At John 8:56-58 it says, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”
On this expression a comment is made in the Abbé Drioux edition of the Holy Bible which translates John 8:58 as,
“Before Abraham was, I am, in fact God eternal, before Abraham was born.” In a footnote in his Bible translation Monsignor Ronald A. Knox says regarding the expression, "I AM" at John 8:58 he says, "here our Lord seems explicitly to claim a Divine title and then tells readers to compare Exodus 3:14.” and when you turn to Exodus 3:14 it reads, “God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you.” But the
King James Version reads this scripture this way: “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”
The expression “I AM” is there used as a title or a name, and in the Hebrew this expression is the one word, "Ehyéh (אהיה)." At Exodus 3:14 Jehovah God was there speaking to Moses and sending him to the children of Israel. Well, was Jesus claiming to be Jehovah God at John 8:58? Not according to many modern Bible translators, as the following quotations will prove:
Moffatt translation says at John 8:58, “I have existed before Abraham was born.”
Schonfield which is An
American Translation reads, “I existed before Abraham was born.”
Stage a German translation says, “Before Abraham came to be, I was.”
Pfaefflin
another German translation says, “Before there was an Abraham, I was already there!”
George M. Lamsa, translating from the Syriac Peshitta, says, “Before Abraham was born, I was.”
Dr. James Murdock, also translating from the Syriac
Peshitto Version, says, “Before Abraham existed, I was.”
The Brazilian
Sacred Bible published by the Catholic Bible Center of São Paulo says, “Before Abraham existed, I was existing.” None of these translations translates John 8:58 as if Jesus was saying he was the only True God here by saying he was the "I AM."
Also, when Jesus spoke to those Jews, he spoke to them in the Hebrew of his day, not in Greek. So how Jesus said, John 8:58 to the Jews is therefore presented to us in modern Hebrew translations, a couple of these modern translations by Hebrew scholars translated John 8:58 as follows:
Dr. Franz Delitzsch: “Before Abraham was, I have been.”
Isaac Salkinson and David Ginsburg says, “I have been when there had as yet been no Abraham.”
In both of these Hebrew translations the translators are using the expression “I have been” these two Hebrew words which are both a pronoun and a verb are, "aní
hayíthi;" they do not use the one Hebrew word, "Ehyéh
." So they do not make out that at John 8:58 Jesus was trying to imitate Jehovah God and give us the impression that he himself was Jehovah, the I AM.
Now we know that the Apostle John wrote his gospel in the Greek language, and here at John 8:58 the
Controversial expression is, "Egó
eimí."
Now this expression without any introductory material ahead of it, means, "I AM." Well here at John 8:58 is there introductory material ahead of the expression, "Egó eimí," yes, this also true at John 8:24,28 where the expression, "Egó eimí" is translated, "I am he" not as, "I AM." So why isn't John 8:58 translated as, "I am he" since John 8:58 has introductory material ahead of the expression, "Egó eimí" just as John 8:24, 28 does. I mean I would understand the expression, "Egó eimí" being translated, "I AM" if the expression, "Egó eimí" stood alone without any introductory material ahead of it, but that's not the case.
The context shows that Jesus was talking about the fact he was older than Abraham that he was in existence long before Abraham was born. That's all that Jesus was saying, Jesus wasn't saying he was God, so he wasn't trying to use the expression, "Egó eimí" to imitate what God had inspired to be written down at Exodus 3:14.
Trinitarians want to give us the idea that Jesus was not simply referring to his existence but also giving himself a title that belongs to Jehovah God, in imitation of Exodus 3:14.
As I said before when writing John 8:58 the apostle was not quoting from the Greek Septuagint Version, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures made by Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, Egypt, before the birth of Christ, and I said let anyone who reads Greek compare John 8:58 in Greek and Exodus 3:14 in the Greek
Septuagint, and he will find that the Septuagint reading of Exodus 3:14 does not use the expression, "Egó eimí" for God’s name, that doesn't mean that the words, Egó eimí are not there, I said that the expression Egó eimí wasn't used for God's name. When God says to Moses: “I AM hath sent me unto you.” The Greek Septuagint uses the expression ho Ōn, which means “The Being,” or, “The One who is.” This fact is clearly presented to us in Bagster’s translation of the Greek Septuagint, at Exodus 3:14 which reads: “And God spoke to Moses, saying, I am THE BEING [ho Ōn]; and he said, Thus shall ye say to the children of Israel, THE BEING [ho Ōn] has sent me to you.” Thus this comparison of the two Greek texts, that of the Septuagint and that of John 8:58, removes all basis for trinitarians to argue that Jesus, in John 8:58, was trying to fit Exodus 3:14 to himself, as if he was Jehovah God.
The expression, "Egó eimí ho Ōn" isn't what's used at John 8:58 only the expression, "Egó eimí" is, so if Jesus was telling us that he was the True God who spoke to Moses at Exodus 3:14 which uses the expression, "Egó eimí
hoŌn," not, "Egó eimí" by itself, why didn't Jesus use the whole expression?
