The Koine Greek term Ego eimi (Ἐγώ εἰμί, pronounced[eɣóimí]), literally 'I am' or 'It is I', is an emphatic form of the copulative verb εἰμι that is recorded in the Gospels to have been spoken by Jesus on several occasions to refer to himself not with the role of a verb but playing the role of a name, in the Gospel of John occurring seven times with specific titles. It is connected to the passage in Exodus 3:14 in which God gives his name as אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, translated most basically as "I am that I am" or "I shall be what I am". In the Hebrew Bible (Exodus 3:14), it is the personal name of God, revealed directly to Moses.[1] These usages have been the subject of significant Christological analysis.[2][3]
New Testament
In the New Testament, the personal pronoun ἐγώ in conjunction with the present first-person singular copulativeεἰμι is recorded to have been used mainly by Jesus, especially in the Gospel of John.
It is used in the Gospel of John both with and without a predicate nominative. The seven occurrences with a predicate nominative that have resulted in some of the titles for Jesus are:
"I am" is also used without a predicate nominative, which is not very common in Koine Greek, thus it is generally interpreted as a self-declaration by Jesus, identifying himself as God. In John 8:24 Jesus states: "For unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins", and later the crowd attempts to stone Jesus in response to his statement in John 8:58: "Before Abraham was, I am". Many other translations, including the American Standard Version, have rendered John 8:24 as something like "For unless you believe that I am [He], you will die in your sins". Some consider the phrase in John 8:58 to be grammatically different from that in John 8:24, as the copulative verb can be used with any predicative expression and not only a predicate nominative, such as in "ὅπου εἰμὶ ἐγὼ καὶ ὑμεῖς ἦτε" ("where I am, you also may be") in John 14:3. "πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι" ("before Abraham was") can be taken as a predicative prepositional phrase, thus "ἐγώ εἰμὶ" ("I am") in John 8:58 does not grammatically require a predicate nominative, however it is rather unusual for a present tense verb to be used with a temporal adverb like πρὶν in a declarative statement, though there are rare exceptions outside the New Testament. Thus explanations of John 8:58 generally depend on theology and not Greek grammar.
ἐγώ εἰμι also occurs without an explicit or implicit predicate nominative in the Septuagint, but instead either with a prepositional phrase such as in "μὴ ἀντὶ θεοῦ ἐγώ εἰμι ..." ("Am I in place of God ...") Genesis 30:2, or with a predicative clause such as in "πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος ἐγώ εἰμι μεθ' ὑμῶν" ("As a foreigner and a sojourner I am with you") in Genesis 23:4, or with the idiomatic meaning 'It is I' such as in "καὶ εἶπεν Ἰωαβ ἀκούω ἐγώ εἰμι" ("And Joab said: I hear; it is I.") in 2 Samuel 20:17.[7]
It has been suggested that the unique expression of the Tetragrammatonיהוה (YHWH) is a verbal cognate noun derived from היה (hayah), the Hebrew copulative otherwise known as the verb 'to be'. Translations often render this word in compliance with the tradition of the Septuagint, "Lord".
In Christian philosophy
The philosopher Joseph de Torre, commenting on the philosophical implications of "I am" as the name of God, wrote:
Aristotle conceived God as the First Mover but outside the world, because of his defective concept of "act", which is more physical than metaphysical. What St. Thomas did was to take this concept and raise it to a metaphysical plane, and then he combined it with Plato's concept of "participation". But he did all this under the guiding light of the faith, since it is the Bible that describes God as HE WHO IS (Exodus, 3): he saw that God is the fullness of being, the very Act of Being, the perfection of being, the subsistent act of being; and everything else is a participation in the act of being, which must be created by God "out of nothing", since God cannot share His infinite act of being.[8]
^Encyclopedia of theology: a concise Sacramentum mundi by Karl Rahner 2004 ISBN0-86012-006-6 page 1082
^Hurtado, Larry W. (June 2003). Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans. ISBN0-8028-6070-2 pages 370–371
^Nestle-Aland "Novum Testamentum Graece", 27th revised edition (a.k.a. "NA27"), Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, July 2006, ISBN1598561723
^"The Greek New Testament", 4th Edition with Dictionary, United Bible Societies (a.k.a. "UBS4")