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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | angst33 | 113932 | ||
God refers to himself as "The great I Am". what does this mean? | ||||||
2 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | Emmaus | 113933 | ||
angst33, God replied, "I am who am." Then he added, "This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you." Exodus 3:14 [14] I am who am: apparently this utterance is the source of the word Yahweh, the proper personal name of the God of Israel. It is commonly explained in reference to God as the absolute and necessary Being. It may be understood of God as the Source of all created beings. Out of reverence for this name, the term Adonai, "my Lord," was later used as a substitute. The word LORD in the present version represents this traditional usage. The word "Jehovah" arose from a false reading of this name as it is written in the current Hebrew text. NAB footnote http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/exodus/exodus3.htm Emmaus |
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3 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | Tara1 | 114048 | ||
Hello to you Emmaus, Kenneth L. McKay, who graduated with honors in Classics from the Universities of Sydney and Cambridge, taught Greek in universities and theological colleges in Nigeria, New Zealand, and England, who taught at the Australian National University for 26 years, has written numerous articles on ancient Greek syntax, as well as authored a book on Classical Attic, Greek Grammar for Students, and A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: an aspectual approach, provides the following in relation to the alleged "true parallel between Exodus 3:14 (LXX) and John 8:58": John's Gospel," Expository Times (1996): 302-303) 'I am' in John's Gospel BY K. L. MCKAY, MA, FORMERLY OF THE AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY It has become fashionable among some preachers and writers to relate Jesus's use of the words 'I am' in the Gospel according to John, in all, or most, of their contexts, to God's declaration to MOSES in Exodus 3:14, and to expound the passages concerned as if the words themselves have some kind of magic in them. Some who have no more than a smattering of Greek attribute the 'magic' to the Greek words ego eimi.1 I wish briefly to draw attention to the normality of the Greek in all such passages, and the unlikelihood of the words ego eimi being intended to suggest any special significance of this kind. It is, of course, perfectly reasonable to draw attention to Jesus's claims about himself by noting the 'I am' element common to them: 'I am the bread of life' (6:35), 'I am the light of the world' (8:12), 'I am the gate/door' (10:7), 'I am the good shepherd' (10:11), 'I am the resurrection and the life' (11:25), 'I am the way, the truth and the life' (14:6), 'I am the true vine' (15:1). These statements give important insights into the identity and work of Jesus, and we can be challenged to decide whether the words 'I am' in them convey truth, delusion, deceit, or something else. In each case the Greek words used are ego eimi, the pronoun being emphatic (as is usually appropriate in beginning a startling fresh statement, answering a question of identity or personal activity, and in some other circumstances), and the verb, also slightly emphatic,2 being the normal use of the verb 'to be' as a copula, the means of linking the subject with the significant words, 'bread', 'light', etc., which occur as noun complements.The same principle applies when the complement is an adjective or an adverb or adverbial phrase used adjectivally. With variations of context the degree of emphasis may vary, and either the pronoun or the verb may be omitted. In the parallelism of 8:23 pronoun and verb are separated: humeis ek ton kato este, ego ek ton ano eimi, but in the immediately following parallel statement the introduction of a negative brings the verb forward (thus also giving extra emphasis to toutou): ego ouk eimi ek tou kosmou toutou. In 14:10 the verb is omitted, because it is understood from the rest of the sentence: ego en to (i) patri kai ho pater en emoi estin.3 In 14:20 a development from the same statement, also in a hoti clause, omits the copula entirely: ego en to(i) patri mou kai humeis en emoi kago en humin In 10:36 the personal pronoun is not needed for emphasis, and is omitted: huios tou theou eimi. In 7:34 and 7:36 the clause structure demands the postposition of the subject: hopou eimi ego humeis ou dunasthe elthein. |
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4 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | Tara1 | 114050 | ||
Part 2 Although the natural English translations differ, there are two contexts of this kind in which Jesus uses the words eg eimi alone to identify himself: in 6:20, where the disciples are afraid of the apparition they see walking on the water, and Jesus reassures them by identifying himself, quite naturally, with these words, which translate into English as 'It is 1'; and in 18:5, whale Jesus acknowledges that he is Jesus of Nazareth by speaking the same words, which are naturally translated into English as 'I am he'. The syntactic difference between them is that in the former ego is the complement, the unexpressed subject being something equivalent to 'what you see', and in the latter ego is the subject, the unexpressed complement being 'Jesus of Nazareth'. In both these passages ego eimi is the natural Greek response in the circumstances, as may be seen in 9:9, where the man cured of blindness uses exactly the same words to acknowledge his identity. The dramatic reaction of the arresting party in 18:6 is readily explained if we note that the confident authority of Jesus's presence was such that he defeated the merchants in the temple (2:15), and he simply walked away when the crowd was intent on throwing him over the brow of the hill near Nazareth (Luke 4:28-30). The verb 'to be' is used differently, in what is presumably its basic meaning of 'be in existence', in John 8:58: prin Abraam genesthai ego eimi,5 which would be most naturally translated 'I have been in existence since before Abraham was bom',6 if it were not for the obsession with the simple words 'I am'. If we take the Greek words in their natural meaning, as we surely should, the claim to have been in existence for so long is in itself a staggering one, quite enough to provoke the crowd's violent reaction. For the emphasis on the words 'I am' we need to look back to God's words to Moses in Exodus 3:14, 'I am who I am. This is what you arc to say to the Israelites: "I am has sent me to you".' The passage in its Hebrew form has been discussed by many commentators as something of a problem, with possibilities that the verb could mean 'I am', 'I will be', 'I become', or 'I will become', and the pronoun 'that', 'who', 'what', or even 'because'. Some see a need to emend the text, and some stress various critical principles as basic to its interpretation. A few refer to the Septuagint translation of the passage as relevant for understanding it.7 Now the Septuagint was the translation done for the benefit of the increasing number of Greek-speaking Jews a couple of centuries earlier, so naturally it is the version of the Old Testament that is normally referred to in the New Testament, and certainly the one most likely to be known to the early readers of John's Gospel. Its translation of Exodus 3:14 follows the sense (as understood by the Jewish translators) rather than the exact form of the Hebrew: ego eimi ho an ... Ho an apestalke me, which translates into English literally as 'I am the being one',' and 'the being one has sent me'. Now the words ego eimi here are the emphatic pronoun and the copula as in most of the passages cited above; and ho an represents a relative clause which in its first occurrence would be hos eimi and in its second occurrence would be hos esti,9 but the most natural translation into English of both would be 'the one who is (who really exists)',' the verb having its basic |
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5 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | Tara1 | 114051 | ||
Part 3 meaning (and being so accented), and not being a mere copula In neither is there any possibility of inserting an emphatic ego. So the emphatic ords used by Jesus in the passages referred to above are perfectly natural in their contexts, and they do not echo the words of Exodus 3:14 in the normally quoted Greek version. Thus they are quite unlikely to have been used in the New Testament to convey that significance, however much the modern English versions of the relevant passages, following the form of the Hebrew words, may suggest it. 1 I have seen one such speaker try to impress his audience by writing the words on a blackboard, only to demonstrate that he was ignorant of even the simplest details of Greek. 2 Its position is unemphatic, but the degree of emphasis could be reduced by its omission, which would make no difference to the meaning. The omission of the copula is quite common in Greek, especially, but not exclusively, in the third person. 3 The fact that this is a reported statement, in a hoti clause, does not affect the grammar, but only the degree of emphasis. 4 In translation, if as is likely, the original reply was the equivalent in Aramaic. 5 Note that with this meaning the verb is differently accented in Greek E)GW\ E)MI/ instead of E)GW E)IMI ). 6 For the construction see K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An aspectual approach (Peter Lang, 1994), 4.2.4. 7 For extensive modern discussion of the problems of interpretation see Brevard S. Childs, Exodus: A Commentary (OTL, SCM, 1974) and John 1. Durham, Exodus (WBC 3, Word, 1987). See also Martin Noth, Exodus (OTL, SCM, 2nd ed. 1966); U. Cassuto, Commentary on the Book of Exodus (Magnes Press), 1. P. Hyatt, Exodus (NCB, Oliphants, 1971); Alan Cole, Exodus (TC, IVP, 1973); J. W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Exodus (Scholars Press, 1990). 8 As Noth mentions in a footnote. 9 Cf. the Vulgate translation of 14b: Qui est misit me ad vos. 10 English has lost the full range of inflections, and the relative pronoun is now treated as if it were always third person. Tara1 |
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6 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | flinkywood | 114054 | ||
Tara1, who is Jesus Christ? Colin |
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7 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | Tara1 | 114066 | ||
Hi Colin, Presumably you desire me to commit myself to a response that defies your definition of Christ's divinity. I hope I'm mistaken. I understand what the divinity of Christ is and unquestionably believe it since the Bible unequivocally teaches it. If indeed your understanding of Christ’s divinity is distorted that’s not my problem now is it? Likewise, if my understanding of Christ’s divinity is distorted, that’s not your problem. 1 Pet 3:8 tells you and me “Why, even Christ died once for all time concerning sins, a righteous [person] for unrighteous ones, that he might lead YOU to God, he being put to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the spirit.” Therefore Jesus Christ is now a divine spirit who resides in the heavenly realm and died so as to lead you and me to God. I think that is simple to understand, don’t make it difficult. John 3:16 is one of the most well known verses of the entire Bible and plainly states that God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life. This I believe with all my heart mind and soul and hope to God you do too. Tara1 |
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8 | God refers to himself as "The great I Am | Ex 3:14 | flinkywood | 114068 | ||
Tara, Do you agree that the Bible unequivocably teaches that Jesus Christ is uncreated and eternal? Colin |
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