Jesus claimed to be THE I AM (The Eternal God) but the Watchtower said He claimed to be the I have been.
John 8:58: KJV: Jesus said unto them, ?Verily,verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.?
John 8:58: NWT: Jesus said to them: ?Most truly I say to you, Before Abraham came into existence I have been.?
Below is a comment from AlanF on a thread I started long ago on this very subject.
This is an ancient and very common claim, but it is easy to see
why it is completely nonsensical. First note the exchange between Jesus and
the Jews. He implied that he saw Abraham, which would make him older than
Abraham. John 8:57 has the Jews exclaiming, "You are not yet fifty years old,
and you have seen Abraham!" In effect they said, "You can't possibly be that old!"
Jesus answered by telling them that he was indeed that old:
From the New Living Translation:
"Jesus answered, `The truth is, I existed before Abraham was even born!' "
From the Worldwide English New Testament:
"Jesus answered, `I tell you the truth. I already was before Abraham was born.' "
There are a number of other decent Bible translations that render the passage
similarly. Why do they render it this way, and not as the NIV, KJV and many
others do? First note that the latter have adopted the spurious ancient claim
that the simple statement "I am" refers back to an ancient formula given in
Exodus 3:14. This claim is merely an assumption and cannot be proved; indeed,
there is good evidence that there is no connection.
First, Exodus 3:14 can be translated in ways other than "I am", and plenty of
good translations do so. I don't have online access to enough translations to
show this, so you can look them up for yourself. The general idea is that
"I will be what I will be" is a perfectly reasonable rendering.
Second, the Jews in essence asked Jesus how old he was, and he answered
in kind: "I'm really, really old." Why would he answer such a question with
a recitation of an ancient formula? Look at the following sequence and tell
me which makes more sense:
Jews: How old are you?
Jesus: Before Abraham was born I am.
OR:
Jews: How old are you?
Jesus: Before Abraham was born I was.
OR:
Jews: How old are you?
Jesus: Before Abraham was born I existed.
It is obvious which of these is nonsensical, when context is taken
into account.
The Greek phrase for "I am" is ego eimi. Here eimi is in the
present tense. However, in Greek, as in many languages such as French, a
present tense is often used as a past tense. For example, a French speaker
might want to say:
"I went there ten years ago."
He would say:
"Je suis alle la il y a dix ans."
Literally:
"I am gone there it there has ten years."
The word for "am" is "suis" and is in the present tense. But by standard
usage, the past tense is almost always rendered by two constructions that
are something like "I am gone" or "I have gone" in English.
Because the Greek word for "to be" and "to exist" is eimi, and the
past tense is sometimes rendered by a present tense, the phrase ego eimi
can properly be rendered as "I am" or "I was" or "I exist" or "I existed".
Context tells the reader which is meant.
In the NT there are many examples where an apparently present tense really is
the past tense by this usage, including phrases like "ego eimi", if I remember
right. So claims that the present tense is required for ego eimi
in John 8:58 are spurious. At best the argument remains unresolved.
All of the passages you cite have been disputed by scholars. They remain
ambiguous and what appears in a given translation is the opinion of
the translators.
Gumby
