TO NEWSEED

Jesus Himself said He was God in John 8:58 . Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" The word "I am," was the divine name of God, used countless times in the Old Testament. This word "YHWH" in Hebrew, is explained as the "personal name" of God in Exodus 3:14-15, 20:5; Isaiah 42:8; 44:6 ...

This is classic trinitarian propaganda of John 8:58! This is the one verse in the entire NT where Jesus is supposedly have said "I am GOD".
But no matter how many times you read this verse, it does not say,
"Before Abraham was, I am GOD". It just does not say that!

Before I continue, let me clarify two points.
1) The word(s) "I am" (ehyeh/ani hu) is not the name of GOD and
2) it is NOT used countless of times in the Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament) as the divine name of GOD.

The divine and personal name of GOD is YHWH, depicted as the tetragrammaton (Greek for 4-letter name); which is used over 6700 times in the Hebrew Bible.
Hence (Exo 3:14-15) reads And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM [EHYEH ASHER EHYEH]: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM [EHYEH] hath sent me unto you. 15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, YaHWeH God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.


Ehyeh (or Hayah), therefore, is being used to describe the infinitude and the eternality of GOD. However His name is YAHWEH.
Even the Greek OT (the Septuagint, LXX) depicts Exo 3:14 as "Thus shall ye say to the children of Israel,
'HO ON' ('THE BEING') has sent me to you."
Therefore, if the trinitarian propaganda was true, that John 8:58 was a quote of Exo 3:14, it would therefore read ...
Before Abraham was, EGO EIMI HO ON or Before Abraham was, HO ON
Which of course, IT DOES NOT!! WHY NOT?? Because there is no connection at all between Exo 3:14 and John 8:58 at all!

So what was Jesus saying in John 8:53-58?
Answer: He was claiming to be greater than Abraham & the prophets because he was the Messiah. He was stating that before Abraham was, he (that is Jesus) was foreordained to be the Messiah; hence he was before Abraham, in the sense of pre-eminence & priority.
Note: Jesus never said that he saw Abraham, neither did he say Abraham saw him. His enemies misunderstood him (like they so often did) - they misunderstood his Messianic claim!!

John 8:58 is a Messianic claim.

So that I do not repeat myself, word for word, I have already gone into great detail concerning a better scriptural interpretation of John 8:58 elsewhere on this forum.
Please refer to: http://www.jesus-christ-forums.com/home/viewtopic.php?t=3428&start=12

Let me conclude with these quotes:

John A.T. Robinson wrote:The identification of Jesus’ ‘I am’ statements [of John's Gospel] with the ‘I am He’ (‘ani hu’) of Yahweh in the Old Testament ... I believe to be a misreading which can be shown to be such by careful attention to the text [of John].
Of the 'I am' sayings in this Gospel ... (‘I am the bread of life ... the good shepherd’, etc.) certainly do not imply that the subject is God.

Of the ‘absolute’ uses of ego eimi, the majority are simply establishing identification: ‘I am he.’ This is so of 4:26 (the Messiah you speak of); 6:20 (confirming Jesus’ identity on the lake at night, exactly as in Mark 6:50, Matt. 14:27); 9:9 (on the lips not of Jesus but of the blind man) and 18:5-8, the ‘I am your man’ at the arrest (cp. Acts 10:21), even though it evokes awe (though not the reaction to blasphemy) in the arresting party. There is the same usage in the resurrection scene of Luke 24:39, ‘it is I myself’ ... Three other occurrences (8:24, 28, 13:19) are I believe correctly rendered by the NEB ‘I am what I am,’ namely the truth of what really I am. They do not carry with them the implication that he is Yahweh (indeed in the latter two especially there is contrast with the Father who sent him), but, in Johannine terms ‘the Christ, the Son of God’.

Barrett (one of the most celebrated commentators on John) wrote:Ego eimi (‘I am he’) does not identify Jesus with God, but it does draw attention to him in the strongest possible terms. I am the one, the one you must look at and listen to if you would know God”

[Referring to John 8:28 he writes]
“It is simply intolerable that Jesus should be made to say, ‘I am God, the supreme God of the Old Testament, and being God I do as I am told’; and to 13:19, ‘I am God, and I am here because someone sent me’ …
Jesus’ ego eimi is not a claim to divinity.”

Bultmann wrote:We should reject the idea that ego eimi means ‘I (Jesus) am God.’