KingdomRose
New member
I was asked to respond to Graphics claiming to show that Jesus is Jehovah, by Musterion. I will answer those claims, one by one, and will try to answer before my post is deleted, as happened yesterday. I'll have to break up my answer into several posts so that I won't get kicked off the forum because of overstaying my time on a post (?).
The first specific topic is: I AM
The King James Version and many other versions render Jesus' statement at John 8:58 as "before Abraham was, I am." This actually flies in the face of the rules for translating Greek into good English, as Bratcher (who translated the Good News Bible[TEV]) would have to agree, as he set forth three necessary rules in a statement of his own:
"At least it can be agreed that any translation, in order to be considered good, should satisfy 3 requirements:
1) It should handle textual matters in an informed and responsible way.
2) Its exegesis of the original texts should be theologically unbiased.
3) Its language should be contemporary, and it should conform to normal English usage." (1978, pp.115-116)
With these things in mind, we can look at John 8:58. We can see right off that the way it is translated in the KJV and other versions, "normal English usage" has not been honored. The way that Biblical texts are usually translated has not been carried through on this verse.
The Greek reads: prin Abraam genesthai ego eimi.
It is fine idiomatic Greek. It can be rendered straightforwardly into English by doing what translators always do with Greek, namely, rearrange the word order into normal English order and adjust things like verbal tense complementarity into proper English expression. (See BeDuhn, Truth in Translation, p.104.) Note: These steps of translation are necessary because Greek and English are not the same language and do not obey the same rules of grammar. Greek has more flexibility with word order than English does, and it can mix verbal tenses in a way that English can't. Yet the rules of translation are ignored by many versions when they translate John 8:58. They present a verse with mangled word order; utterly ungrammatical and syntactically strained!
As one scholar brought out: Because Greek idioms are different from English idioms, translators do not translate these expressions word-for-word, but rather convey the meaning of the Greek idiom in proper, comprehensible English. At least that is what they are supposed to do. (BeDuhn, p. 105)
It is ungrammatical English for something referred to with a present "am" to occur earlier in time than something described with a past "came to be." Normally, if we want to refer to an event before one already in the past, we would use a perfect tense: "He had put on his boots before he went out into the snow." In John 8:58, since Jesus' existence is not completed past action, but ongoing, we must use some sort of imperfect verbal form to convey that. Therefore the correct rendering of John 8:58 is: "I have been since before Abraham came to be."
The first specific topic is: I AM
The King James Version and many other versions render Jesus' statement at John 8:58 as "before Abraham was, I am." This actually flies in the face of the rules for translating Greek into good English, as Bratcher (who translated the Good News Bible[TEV]) would have to agree, as he set forth three necessary rules in a statement of his own:
"At least it can be agreed that any translation, in order to be considered good, should satisfy 3 requirements:
1) It should handle textual matters in an informed and responsible way.
2) Its exegesis of the original texts should be theologically unbiased.
3) Its language should be contemporary, and it should conform to normal English usage." (1978, pp.115-116)
With these things in mind, we can look at John 8:58. We can see right off that the way it is translated in the KJV and other versions, "normal English usage" has not been honored. The way that Biblical texts are usually translated has not been carried through on this verse.
The Greek reads: prin Abraam genesthai ego eimi.
It is fine idiomatic Greek. It can be rendered straightforwardly into English by doing what translators always do with Greek, namely, rearrange the word order into normal English order and adjust things like verbal tense complementarity into proper English expression. (See BeDuhn, Truth in Translation, p.104.) Note: These steps of translation are necessary because Greek and English are not the same language and do not obey the same rules of grammar. Greek has more flexibility with word order than English does, and it can mix verbal tenses in a way that English can't. Yet the rules of translation are ignored by many versions when they translate John 8:58. They present a verse with mangled word order; utterly ungrammatical and syntactically strained!
As one scholar brought out: Because Greek idioms are different from English idioms, translators do not translate these expressions word-for-word, but rather convey the meaning of the Greek idiom in proper, comprehensible English. At least that is what they are supposed to do. (BeDuhn, p. 105)
It is ungrammatical English for something referred to with a present "am" to occur earlier in time than something described with a past "came to be." Normally, if we want to refer to an event before one already in the past, we would use a perfect tense: "He had put on his boots before he went out into the snow." In John 8:58, since Jesus' existence is not completed past action, but ongoing, we must use some sort of imperfect verbal form to convey that. Therefore the correct rendering of John 8:58 is: "I have been since before Abraham came to be."
