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NASB | Psalm 83:18 That they may know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, Are the Most High over all the earth. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Psalm 83:18 That they may know that You alone, whose name is the LORD, Are the Most High over all the earth. |
Subject: WHERE TO FIND ALL THE NAMES OF GOD |
Bible Note: Hi Tim, I am so sorry you feel the way you do about the NWT but I can understand how you feel because I feel as you do with so many other translations. One of the biggest problems I have is the theology bias the translators brazenly display. I will get into that some day, I’m sure. I have already mentioned Rolf Furuli and his thoughts are elucidated herein by me to defend just this one text you brought up, John 8:58. The NWT says, “Before Abraham came into existence, I have been.” Many others read, “Before Abraham was born ‘I am.’” Greek ego eimi. Here we have the personal pronoun “I” together with the present of the auxiliary “to be”. It seems to me that other translations translate this in a mystical sense, allowing their theology of the Trinity to affect them. Since originally Jesus spoke either the Hebrew or Aramaic when he uttered this text in question then it was translated into Greek, and now into English, we have three different verbal systems to deal with. Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic don’t have tenses, but have aspects. Greek has two conjugations that only code for aspect, one that codes for the tense, and the other that codes for both aspect and time and yet another for stative conjugation (as opposed to tenses). It’s a misnomer to use tenses for the Greek verbs. Anyway, English has only tenses and no grammaticalized aspects. Most translations, speaking schematically, translate ego eimi in the present tense. Present tense is a time line diagram representing the present moment or the intersection between past time and future time. But think about it, isn’t it rare for actions to coincide exactly with the present moment? So, in English, present may occupy a part of the past as well as of the future but always including the present moment. It can be used for the distant future but hardly including a definite reference point in the distant past. The Greek present is different because it is an aspect and not a tense. It conveys a part of the action, not including the end, and is evidently timeless, except in resultative situations, that is, when an action ends with a resulting state following. The resultant state is unbounded. This conclusion is derived from the book, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research pp. 881, 882; by A. T. Robertson and the book Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament p. 78 by S. Porter. Greek future is about the same as English so it’s a grammaticalized tense, and the imperfect normally makes visible a sequence of a continuous action in the past. I’m sure you know all this. Some feel the NWT renders ego eimi as “I have been” in an attempt to harmonize the text in question with antitrinitarian doctrine. Some feel too that even the context dictates it’s wrong. Care must be take to be literal in translation and actually any translation of ego eimi is literal. So now let’s look at both Jesus’ original words and context. Jesus lived in the period between Classical Hebrew and Mischnaic Hebrew, but there is no evidence that tense-system of Mishnaic Hebrew was at work. A participle of the Hebrew verb haya (to be) is used only twice in the Hebrew text of the Bible. Ex. 9:3 and Pr 13:19. And of the 50 occurrences of the first person singular of the verb in Hebrew imperfect, all cases, except possibly 5 (Job 3:16; 10:19; 12:4; 17:6 and Ruth 2:13) have future meaning. So Jesus’ use of the Hebrew participle or imperfect is unlikely. The perfect of the first person singular occurs 63 times, but a search reveals only two instances where the Septuagint translated them eimi (Job 11:4 and Ex. 2:22) and one instance by ego eimi (Job 30:9). There are 18 instances that are assessed as having future meaning, 28 as having past meaning and 17 as having present meaning. Of the last mentioned 3 are viewed as imperfects of eimi and 1 as active or passive aorists of ginomai (to come into existence). Jesus could have used the Hebrew perfect, ani hayiti (or just hayiti) as one Hebrew New Testament (published by The Bible Society in Israel and translated by Norman Henry Snaith) translates John 8:58. But it is more likely that he used the words found in another Hebrew New Testament, namely, ani hu,(The New Testament in Hebrew and English published by The Society for Distributing the Holy Scriptures to the Jews, Edgware, Middlesex, England), or that he simply used the single pronoun ani.( which means “I” and hu means “he”. In Hebrew the pronoun hu could be used a copula (with the meaning is, or more rarely was or will be) in clauses without any verb. The pronoun hu as also used for emphasis (ani hu, “it is I’ or “I am the one”). In the Septuagint all 9 occurrences of ani hu are translated by ego eimi. However, in 160 other instances the words ego eimi in the Septuagint translate the lone Hebrew pronoun ani. There are two examples ehye rendered by ego eimi in the LXX (Ex 3:14 and Hosea 1:9) (continued) |