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 8:24, 28
If ye believe not that I am. Twice in five verses, with nothing after it.
John 8:24, in every translation this tool compares.
Unless you believe that I am. Your ear waits for the rest. There is no rest, and that is the construction.
Because these are the absolute sayings, not the predicate ones, and every English version has to supply a word that is not there in order to make a sentence.
Versions supply he, or the one I claim to be, or he is, usually without marking it.
ἐγώ εἰμι ego eimi
Ego eimi with no predicate at all, at verses 24 and 28, then again at 58. The Septuagint uses the same two words at Isaiah 43:10 for the divine self-declaration, which is the ground for reading these as more than a claim to identity.
English requires a completion after the verb to be. Any completion is supplied, and the supplied word is the interpretation.
When a modern version prints words in italics or adds a footnote reading literally I am, the words are an addition and the bare Greek is the thing to notice.
I am he is the majority rendering; the one I claim to be is the NIV's expansion.
- The absolute sayings at John 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5-6
- Septuagint Isaiah 43:10, hina pisteusete hoti ego eimi
- Exodus 3:14 in the Septuagint
