John 8:58 & scholarly sources

From: Alan Repurk (lars@repurk.mw.com)
Date: Wed Aug 21 1996 - 20:02:26 EDT


Ron Henzel wrote:
 
> Several years ago, Dr. Gleason Archer and others did a magnificent
> piece of work by laying side-by-side every single Hebrew text that is
> quoted in the New Testament with its LXX and NT counterparts. When
> you see the Hebrew and LXX of Exodus 3:14 next to the Koine of John
> 8:58, all these arguments about the "perfective present" and the
> predicate clause in the LXX rendering simply pale in comparison to
> the striking resemblances between all versions!
>
> -- Ron Henzel
> Ronald.M.Henzel@wheaton.edu

Kenneth L. McKay, who graduated with honors in Classics from the
Universities of Sydney and Cambridge, taught Greek in universities
and theological colleges in Nigeria, New Zealand, and England, who
taught at the Australian National University for 26 years, has written
numerous articles on ancient Greek syntax, as well as authored a
book on Classical Attic, Greek Grammar for Students, and A New
Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: an aspectual approach,
provides the following in relation to the alleged "true parallel
between Exodus 3:14 (LXX) and John 8:58":
 
======================================================================

'I am' in John's Gospel

BY K. L. MCKAY, MA,
FORMERLY OF THE AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY

It has become fashionable among some preachers and writers to
relate Jesus's use of the words 'I am' in the Gospel according to John,
in all, or most, of their contexts, to God's declaration to MOSES in
Exodus 3:14, and to expound the passages concerned as if the words themselves
have some kind of magic in them. Some who have no more than a smattering of
Greek attribute the 'magic' to the Greek words ego eimi. (1) I wish briefly
to draw attention to the normality of the Greek in all such passages, and the
unlikelihood of the words ego eimi being intended to suggest any special
significance of this kind.

 <...>

          The verb `to be' is used differently, in what is presumably
          its basic meaning of `be in existence,' in John 8:58: _prin
          Abraam genesthai ego eimi, which would be most naturally
          translated `I have been in existence since before Abraham
          was born,' IF IT WERE NOT FOR THE *OBSESSION* WITH THE
          SIMPLE WORDS `I AM.' If we take the Greek words in their
          natural meaning, as we surely should, the claim to have been
          in existence for so long is in itself a staggering one,
          quite enough to provoke the crowd's violent reaction
          . . . So the emphatic words used by Jesus in the passages
          referred to above [one of which is John 8:58] are perfectly
          natural in their contexts, AND THEY DO NOT ECHO THE WORDS OF
          EXODUS 3:14 IN THE NORMALLY QUOTED GREEK VERSION. Thus they
          are quite UNLIKELY to have been used in the New Testament to
          convey that significance, however much the modern English
          versions of the relevant passages, following the form of the
          Hebrew words, may suggest it. (K. L. McKay, "`I am' in
          John's Gospel," Expository Times (1996): 302-303)

(1) I have seen one such speaker try to impress his audience by writing the
words on a blackboard, only to demonstrate that he was ignorant of even the
simplest details of Greek.

-lars



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