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NASB | John 8:58 Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am." |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 8:58 Jesus replied, "I assure you and most solemnly say to you, before Abraham was born, I Am." [Ex 3:14] |
Subject: Is BeDuhn correct on John 8:58? |
Bible Note: Your quote is correct. He also states: "I am not claiming that Jesus' remark in John 8:58 is without theological significance, nor that it has nothing to do with to OT background." There is something here for a prideful Jew to kill Jesus over - he is claiming to have been alive before Abraham! BeDuhn does not see the NW as the best translation of the verse, but the LB: "I was in existence before Abraham was ever born!" He concludes: "The average Bible reader might never guess that there was something wrong with the other translations, and might even assume that the error was to be found in the LB and NW. When all you can do is compare the English translations, and count them up like votes, the LB and NW stick out as different in John 8:58. It is natural to assume that the majority are correct and the odd ones at fault. It is only when translations are checked against the original Greek, as they should be, that a fair assessment can be made, and the initial assumption can be seen to be wrong." Tim, you say that Jesus is not addressing the question of identity. Exactly. It’s about how long he’s existed. So you agree this verse has been abused as a trinity proof. Since I know no one will actually read this book, at least not with an open mind, I’ll spoil the ending. How does one explain how Jehovah’s Witnesses could have published the most accurate and least biased of the modern translations compared? “The Jehovah’s Witness movement was and is a more radical break with the dominant Christian tradition of the previous millennium than most kinds of Protestantism. This movement has, unlike the Protestant Reformation, really sought to re-invent Christianity from scratch. Whether you regard that as a good or a bad thing, you can probably understand that it resulted in the Jehovah’s Witnesses approaching the Bible with a kind of innocence, and building their system of belief and practice from the raw material of the Bible without predetermining what was to be found there.” On the other hand, he boldly declares that “when the Protestant Reformation occurred just five hundred years ago, it did not re-invent Christianity from scratch, but carried over many of the doctrines that had developed within Catholicism over the course of the previous thousand years and more. In this sense, one might argue that the Protestant Reformation is incomplete, that it did not fully realize the high ideals that were set for it.” Amen to that. |