Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 4:26
I that speak unto thee am he. The Greek is the same two words as John 8:58.
John 4:26, in every translation this tool compares.
I am. On its own, in English, it sounds unfinished. Your ear wants a completion. That incompleteness is the whole point.
Because the he is not in the Greek. The words are ego eimi, and this is the first place in the Gospel where Jesus says them, to a Samaritan woman rather than to a crowd.
Every version supplies he or the one. None can print the bare phrase without it sounding broken.
ἐγώ εἰμι ego eimi
Ego eimi with no predicate. English requires a completion, so translators supply he. The same two words appear absolutely at John 8:58, 8:24, 8:28, 13:19 and 18:5-6, and at 18:6 the arresting party falls backward.
English cannot leave a sentence hanging on the verb to be. Something has to follow it, and whatever follows is supplied by the translator.
When a version prints italics or a footnote on a short word like he, the word is not in the original. Supplied words are marked in some Bibles and not in others.
I am he is the majority rendering; I am the one appears in some modern versions.
- Absolute I am at John 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5-6
- The reaction at John 18:6
- Septuagint Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah 43:10
