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 6:35
I am the bread of life. The first of the predicate I am sayings.
John 6:35, in every translation this tool compares.
I am the teacher. I am. The first completes itself. The second does not, and that is a different kind of sentence.
Because the same two words that stand alone at 8:58 here take a predicate, and knowing the difference between the two constructions is what keeps the absolute ones from being flattened.
Every version reads I am the bread of life.
ἐγώ εἰμι ego eimi
Ego eimi followed by a predicate: bread, light, door, shepherd, resurrection, way, vine. Seven of them in this Gospel. The absolute form with no predicate, as at 8:58, is a separate construction and the reaction to it is different.
English carries both fine. What English cannot do is signal that the two constructions are the same two words doing different jobs.
Count both sets. The predicate sayings and the absolute sayings are a deliberate pair and only one of them gets people reaching for stones.
I am the bread of life is universal.
- The seven predicate sayings: John 6:35; 8:12; 10:7; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1
- The absolute sayings: John 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5-6
- Exodus 3:14 in the Septuagint
