G1473

• {"n":"John 8:58","s":"Before Abraham was, I am. The verb is wrong on purpose.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=john-8-58","r":"John 8:58","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Nearly every version reads I am. A handful render I have been, which repairs the grammar and removes the reason anyone reached for a stone."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**Before the war started, I am here.** Your ear rejects that, and rightly. A speaker who says it in front of you is not making a grammar mistake. They are doing something with the mistake."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Ego eimi is present tense against a past clause, which is ungrammatical in Greek as it is in English. The same two words render the divine name in the Septuagint at Exodus 3:14, and they run through this Gospel as a formula. The crowd's reaction in verse 59 is the commentary."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English can print the clash, but English readers absorb it as odd phrasing rather than as a claim, because English has no formula attached to those two words."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a sentence is grammatically broken in the original and the crowd reacts violently, the breakage is the message. Translations that repair the grammar delete the evidence."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"I have been is smoother and loses the formula. I am is rough and keeps it. The stones in verse 59 are the argument for keeping it."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u1f10\u03b3\u03ce \u03b5\u1f30\u03bc\u03b9 ego eimi \u00b7 G1473 + G1510"}],"src":["Septuagint Exodus 3:14, ego eimi ho on","The absolute I am sayings at John 8:24, 8:28, 13:19, 18:5-6","The reaction in John 8:59 is the internal evidence that something was heard"]}