Hi Vicky, Sorry for the poke at the brown book/bottle :D
book = reasoning bottle = booze color = WT GB body eye color
Let me point out this " These guys aren't just a gang of thugs " They are Religious fanatics who love the rule book and in the rule book you stone for blasphemy. Claiming to be before abraham ( He could have been claiming to be an Angel that's not Blasphemy )
Lev 24:16 is what they are after him for.
When he blasphemes the name of the LORD, he shall be put to death. Claiming to be the "I AM" now that's worth stoning for.
I'm no Geek :D expert but here are a few thoughts on 8:58 from those who are.
Greek scholar of the late nineteenth century was
B. F.
Westcott, the co-editor of the first truly modern critical edition of the
Greek New Testament. In his book _The Gospel according to St. John_
(Eerdmans, reprint of 1881 ed.), regarding "I am," he comments:
"
The phrase marks a timeless existence. In this connexion 'I was' would have expressed simple priority.
Thus
there is in the phrase the contrast between
the created and the uncreated, the temporal and the eternal" (140).
William Milligan and William F. Moulton,
two of the leading Greek scholars at the end of the nineteenth century.
Moulton translated Winer's Grammar into English, was the youngest
member of the translation committee for the English Revised Version, and co-produced a New Testament concordance.
In their _Commentary on the Gospel
of St. John_ (T & T Clark, 1898), they state:
"In the clearest possible manner Jesus declares, not only His existence before Abraham,
but also
the essential distinction between His being and
that of any man. Man is born, man passes through successive periods of time:
of Himself, in regard alike to past,
present, and future, Jesus says 'I am'"(111).
In order to establish the case that Jesus was claiming to be Yahweh, we must see in what matter does Jesus use the phrase.
Does he use it to imply timeless existence and sovereignty? Or did he use it to simply identify himself as the person whom others were seeking much like the blind man of John 9:9 did when asked if he were the one healed by Jesus?
Fortunately,
we don't have to look far to find the answer to our question since the answer is there in John 8:58.
Jesus' usage of the phrase is to contrast Abraham's beginning with his lack of beginning. In others, Jesus was unlike Abraham since the latter was brought into existence whereas
Christ always was. This is brought out more clearly in
the Greek verbs John uses to contrast Abraham's origins with the timeless existence of Christ, namely
genesthai and eimi:
"...
the aorist genesthai 'came into being,'
used of Abraham,
is contrasted with the present eimi, which can express duration up to the present, 'I have been <and still am>' as well as the simple present, 'I am.'
Jesus claims that his mode of existence transcends time, like God's, and his I am is understood by the Jews as a claim to equality with God..." (J.N. Sanders & B.A. Mastin as cited by Robert M. Bowman Jr., Jehovah's Witnesses Jesus Christ &The Gospel of John [Baker Book House; Grand Rapids, MI, 1995], pp. 111-112 )
"He (Jesus) chose the term that would most strongly contrast the created origin in time of Abraham with his own timeless eternality, the present tense verb eimi... Thus, had
Jesus wished to say what JWs understand him to have said- that
he merely existed for a long time before Abraham-
he could have said so by saying,
'Before Abraham came into existence, I was,' using the imperfect tense emen instead of the present tense eimi. (This point was made by Chrysostom and Augustine, and reaffirmed by such Reformers as Calvin, and is also a standard observation found in most exegetical commentaries on John and never, to this author's knowledge, disputed in such works.) Such a statement would have left open the question of whether or not Jesus had always existed, or whether (like the angels) he had existed from the earliest days of the universe's history. Or,
had he wished to make it clear that (as JWs believe) he had himself come into
existence some time prior to Abraham,
he could have said so by stating, 'Before Abraham came into existence, I came into existence" (by using the first person aorist egenomen instead of eimi),
or perhaps more simply,
'I came into existence before Abraham.' Having said neither of these things, but rather, having chosen terms which went beyond these formulations to draw a contrast between the created and the uncreated,
Jesus' words must be interpreted as a claim to eternality." (Ibid., pp. 115-116 )
"What is it about this contrast between genesthai and eimi that has led to such a solid consensus throughout the centuries among biblical scholars that the words contrast created origin with uncreated eternal existence? By itself, of course, the word eimi does not connote eternal preexistence. However, placed alongside genesthai and referring to a time anterior to that indicated by genesthai, the word eimi (or its related forms), because it denotes simple existence and is a durative form of the verb to be, stands in sharp contrast to the aorist genesthai which speaks of 'coming into being.'
It is this sharp contrast between being and becoming which makes it clear that in a text like John 8:58 eimi connotes eternality, not merely temporal priority." (Ibid., p. 114)
"If all Jesus wanted to say was that He existed before Abraham, all He had to do was to use the imperfect tense 'I was.' But
this would not have caused a riot and an assassination attempt. It is His use of the present tense and the way He said it that made them riot." (Robert Morey, Trinity, p. 364)
Interestingly,
we find the same form of verbs used in the Greek Septuagint version of Psalm 90:2 where
Yahweh's timeless existence is contrasted with the creation of the mountains:
"Before (pro) the mountains were brought into existence (genethenai)... from age to age, you are (su ei).
Note the similarity in wording to John 8:58. Both use synonymous Greek terms to contrast the creation of one with the timeless existence of the other. Rob Bowman notes:
"The word pro, like prin, means 'before,' and some manuscripts of the Septuagint actually have prin instead of pro. The verb introduced by these prepositions in both cases is ginomai: in Psalm 90:2 genethenai is the aorist passive infinitive of ginomai, while in John 8:58 genesthai is the aorist active infinitive. The use of the active voice instead of the passive voice, of course, does not affect the parallel between the two texts in terms of the created-eternal contrast. These aorist infinitive phrases are then set in contrast to a present indicative main clause in each case: in Psalm 90:2 LXX it is su ei, while in John 8:58 it is ego eimi. These two clauses are identical in terms and meaning except for the fact that the former is second person while the latter is first person; and again, this difference does not affect the parallel in question.
"Thus the tense mood forms are identical, the syntactical relations between the two verbs in each passage are identical, and the verbs themselves used in each passage are identical. In other words, it is as if John (quoting Jesus' words in Greek) had taken the relevant words from Psalm 90:2 LXX, perhaps substituted prin for pro, replaced 'the mountains' with 'Abraham' and changed su ei from second person to first person and genethenai from passive to active. One could hardly ask for a more exact parallel, unless the passage itself were actually quoted. Since the parallel in question is fundamentally one of tense (since the issue is the significance in relation to time of the present tense of eimi in John 8:58), and since none of the differences between the two texts affect that parallel, it would be safe to conclude that eimi has the same force in John 8:58 that ei has in Psalm 90:2 LXX.
In Psalm 90:2, the Septuagint rendering su ei is clearly intended to assert the eternal preexistence of Yahweh in contrast to the created origin of the mountains... To be consistent... John 8:58 just as clearly affirms the eternality of Jesus." (Ibid., pp. 117-118 bold emphasis ours)
Other scholars who agree include the following:
"... The vast majority of translators see, as do many commentators, that there is a clear differentiation being made here between the derivative existence of Abraham and the eternal existence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many scholars rightly point out the same contrasting of verbs as seen in the prologue of John as well as the same kind of differentiation found in the Septuagint Greek rendering of Psalm 90:2." (White, Forgotten Trinity, p. 97 bold emphasis ours)
"...
The tense of the verb eimi is not in question. It is the present indicative tense
. A.T. Robertson comments:
I am (ego eimi). Undoubtedly here Jesus claims eternal existence with the absolute phrase used of God.
The contrast between genesthai (entrance into existence of Abraham) and eimi (timeless being) is complete. See the same contrast between en in 1:1 and egeneto in 1:14.
See the contrast also in Ps. 90:2 between God (ei, art) and the mountains (genethenai). See the same use eimi in John 6:20; 9:9; 8:24, 28; 18:6." (Robert Morey, Trinity, p. 364)
Finally, Bowman includes the following scholars in support of the connection between Ps. 90:2 and Jn. 8:58:
"Once again, it must be understood that the position taken here is not original.
A multitude of scholars have recognized the parallel between Psalm 90:2 LXX and John 8:58 and noted its significance as confirming that Jesus' words connote eternality. Among these should be mentioned Barnes, Barrett, Brown, Bultmann, Godet, Hengstenberg, Hoskyns, Lindars, Milligan and Moulton, Plummer, Robertson, Schnackenburg, and Winer. Not one biblical scholar has ever disputed the parallel or denied that it confirmed the traditional interpretation. Unless some important considerations have been overlooked, this exegetical conclusion would seem to be as well established as any could be." (Bowman, Jehovah's Witnesses &Jesus, pp.118-119)
These preceding factors clearly affirm that Jesus' I AM statement in John 8:58 served to both affirm his timeless existence and identify him with Yahweh, especially in light of the similarities to Psalm 90:2.
Agree to disagree I'll poke fun at you and you poke fun at me:D:D:D