"Before Abraham was I am."
When the earth was created the angels cried out in joy. They were there before man. Abraham was a man. (
Job 38:7)
"If you have seen me you have seen the father."
Jesus was the perfect representation, the logos, spokesperson, for the father.
Who has seen God and what does it mean to see God 'face to face.?'
Did Abraham? Genesis 18:1-3 Note that Jehovah god is mistaken for one of the three men. Was God a man or an angel in the form of a man who represented God?
Did Moses? Numbers 12:8 - Note that it is an apperance of God that represents God to Moses.
Did Jacob? Genesis 32:30 - Note Hosea 12:2-4 points out that it was an angel who represented God that grappled with Jacob.
Did Manoah and his wife? Judges 13:2-22 - Note that the angel of Jehovah God is called Jehovah God.
Did Gideon? Judges 6:11-23 - Later
Jehovah's angel came and sat under the big tree that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while Gideon his son was beating out wheat in the winepress so as to get it quickly out of the sight of Midian. Then
Jehovah's angel appeared to him and said to him: "Jehovah is with you, you valiant, mighty one." At this Gideon said to him: "Excuse me, my lord, but if Jehovah is with us, then why has all this come upon us, and where are all his wonderful acts that our fathers related to us, saying, 'Was it not out of Egypt that Jehovah brought us up?' And now Jehovah has deserted us, and he gives us into the palm of Midian." Upon that
Jehovah faced him and said: "Go in this power of yours, and you will certainly save Israel out of Midian's palm. Do I not send you?" In turn he said to him: "Excuse me,
Jehovah. With what shall I save Israel? Look! My thousand is the least in Manasseh, and I am the smallest in my father's house." But
Jehovah said to him: "Because
I shall prove to be with you, and you will certainly strike down Midian as if one man."
At this he said to him: "If, now, I have found favor in your eyes, you must also perform a sign for me that you are the one speaking with me. Do not, please, move away from here until I come to you and I have brought out my gift and set it before you." Accordingly he said: "I, for my part, shall keep sitting here until you return." And Gideon went in and proceeded to make ready a kid of the goats and an ephah of flour as unfermented cakes. The meat he put in the basket, and the broth he put in the cooking pot, after which he brought it out to him under the big tree and served it.
The
angel of the [true] God now said to him: "Take the meat and the unfermented cakes and set them on the big rock there, and pour out the broth." At that he did so. Then
Jehovah's angel thrust out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unfermented cakes, and fire began to ascend out of the rock and to consume the meat and the unfermented cakes. As for
Jehovah's angel, he vanished from his sight. Consequently Gideon realized that it was
Jehovah's angel.
At once Gideon said: "Alas,
Sovereign Lord Jehovah, for the reason that I have seen
Jehovah's angel face to face!" But
Jehovah said to him: "Peace be yours. Do not fear. You will not die." So Gideon built an altar there to Jehovah, and it continues to be called Jehovah-shalom down to this day. It is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
No man has seen God but a few have seen representations of him. The angels are, in a sense, at least to the people they deal with, the same as God. In order for men to see them they have to take human form. They are angels, men, and because they speak for God, represent him, they are God as well in that sense.
"In the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word WAS god."
John 1:1 (KJV) - "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
1808: "and the word was a god." The New Testament, in an Improved Version, Upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome's New Translation: With a Corrected Text, London.
1864: "and a god was the Word." The Emphatic Diaglott, by Benjamin Wilson, New York and London.
1935: "and the Word was divine." The Bible-An American Translation, by J. M. P. Smith and E. J. Goodspeed, Chicago.
1935: "the Logos was divine." A New Translation of the Bible, by James Moffatt, New York.
1975: "and a god (or, of a divine kind) was the Word." Das Evangelium nach Johannes, by Siegfried Schulz, Gottingen, Germany.
1978: "and godlike sort was the Logos." Das Evangelium nach Johannes, by Johannes Schneider, Berlin.
1979: "and a god was the Logos." Das Evangelium nach Johannes, by Jurgen Becker, Wurzburg, Germany.
John 1:1 - In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God (Literally "was toward the God." Greek en pros ton Theon; Christian Greek Scriptures, Heb., by Franz Delitzsch, London, 1981 ed., Christian Greek Scriptures, Heb., by Isaac Salkinson and C. D. Ginsburg, London. the Hebrew, hayah eth ha Elohim), and the Word was a god (Greek, theos, in contrast with ton Theon, "the God," in the same sentence; Hebrew, welohim, "and god.")
The Greek word theos is a singular predicate noun occurring before the verb and is not preceded by the definite article. This is an anarthrous theos. The God with whom the Word, or Logos, was originally is designated here by the Greek expression ho theos, that is, theos preceded by the definite article ho. This is an articular theos. The articular construction of the noun points to an identity, a personality, whereas a singular anarthrous predicate noun preceding the verb points to a quality about someone. John was saying that the Word or Logos was "a god" or "divine" or "godlike" rather than that he was the God with whom he was.
There are many cases of a singular anarthrous predicate noun preceding the verb, such as in Mark 6:49; 11:32; John 4:19; 6:70; 8:44; 9:17; 10:1, 13, 33; 12:6. Where "a" or "an" is inserted "an apparition" or "a spirit" or "a liar" or "a prophet" or "a god."
In the article "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1," published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 92, Philadelphia, 1973, p. 85, Philip B. Harner said about John 1:1: "with an anarthrous predicate preceding the verb, are primarily qualitative in meaning. They indicate that the logos has the nature of theos. There is no basis for regarding the predicate theos as definite." On p. 87 of his article, Harner concluded: "In John 1:1 I think that the qualitative force of the predicate is so prominent that the noun cannot be regarded as definite."
In other words, Jesus was a god, which is completely in harmony with scripture. Jesus was prophetically called a mighty god (Hebrew El Gibbohr) at Isaiah 9:6.
John 1:14 - "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."
Jesus was the word, or spokesperson, of Jehovah God. He existed in heaven in spirit form before he came to earth. (John 3:13; 6:51; 17:5)
John 8:58 - "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am."
A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament, by G. B. Winer, seventh edition, Andover, 1897, p. 267, says: "Sometimes the Present includes also a past tense (Mdv. 108), viz. when the verb expresses a state which commenced at an earlier period but still continues, a state in its duration; as, Jno. xv. 27 aparkhes met emou este], viii. 58 prin Abraam genesthai ego eimi."
A Grammar of New Testament Greek, by J. H. Moulton, Vol. III, by Nigel Turner, Edinburgh, 1963, p. 62, says: "The Present which indicates the continuance of an action during the past and up to the moment of speaking is virtually the same as Perfective, the only difference being that the action is conceived as still in progress . . . It is frequent in the N[ew] T[estament]: Lk 248 137 . . . 1529 . . . Jn 56 858 . . . "
Before Abraham came into existence is the first person singular present indicative and so properly translated with the perfect indicative. So from the fourth/fifth century the Syriac edition translates John 8:58 as "before Abraham was, I have been." (A Translation of the Four Gospels from the Syriac of the Sinaitic Palimpsest, by Agnes Smith Lewis, London, 1894.
From the fifth century the Curetonian Syriac Edition translates "before ever Abraham came to be, I was." (The Curetonian Version of the Four Gospels, by F. Crawford Burkitt, Vol. 1, Cambridge, England, 1904)
The Syriac Peshitta Edition, The Old Georgian Version, also from the fifth century and the Ethiopic Edition of the sixth century all do the same.
In an attempt to confuse Jesus as Jehovah some suggest that ego eimi is the same as the Hebrew expression ani hu, "I am he," which is used by God, but it is also used by man. (1 Chronicles 21:17)
Others try and use the Septuagint's reading of Exodus 3:14 which reads Ego eimi ho on meaning "I am The Being," or "I am The Existing One" which can't be sustained because the expression at Exodus 3:14 is different than John 8:58.
