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To: kosta50
The way it looks in Greek, Jesus is simply saying that he lived before Moses (and the reaction of the Pharisees reflect their understanding of his claim that way), not that he pre-existed the world!

Kosta, but you ignore both John's preamble (and the Logo was God) and his summation:

28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" 29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." 30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Any "ego emi" outside of the immediate context, the gospel of john context, and the johannin context is simply not going to arrive at a legitimate conclusion. It would be like my taking your words and ignoring all our past discussions.

430 posted on 07/11/2010 8:46:43 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and proud of it. Those who truly support our troops pray for their victory!)
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To: xzins
Kosta, but you ignore both John's preamble (and the Logo was God) and his summation

I am not ignoring it, xzins; I am simply stating that the author is not expressing himself in such a way as to connect ego eimi in John 8:58 with Ex 3:14. If that was his intention, then he did a poor job of it because he left out ho on.

The way it reads in Jn 8:58 is that he existed before Moses, not before all creation.

No one is denying that the author aimed at synthesizing Paul's "firstborn of all creatures" into "the Word is eternally in existence as* God" it's just that the way he goes about it is not always what he writes.

*I am using this form to indicate the imperfect indicative tense, i.e. the continual action, since the English "was" doens't really mean what it does in Greek.

440 posted on 07/11/2010 10:04:59 AM PDT by kosta50 (The world is the way it is even if YOU don't understand it)
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