Guestman,
ἐγὼ εἰμί (
egw eimi) means 'I am' and NOT 'I have been'. This is the NWT's deceptive way to avoid the truth of Greek grammar. I know and teach NT Greek.
Why do you have the audacity to provide the New World Translation here and not tell us it is the NWT? It is a false translation from the Greek. See:
John 8:58, "Before Abraham came into existence, I have been."
Oz
Since when is there the requirement to identify the translation that I use as the
New World Translation ? But I will for your information. Of the accuracy of the
New World Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Dr. Benjamin Kedar, professor emeritus of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, stated in 1989: "In my linguistic research in connection with the Hebrew Bible and translation, I often refer to the English edition as what is known as the New World Translation. In so doing, I find my feeling repeatedly confirmed that this kind of work reflects an honest endeavor to achieve an understanding of the text that is as accurate as possible. Giving evidence of a broad command of the original language, it renders the words into a second language understandably without deviating unnecessarily from the specific structure of the Hebrew.....Every statement of language allows for a certain latitude in interpreting or translating. So the linguistic solution in any given case may be open for debate. But I have never discovered in the New World Translation any biased intent to read something into the text that it does not contain".
Of the Christian Greek Scriptures of the New World Translation, Jason BeDuhn, professor of Religious Studies at Northern Arizona University (USA), with a Ph. D. degree from Indiana University in Comparative Study of Religion, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Illinois, after carefully examining several major translations for accuracy that included the New World Translation, called the New World Translation a "remarkably good" translation, "better by far" and "consistently better" than some of the others he considered.
He further said that the New World Translation "is one of the most accurate English translations of the New Testament currently available" and "the most accurate of the translations compared".(the translations he compared are (1)
The Amplified New Testament, or AB (2)
Good News Bible in Today's English Version, or TEV (3)
The Living Bible, or LB (4)
New American Bible with Revised New Testament, or NAB (5)
The New American Standard Bible, or NASB (6)
Holy Bible, New International Version or NIV (7)
New Revised Standard Version, or NRSV (8)
New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, or NW.
In addition, he said that "I am not writing to support any denomination or sect of Christianity, but simply to inform.....I am writing because I am a biblical scholar, not by assertion or by approval of authorities, but by training", taking "on the role of a neutral investigator.....People are quick to charge inaccuracy and bias in someone's else's Bible....Greek is not English. Greek words do not have a one-to-one correspondence with English words in terms of their meaning....so there is room for legitimate variation in translation" and added that many translators were subject to pressure "to paraphrase or expand on what the Bible does say in the direction of what modern readers want and need it to say".(
Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, pub. in 2003)
Now on with the topic at hand. The Greek words of
ego eimi as "I am" is a literal rendition, but translating from one language to another requires understanding nuances, idioms, and subleties. A careful and honest translator will look at the context to ensure that the proper meaning is being set forth or conveyed.
Jason BeDuhn wrote that there is the need of "truth in advertising.....If a translation departs from the meaning of the Greek, and rewrites the Bible......it must be judged poorly......Accuracy does not require following the Greek in a hyper-literal, word-for-word way" which is called an interlinear translation, though "it is not really a translation at all".
For example, the Greek words
makarioi hoi ptochoi to pnuemati hoti auton estin he basileia ho ouranos at Matthew 5:3 are rendered as "Blessed [are] the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" by the translators of the
King James Bible (and is more of a literal rendition) but which obscures the real meaning and could imply that those "poor in spirit" are mentally unbalanced or lacking in vitality and determination, which is far from the truth.
The
New World Translation renders it accurately as "Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need, since the Kingdom of the heavens belongs to them". This brings out the true flavor of the words rather than obscures them and that is what skillful and conscientiously translators do for their readers.
Of John 8:58, Jason BeDuhn quotes Robert Bratcher (who translated the Good News Bible or TEV) who said that "any translation, in order to be considered good, should satisfy three 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, it should conform to normal usage".
Jason BeDuhn then says that "readers of Bratcher's "Good News Bible" (TEV) quite naturally assume that it satisfies the three principles laid out by the translator himself. So these same readers must scratch their heads in puzzlement when they come upon the following sentence: "Before Abraham was born, I Am"(John 8:58) How's that again ?"(pg 104)
Jason BeDuhn then says: "In this verse, the TEV violates the third of Bratcher's own principles (normal English usage) and, as we have found in other cases, the reason for doing so lies in a breech of his second principle (freedom from theological bias). The TEV form of John 8:58 strays from normal English usage in word order and verbal tense complementarity. That is, it puts the subject after the predicate, which is not the normal word order of English sentences, and it mixes a present tense verb with a past tense verb in a totally ungrammatical construction. Most other versions have the same problem (such as the KJV, NRSV, NASB, NIV, TEV, AB, NAB)"
He further says that "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. 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".......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: "I have been (since) before Abraham came to be". That's as close as we can get to what the Greek says in our own language if we pay attention to all parts of the sentence. Both the LB (The Living Bible) and NW (New World Translation) offer translations that coordinate the two verbs in John 8:58 according to proper English syntax, and that accurately reflect the meaning of the Greek idiom. The other translations fail to do so".
He then says: "Why does Bratcher himself, in the TEV, render John 8:58 as "Before Abraham was born, I Am" ? The answer is theological bias. In the Gospel of John, Jesus uses the words "I am" many times......But in the hands of some interpreters, this very reasonable interpretation of Jesus' use of language in the Gospel according to John has grown into a strange, unsubstantiated idea about the words "I am" themselves, independent of the objects and phrases attached to "I am" in Jesus speech.....But someone at some point noticed that this perfectly ordinary combination of the first person pronoun "I" and the present tense verb "am" just happens to read the same as what God says when he reveals himself to Moses in English translations of the Old Testament, "I am" (Exodus 3:14)"
But then Jason BeDuhn shows that the Hebrew rendering into Greek by the Greek
Septuagint is not "I AM THAT I AM", but that of "I am the being" (pg 108), and is accurately rendered as "I Will Become What I Choose to Become".(NW) Thus, John 8:58 does not say: "Before Abraham was, I am", but accurately as "Most truly I say to you, before Abraham came into existence, I have been".(NW)