Dr Bock! In Sweden, on one of the bigger swedish Christian blogs, there is a battle about the biblical foundation of the divinity of Christ ... My own concerns, however, regards the Ego Eimi expressions.

Many scholars (i.e. commentaries) seems to be very fond of making big claims of the Ego Eimi-sayings in the gospel of John - i.e. that these sayings alludes to Exodus 3:14 and the equivalent I AM:saying of YHWH... Is that really so?

i. The "ego eimi" is just in intself a personal pronoun followed by a verb and used in a more prosaic way elsewhere in the gospels for instance by the blind man in Jn 9:9 (ἄλλοι ἔλεγον ὅτι Οὗτός ἐστιν: ἄλλοι ἔλεγον, Οὐχί, ἀλλὰ ὅμοιος αὐτῷ ἐστιν. ἐκεῖνος ἔλεγεν ὅτι Ἐγώ εἰμι). Why do we choose to translate his self-expression with "I am the man" and not as: I Am (which we so often does concerning Jesus statements).

ii. The LXX-version of Ex. 3:14 has "Ego Eimi" - followed by a substantivized participle ὁ ὤν.
(Ἑγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν· καὶ εἶπεν Οὕτως ἐρεῖς τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ Ὁ ὢν ἀπέσταλκέν με πρὸς ὑμᾶς.).
This raises a lot of questions for me of why John never uses the particple "The Being" concerning the "I Am sayings" in his Gospel (in order that it would be beyond a shadow of dobut that these sayings refers back to Exodus and making claims of his divinity so to speak).

iii. There are huge theological implications if the I Am sayings in John only has the prosaic meaning of I am without divine connotations (as the messianic movment often claims today).

Let me show you two important passages concerning the Ἑγώ εἰμι which involves huge theological implications:
a. 8:58: εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Ἰησοῦς, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί.

b. 8:24 εἶπον οὖν ὑμῖν ὅτι ἀποθανεῖσθε ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν: ἐὰν γὰρ μὴ πιστεύσητε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι, ἀποθανεῖσθε ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν.

How do we know that these - I am sayings - deliberately alludes to the Great "I Am" in Exodus 3:14??

Sincerely Magnus Nordlund, Sweden.