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NASB | Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "You shall say this to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" |
Bible Question:
Hi Tim You wrote: There isn't any doubt as to what Jesus was doing in this verse. He uses the exact phrase that Jehovah used of Himself in Ex. 3:14, as translated by the LXX. The LXX says in Ex 3:14: (transliterated) Kai apen ha theos prahs Monsan, legon, eigo emi ha On, (And spoke the God toward Moses, saying, I am the Being. Translation provided in the LXX: And God spoke to Moses, sayking, I am THE BEING. 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" . And further recommends an author of whom I make mention of by saying, “ I recommend Rolf Furuli's chapter concerning John 8:58 for a through explanation of this point.” ------------------------------------------------------ 'I am' in John's Gospel The Expository Times, 1996, page 302 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 egw eimi. [1] I wish briefly to draw attention to the normality of the Greek in all such passages, and the unlikelihood of the words egw 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 egw 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, egw 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): egw ouk eimi ek tou kosmou toutou. In 14:10 the verb is omitted, because it is understood from the rest of the sentence: egw en tw 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: egw en tw patri mou kai humeis en emoi kagw 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 egw humeis ou dunasthe elthein. (Continued) |
Bible Answer: Part 2 Although the natural English translations differ, there are two contexts of this kind in which Jesus uses the words egw 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 I'; and in 18:5, while 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 egw is the complement, the unexpressed subject being something equivalent to 'what you see', and in the latter egw is the subject, the unexpressed complement being 'Jesus of Nazareth'. In both these passages egw eimi is the natural Greek response [4] 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 egw eimi, [5] which would be most naturally translated 'I have been in existence since before Abraham was born', [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 are 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] (continued) Truthfinder |