(If you’ve forgotten your high school grammar, the predicate nominative is the second half of the sentence for example, “I am the good shepherd.”). What makes “I am” distinctive in God’s declaration to Moses (Exod 3:14) is that it doesn’t have a predicate nominative. “I am” is only intended to refer to deity in some of Jesus’ sayings. So, since ἐγώ εἰμι usually has a very ordinary meaning, it can only refer to deity if something significant in the context leads us to believe that deity is suggested.Ģ. As I have searched through other works written in ancient Greek (Philo, the Pseudepigrapha, Plato and other philosophers), I have run across many such ordinary occurrences of ἐγώ εἰμι. God uses the phrase often, but so does Jacob (Gen 27:32), Deborah (Jdg 5:3), Gideon (Jdg 6:15) and others. The Septuagint uses “I am” (ἐγώ εἰμι) in very normal ways. This matches the use in Greek outside the NT.

In the New Testament, ἐγώ εἰμι is used by Jesus, Judas (Matt 26:25), Gabriel (Luke 1:19), the blind man (John 9:9), Peter (Acts 10:21) and Paul (Acts 22:3, 26:29, Rom 11:13, 1 Tim 1:15), always to refer to themselves. It is a quite normal way to say “I am” for anyone. Jephthah (Jdg 11:9), Ruth (Ruth 2:13), David (1 Sam 18:18), Jonathan, (1 Sam 23:17), Hushai (2 Sam 16:18), Job (Job 12:4) and many others use it to refer to themselves. It is used by many people simply to refer to themselves. It is often used by God in the Old Testament, but rarely as his title. The Hebrew word “I am” ( אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה, ehyeh), however, is not a code word or a technical title for God. Many Hebrew scholars suggest that YHWH means something like “the one who is.” In fact, the Septuagint (ancient Greek translations of the OT, widely used by early Jews and Christians) did not translate the second אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה in Exodus 3:14 as ἐγώ εἰμι, but rather as ὁ ὢν, “the one who is.” In Hebrew, the phrase “I am” ( אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה, ehyeh), is linguistically related to God’s name, יהוה (YHWH, often represented in English as Yahweh or Jehovah). God said to Moses, 'I AM who I AM' and he said, 'Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'' (Exod 3:14 the “all caps” is one way that modern Bibles represent the phrase in this verse) It is true that an important passage in Exodus uses “I am” to refer to God. “I am” ( ἐγώ εἰμι ), by itself, is not a code for the name of God Paying too much attention to the “I am” part of the sentence distracts readers from paying attention to the rest of the sentence.ġ.“I am” is only intended to refer to deity in some of Jesus’ sayings.

“I am” (ἐγώ εἰμι), by itself, is not a code for the name of God.

There is some truth to this, but I want to suggest three important caveats to this claim: It is commonly claimed that when Jesus used the phrase “I am” (ἐγώ εἰμι, ego eimi), he was making a direct reference to the name of God in the Old Testament, YHWH.

What is yhwh in bible