"Before Abraham was, I am."

[Elijah John]

From the Gospel of John:

"Before Abraham was, I am".

For debate:

Was that an important claim?

How important was it?

If it was an important claim, why didn't Matthew, Mark or Luke record it?

[Elijah John]

Elijah John wrote:

The Gospel of John presents us with a theologically interpreted Jesus. The Evangelist John even goes so far as to put words on Jesus lips.

Can you explain what you mean by a "theologically interpreted Jesus"? What words do you believe John put on Jesus's lips? And what evidence can you provide to back up these statements?

Literary evidence.

First, the Synoptics are full of parables from Jesus. John? Not many, if any.

The Synoptics have Jesus speaking using relatively brief maxims and axioms, mostly focused on the Father, the Kingdom of God, and not on himself.

In the GoJ, Jesus speaks in long, rambling discourses, often about himself. "Grasping" for glory of the Father. Those discourses, as well as the bold claims, are laden with theological tinged statements. Either made by Jesus, or put on the lips of Jesus by his "biorgrapher" John.

So which is the voice of the real Jesus? People don't usually speak sylistically in dramatically different ways.

The Synoptic evangelists seem to be in agreement on how Jesus spoke. The multiple attestation of Matthew, Mark and Luke present a Jesus who speaks with one style, whereas the outlier John, presents Jesus speaking in a completely different manner.

If the Synoptics better represent the voice of the real Jesus, seems John added things which Jesus didn't actually say.

If John, that makes three Gospel writers innacurate in conveying the real voice of Jesus.

To reiterate, if Jesus actually said things like "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me". and "Before Abraham was, I AM". Why didn't the other writers consider such statements important enough to record? They are pretty bold claims, don't you think? Too bold to have been missed. These bold claims are theological encapsulations.

Was only John paying attention, and the others delinquent in their mission to represent Jesus to their respective audiences?

[tigger2]

[Replying to post 22 by kayky]

Kayky wrote: "Before Abraham. The phrase I Am is also important. When Moses asks for God's name at the burning bush, God replies, 'I Am.' God is being itself."

This particular trinity 'proof' is also one of the worst. Taking ego eimi (most often translated into English as 'I am') at John 8:58 and comparing it to Exodus 3:14 ehyeh asher ehyeh ('I will be what I will be') is not convincing.

Ehyeh is properly translated as 'I will be' everywhere else in the writings of Moses in Hebrew. (In the ancient Greek OT Septuagint Exodus 3:14 uses ho on ('the being' or 'the existing one') not ego eimi.

The deliberate mistranslation of ehyeh by trinitarian translators at Exodus 3:14 only is clearly because of John 8:58 and their desire to provide trinity (binity?) proofs.

For more of my study of this trinity 'proof' see:

http://examiningthetrinity.blogspot.co ... rt-1.html