the NT-text copies. It is indeed a reconstructed text, but very probably in the form that the first readers had, almost 2000 years ago...
slimboyfat

Even the Catholic scholar Raymond Brown says Romans 9.5 is ambiguous. Why does the Trinity doctrine so regularly fall back on texts that are uncertain textually or grammatically?
PetrW thanks for an interesting exposition about non-adorative Christology and the reference to the early Unitarian Ferenc David.
Yet the NT is very clear that Christians should pray to God alone. Jesus instructed his followers to pray to the Father (the one exception, again, is textually in dispute at John 14.14) and the evidence from Paul and the other NT writers is that they followed this instruction. Christians are to pray to God through Jesus and in his name. The German scholar Hans Conzelmann put it this way:
“Calling on Jesus is to be distinguished from prayer. Only God is worshipped. But that one can pray at all is a miracle, mediated through the Lord. Consequently men call upon him; they pray in the name of the Lord.” An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament (1969), page 84.
I also note that there are Trinitarians who in practice agree that prayer is correctly directed to God through Jesus rather than to Jesus himself. For example I have often observed, and had it confirmed from speaking to them, that the Brethren, despite being fully Trinitarian, strictly follow the Bible pattern of prayer to God through Jesus rather than prayer direct to Jesus.
Sea Breeze

The disciples of the Apostles wrote to each other a lot because of heretical ideas creeping into the congregation. So, the main beliefs of the first Christians are well established and easily cross checked. The reason Christians called Jesus God is because that was one of the MAIN teachings of the apostles. Unitarians are aligned with skeptic scholars to try and cast doubt on scripture. Not much has changed in 2000 years.

Here is a list of nine early church leaders, some taught directly by the apostles who call Jesus God in dozens of instances. This of course supports the traditional reading being discussed in this post.
Polycarp (AD 69-155) was the bishop (city overseer) at the church in Smyrna. Irenaeus tells us Polycarp was a disciple of John the Apostle. In his Letter to the Philippians he says:
Now may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the eternal high priest himself, the Son of God Jesus Christ, build you up in faith and truth...and to us with you, and to all those under heaven who will yet believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his Father who raised him from the dead.1
Ignatius (AD 50-117) was the bishop (city overseer) at the church in Antioch and also a disciple of John the Apostle. He wrote a series of letters to various churches on his way to Rome, where he was to be martyred. He writes,
Ignatius, who is also Theophorus, unto her which hath been blessed in greatness through the plentitude of God the Father; which hath been foreordained before the ages to be for ever unto abiding and unchangeable glory, united and elect in a true passion, by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God; even unto the church which is in Ephesus [of Asia], worthy of all felicitation: abundant greeting in Christ Jesus and in blameless joy.2
Being as you are imitators of God, once you took on new life through the blood of God you completed perfectly the task so natural to you.3
There is only one physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and unborn, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first subject to suffering and then beyond it, Jesus Christ our Lord.4
For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit.5
Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life.6
For our God Jesus Christ is more visible now that he is in the Father.7
I glorify Jesus Christ, the God who made you so wise, for I observed that you are established in an unshakable faith, having been nailed, as it were, to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.8
Wait expectantly for the one who is above time: the Eternal, the Invisible, who for our sake became visible; the Intangible, the Unsuffering, who for our sake suffered, who for our sake endured in every way.9
Justin Martyr (AD 100-165) was an Christian apologist of the second century.
And that Christ being Lord, and God the Son of God, and appearing formerly in power as Man, and Angel, and in the glory of fire as at the bush, so also was manifested at the judgment executed on Sodom, has been demonstrated fully by what has been said.10
Permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts.11
Therefore these words testify explicitly that He [Jesus] is witnessed to by Him [the Father] who established these things, as deserving to be worshipped, as God and as Christ.12
The Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now in the times of your reign, having, as we before said, become Man by a virgin....13
For if you had understood what has been written by the prophets, you would not have denied that He was God, Son of the only, unbegotten, unutterable God.14
More
Blotty

Seabreeze:
The list is interested - I'm wary of English translations of what early church fathers said, as trinitarians have (maybe not intentionally) mistranslated many verses with inconsistent translation practises
compare John 10:33 & Acts 28:6 then look at how John uses anarthrous "theon" in his writings - while other bibles do similar one cannot be expected to translate the same word the same way every time - However here there is no reason to translate them differently except for theological reasons as multiple scholars admit. If John had meant "God" and not "a god" according to his own writing style he would have been obligated to use the article (John 1:18 is an exception, but has a perfectly legit reason)
compare [strict] usage of arkhe and arkhon
Romans 9:5 can hardly be used to prove "doctrine" as its a hotly debated text (recognize the logic?).
For your information the Reasoning Book says:
"The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology states: “Rom. 9:5 is disputed. . . . It would be easy, and linguistically perfectly possible to refer the expression to Christ. The verse would then read, ‘Christ who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen.’ Even so, Christ would not be equated absolutely with God, but only described as a being of divine nature, for the word theos has no article. . . . The much more probable explanation is that the statement is a doxology directed to God.”—(Grand Rapids, Mich.; 1976), translated from German, Vol. 2, p. 80."

Once again though you have presented a theologically biased analysis and only told one side of the story - There are other sides.
you start off with "As regards Christ's human nature" - already I'm sceptical,
1) nowhere is the two nature doctrine stated
2) its stated Jesus stopped being "human" after his death
Where are the scholarly citations to support your point?
Edgar J Goodspeed and James Moffatt rendered it honestly (both trinitarian) where it could be taken either way instead of one in particular (cant accuse me of quote mining xD):
https://studybible.info/Goodspeed/Romans%209:5
https://studybible.info/Moffatt/Romans%209:5
Why did you not include these? your motives have been revealed.
PetrW

@slimboyfat
In response to you, slimboyfat, I would like to clarify this on my part: I am not opposed to whether someone prays or otherwise communicates exclusively with God the Father, or whether they speak only to Christ, or whether they add that they do so in the name of Christ whenever they speak to God.
Rather, my point was to delineate against the "prohibition" of praying exclusively to Christ, as JW's do and justify it with antitrinitarianism (which I think greatly damages the doctrine...).
My position is formulated - I will give an example - according to Rev 5:13, where Christ is included in worship (this blessing, this ευλογια, here in Rev 5:13, is also explained by Rom 9:5...), which therefore, in my opinion, opens the way for the possibility of approaching only Jesus. In my opinion, nowhere in the NT is the JW-ritual strictly brought to an end: as if John, in Rev 20:20, in response to Christ, had to write: Amen, come Jehovah and take the Lord Jesus with you. No, it was enough for him to write: Come Lord Jesus, because it is clear, almost "notorious", that with Christ the Father will come...
I think whether we turn only to Christ or to the Father (through Christ) is influenced by the position of the one who does so. If someone feels like a slave (for example, the Revelation is addressed to them), then they will probably be glad to be heard by the Lord and not try to go around the Lord - after all, they are merely a slave. If someone feels like a brother of Christ, on a par with a fleshly brother (see e.g. James 1:1-2), then he does not need to go to the elder, firstborn brother, but goes straight to the Father.
As I understand e.g. Revelation, there are among Christians, simply small, but also great (Rev 19:5), some are like a little grass, others are like a tree (Rev 9:4), therefore there is, in my opinion, a freedom of access preserved, both to the Father and (only) to the Son, which is based on what kind of relationship we (currently) have with God and what we could have...
In terms of salvation, I think this is a marginal matter. It is clear that we are to strive for the best possible attainable knowledge, or to put it another way: the little grass, is not meant to be grass all the time, it is meant to be a tree (like the proverbial mustard seed), but on the other hand, the fact that someone is a bush, and is better off than the grass, probably doesn't mean much...😁✌️
aqwsed12345

slimboyfat
"Jesus instructed his followers to pray to the Father"
"Our Father" does not mean in the Lord's Prayer only the Father of the Logos, since the faithful are in a Father-child relationship with the entire Godhead. In Catholic theology, the entire Trinity is "the Father" for the people, not just the first person of the Trinity, from whom the Son was born. When we are not talking about "the Father" and "the Son" within the Trinity, about their relation to each other within the Godhead, but generally in the relation between God and creatures, then the whole Trinity is the Father, not just the first person (God the Father) of the Trinity. For example, Isaiah 9:6 also calls Jesus Father. In this sense, "Father" is not necessarily a title for the first person of the Trinity but a synonym for God. Cf. http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2010/07/trinity-is-our-father.html
See: Acts 7:59, 1 Corinthians 1:2
aqwsed12345

Were the Early Christians really JWs?
Pliny the Younger (c. 61 – c. 113), the provincial governor of Pontus and Bithynia, wrote to Emperor Trajan c. 112 concerning how to deal with Christians, who refused to worship the emperor, and instead worshiped "Christus".
Tacitus wrote about during the Eucharist rituals Christians ate the body and drank the blood of their God, interpreting the ritual as cannibalism. I note that the latter proves that the early Christians professed the deity of Jesus and also in his real presence in the Eucharist.
Alexamenos graffito: "Alexamenos worships [his] God", this also disproves the JWs' "torture stake" idea.
aqwsed12345

PetrW
"But it doesn't even attempt to prove that Jesus is παντοκρατωρ?"
Because it is not in the text here, regardless of this, the Bible teaches that the Son is also omnipotent - but what kind of Lord and God is there who is not almighty? Anyway, proving the real deity of the Son does not require the explicit mention of the word 'pantokrator', if every attribute necessary to deity, and the prominent assertion of the "God" as predicate is present. Especially since, in an implicit manner, the Scripture does indeed teach the Son's omnipotence (Mt 28:18, Jn 3:35, 5:19, Heb 1:3), even if you do not accept Rev 1:8.
By the way, it is most likely not the Father who speaks in Rev 1:8 (He is not the only "Jehovah"), but rather the Son/Word, as to my best knowledge, in the Book of Revelation, either John or the Son speaks in the first person. Rev 1:11.17 nicely identifies who the Alpha and Omega, First and Last are. Moreover, according to 1.8, He is the Coming One (ho erhkomenos), who was already mentioned in 1.7 ("He is coming with the clouds"). So, Jesus is the Almighty. According to the text version incorporated into the NA text, He is also "ho theos". In Rev 1:11a the NA text indeed does not include the Alpha and Omega for Jesus. But the other place remains authentic, and here it is specifically Jesus who, speaking, calls Himself Alpha and Omega:
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are those who keep his commandments [...] I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star." (Rev 22:13.16)
And from the Rev 1:16, it is clear that these are the words of Jesus Christ, and there is no change of speaker between them. Furthermore, the First and Last (1:17), which essentially means the same as the Alpha and Omega, is also a title of Jesus according to the Watchtower (though they explain this in a way that He is not the "First and Last" in the same way as the Father). Moreover, unlike the word "apostle", this title cannot be applied to two people of different ranks, at most to those in a dead heat. So the Watchtower, by acknowledging that this title in Rev 22:13 is applied to the Father, admitted that the Son is at least as much "first and last" as the Father.

Romans 9:5

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