In John 8:58 Jesus says, "before Abraham was, I Am[1]." Many people make the logical assumption that this is a reference to Exodus 3:14 where God reveals his name to be "I Am" (when he speaks it), or "You Are" (or Yahweh when his people say it). While there appears to be some basic similarity in meaning, the wording of the Greek underlying these verses looks quite different and so it seems unlikely that John intended for us to see a connection between these two verses.[2]
Was "I Am" a way of referring to God? We know that in Judaism in the time of Jesus the Jews had become very conscious of the sacredness of the Divine Name and were afraid to say it publically or even privately (Matt 7:6). For this reason it became common to say "Lord" instead. However, there were other methods used for referring to God besides this ("Power" Matt 26:64, "Heaven" is common in 2 Macc [3]).
Despite the failure of the connection between John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14, it can still be shown that God was known as the "I am" to the Jews, and that they sometimes used this as a way of referring to him. In fact, Psalm 90:2 is almost an exact parallel of John 8:58 - except that mountains are mentioned instead of Abraham, and the words used "You Are" are used instead of "I Am." (Note that only the Greek (LXX) version and not the Hebrew should be used for this comparison. The Hebrew says "You are God" not just "You Are.")
That Jesus' words were a forceful claim to Divinity is immediately apparent - the crowd attempts to stone him. This is something that they would not do if they merely thought he was crazy.
[1] The original Greek of the Bible, written in a language called "Koine," was written in unctuals. In other words, the words were written using only capitols with no spaces and no punctuation. Because of this, my capitalization merely reflects my understanding that "I Am" is a name.
[2] The Bible was translated into Greek in the third century BC by a group of 70 Hebrew scholars. For this reason it is called the LXX. It was the Greek equivalent of the modern King James in many respects, by this I mean it was the standard Greek Bible. In fact, it is the Bible that is quoted by New Testament writers when they quote the Bible.
[3] Even if you do not accept 2 Maccabees as Scripture, you must admit that it can provide evidence for the point I am making, that is that the "Heaven" was used as a synonym for God. This may be compared to our modern expression, "Heaven knows."
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