Ehhhh come on, what are You talking about men !!! This is an old story. No one is beliveing now in that old story ("I AM")
Just read Rolf Furuli (THE ROLE OF THEOLOGY AND BIAS IN BIBLE TRANSLATION) who now is lecturer in Semitic languages at the University of Oslo ( studied Accadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Greek, Latin, Middle Egyptian, Syriac and Ugaritic):
IS EXODUS 3:14 PARALLEL TO JOHN 8:58?
In discussing Exodus 3:14, we may also learn an important lesson from Psalm 90:2, something which evidently has not occurred to Bowman. There are two words in the Hebrew text of the Psalm and two in the Greek. However, the two Greek words are not a translation of the two Hebrew words, but of one of the Hebrew words and of another which is implied. The Hebrew word which is not translated by the Septuagint is the predicative nominative God. The Hebrew text literally says You (are) God while the Septuagint has the rendering You are. Bowman is aware of this, but there is another important point which he does not stress.
One of the premises on which he builds when he parallels Exodus 3:14 and John 8:58 is that hayā (to be/exist)in Hebrew is equivalent to eimi (to be) in Greek, and herein lies a problem, for this is not necessarily true. The linking verb (copula) to be is usually implied in Hebrew, not written. Therefore, the Greek eimi does not have a written equivalent in Hebrew, and it does not correspond to hayā.
A few statistics might help illustrate this point. Apart from consecutive perfect and imperfect. The meaning of which may be open for discussion, there are a total of 493 occurrences of hayā in the Hebrew OT, compared with 6469 occurrences of eimi in the Septuagint and 2462 occurrences of eimi in the NT. The reason why eimi is used 13 times more frequently than hayā is because eimi serves as copula while hayā does not. Therefore, when hayā is used there is often a stress on existence, which in normally lacking in the Greek eimi. Bowman has not considered this, but it has a bearing on his attempt to parallel John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14.
The crucial words of Exodus 3:14 are ehyē ashēr ehyē (I will be what I will be), or, as NWT reads, I shall prove to be what I shall prove to be. In the following verse the personal name of God is expressed by the four consonants YHWH, and Cowman, Countess and others claim that Jesus applied this name to himself.
There is a similarity between ehyē and YHWH in that two of the consonants (H and H) are identical, and the third (W) is probably identical [The verb hayā has yod as the second consonant, while YHWH has a waw in the second position. In Aramaic a waw is used in the equivalent verb, and such a verb with waw also occurs five times in the Hebrew text (Gen 27:29; Is 16:4; Eccl 2:22; 11:3 and Neh 6:6). The wife of Adam, in Genesis 3:20, is called hawā (the living one, with het, not he, as the first consonant) though we might have expected hayā. The names in Genesis 5 and 10 reveal that the Hebrew behind them was slightly different from the Hebrew of the Masoretic text)]. So, what is the meaning of YHWH? It is near impossible to determine with certainty the etymology of such an ancient word; we simply do not know! One suggestion is that the name represents the causative form of hayā, meaning, he causes to be. This may very well be the case. Against this, however, it may be argued that a causative form (hiphil) of hayā is unprecedented, and that a third person singular is strange indeed for the personal name of God. We would have expected / cause to be rather than he causes to be, just as we see in the ehyē (I will be) of the following verse. Because the ehyē clause describes God and YHWH names God, it is not unreasonable to think that there is some connection between them, but what that connection is may be difficult to determine, with certainty.
The Septuagint translation of ehyē ashēr ehyē is egō eimiho ōn. The words ho ōn are the present participle of eimi together with the article, so the clause may be translated, as Brenton does, I am The Being. It is important to note that the second occurrence of ehyē is translated by ho ōn, which is the predicate nominative of the clause. When the Septuagint in the next verse refers to the person of the previous verse, it uses the predicate nominative ho ōn, which now serves as the subject, The Being [ho ōn] has sent me.
If Jesus, by help of the Septuagint translation, had claimed identity with YHWH, he could either have said, I am YHWH or I am God (as shown in Chapter 5, the Septuagint contained Gods name in Jesus day), or he could have said I am The Being [ho ōn]. The word eimi in Exodus 3:14 is merely a linking verb, and cannot be claimed to represent a point of reference, even an important one. So here there is no link to John 8:58.
Scholars in the field of translating literature know that because languages are different there are times when certain nuance found in one word in the source language cannot be reproduced in the equivalent word in the receptor language. If this is the case, a careful translator of an idiomatic translation should try to create the same effect somewhere else in the clause, or even in the next clause. This is probably what the Septuagint translator tried to do in Exodus 3:14. As already noted, hayā is not a linking verb, even though it, in a few instances, is used like one, but it indicates existence or emphasis. There is no equivalent verb in Greek, so the translator lets all the emphasis materialize in the expression ho ōn; in a way this expression accounts for both occurrences of ehyē in the Hebrew text, while eimi in the same clause is just a linking verb (copula). The eimi of John 8:58, on the other hand, is probably a translation of a nominal clause with an implied copula (the lone an) or a nominal clause with an expressed copula (anh, I am). In either a nominal clause a predicate nominative is lacking (though one could be implied from the context), and therefore existence on the part of the subject is expressed. But this existence is expressed syntactically while the existence signaled by hayā is expressed lexically. If this reasoning is correct, the difference between egō eimi used in John 8:58 and in Exodus 3:14 becomes even more profound.
For all about the John 5:85 just jump to:
http://users.eggconnect.net/noddy3/john8.htm
Ok i got it - this is better - You should know this. Proffesor Grard Gertoux (Professor of National Education in France, President of the Association Biblique de Recherche d'Anciens Manuscrits , Hebrew scholar, specialist of the Tetragram):
(from http://www.divinename.net/)
Does the meaning "He is" of the Tetragram help us to know its pronunciation ?
First, if God says in Exodus 3:14 "I am who I am" that involves one speaking of God would say "He is who He is", but most of the Hebrew scholars agree, at the present time, that God said "I shall be" and therefore one would rather say speaking of God "He will be who He will be". However the meaning "He will be" (or "He will prove to be") not allow finding a vocalization because this meaning is above all a religious explanation without scientific purpose (grammatical).
Very early etymology intervened, not to vocalize the divine name again (which was usefulness) but to explain the real sense of this name. Indeed, the Hebraic Bible gives an etymological definition of this name in Exodus 3:14 which is I shall be which (who) I shall be. Generally the Talmud and Targums commented on this sentence by clarifying that God strengthened his servants by saying to them I shall be [with you]. One finds this same notion in the Christian Greek Scriptures If God is for us, who will be against us (Rm 8:31). However, the translators of the Septuagint (towards 280 BCE ) , under the influence of Greek philosoph y, modified this etymology by translating this sentence into I am the being that is I am He who is, God becoming the one who is. Then at the beginning of the third century there was a slight development of this definition. In the Christian environment, Clement of Alexandria explained that God's name Iaoue means the one who is and who will be. In the Jewish environment the Targum of Jonathan explained that in, Deuteronomy 32:29, that God's name means I am the one who is and who was and I am the one who has to be. At the end of the twelfth century Maimonides explained the name as meaning: The necessary being. But in no way did these etymologies serve to find the original vocalization of the Tetragram.
When the understanding of the Hebraic language rose again in Europe during the thirteenth century, some scholars tried to vocalize this name YHWH from an existing verbal form. The choice was only between two possibilities: YeHaWH (piel form 3 rd person of masculine singular), which means He will make to be or He will constitute a Hebraic reconstituted form and YiHWH a West Aramaic form (peal imperfect, 3 rd person of masculine singular) which means, He will be. The vocalization yehaweh had the favor of a few cabalists (see the Academy of Jerusalem) and the vocalization yihweh had the favor of some Hebrew Christian scholars. The vocalization YiHWH rather than YHWH (B. Davidson - The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon) derives from the word YeHUa (Qo 11:3) meaning He will be.
3-rd person
Hebrew | Meaning | 1st person
Hebrew | Meaning |
| YeHaYH ? | He will constitute | ahayh ? | I shall constitute |
| YiHYH | He will come to be | hyh | I shall come to be |
| YaHaYH ?? | He will cause to be | ahayh ?? | I shall cause to be |
| Hے | He [is] | an | I [am] |
| Y | He exists | - | |
| HoWaH | Coming to be | - | |
| HaYaH | He came to be | hayt | I came to be |
|
3-rd person
Aramaic | Meaning | 1st person
Aramaic | Meaning |
| YeHaWH | He will constitute | ahawh | I shall constitute |
| YiHWH | He will come to be | hwh | I shall come to be |
| YaHaWH ?? | He will cause to be | ahawh ?? | I shall cause to be |
However, no verbal form (3-rd person) corresponded exactly to the biblical definition hyh (1-st person). Additionally, the form yehaweh would come from an Aramaic root HWH (see the piel form YeHaWH of the verb HWH in Psalm 19:3), not from a Hebrew root HYH (see the piel form YeHaYH of the verb HYH in Job 36:6). The normal piel form of the verb HYH would be, according to Hebrew, the form yehayeh, not yehaweh. Even the modern hypothetical form I shall cause to becomeor I shall cause to be Yahayh (hypothetical hiphil form 3-rd person of masculine singular)does not agree with the biblical form I shall [prove to] be that is: hyh in Hebrew. Two explanations have been put forward to try to resolve the differences between the biblical sense and the grammatical meaning. These were to supposethat either the Masoretes had incorrectly vocalized the form I shall be or that the theophoric names which all begin by Yeho- have lost their link with the Tetragram. For example, Johannes Wessel Gansfort who proposed Iohauah for the name of the Father in his comment on the prayer called Our Father (around 1480), supposed that the sentence I shall be who I shall be eheieh azer eheieh in his Latin manuscript could be vocalized aheieh azer aheieh. The Masoretic vocalization had shown itself to be very reliable; some scholars preferred to reconstruct an archaic vocalization of the Tetragram based on its etymology He will be or He is. The first to start this process was probably Gilbert Genebrard in 1568, who proposed the verbal form Iehue or Iihue for the divine name corresponding to the Aramaic yihweh, rather than Iehoua, the usual Hebrew name. At the present time, the Karaites propose the same choice, see this link.
It`s not the problem about Ego Eimi, but about the situation in John 18:6 - when all men fell on the ground...
Edited by - yogi on 10 January 2003 17:32:25
