Before Abraham Was, I Am: The Bloodline Verse the Tradition Reads as a Divinity Claim
Part 9 of THE OTHER GOSPEL Series — by eFireTemple The Verse and What It Has Been Made to Mean There is a verse in the Gospel of John that has, for fifteen centuries, been treated as Jesus's most direct claim to be God. It is one of the two or three verses that get cited first in any conversation about the divinity of Christ. It is cited in catechisms, in apologetics, in seminary lectures, in popular evangelism, in defenses of Trinitarian Christology against every alternative reading.
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Part 9 of THE OTHER GOSPEL Series — by eFireTemple The Verse and What It Has Been Made to Mean There is a verse in the Gospel of John that has, for fifteen centuries, been treated as Jesus's most direct claim to be God. It is one of the two or three verses that get cited first in any conversation about the divinity of Christ. It is cited in catechisms, in apologetics, in seminary lectures, in popular evangelism, in defenses of Trinitarian Christology against every alternative reading. The verse appears in John 8:58, near the close of a long debate between Jesus and a group of his Jewish opponents: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." The Greek is prin Abraam genesthai egō eimi . The English translation is uncontested. The textual witness is stable.