John 8.58 is one of those scriptures which translators often mis-translate.
I am aware this text is defended with passion either way by its advocates. Many insist the "I AM" rendering found in many versions is correct. Others defend the "I have been" or "I was" readings of other versions. Who is right? Right off the bat, I am going to tell you that the rendering "I AM" is proper in a strictly literal version, such as an interlinear, but not in a modern language version. In such cases, the other renderings "I have been" or "I was" are better" in the text. Even so, most translators who prefer "I have been" or "I was" at John 8.58 slip up in the English department. That includes the New World Translation. They had a chance to correct their 8.58 reading in their latest revision, but did not.
Let's see why!
First of all, many trinitarian advocates swear that "I am" is the only appropriate rendering. They claim that the Greek phrase is absolute, somehow indicating that the expression is another name for God, or that it indicates timeless existence. They love to indicate that the NWT is inconsistent in their translation of the Greek phrase. The NWT does render the Greek ego'eimi' as "I am" in most places, but not in John 8.58. This is surely "bias" on their part. Right? Not so.
What the "I am" defenders don't tell you is that the construction of John 8.58 shows a grammatical difference to most other occurrences. The Greek clause of John 8.58 has a time element in the clause which places the beginning of the action in the past: "Before Abraham was born, I am." The "I am" Greek expression simply expresses existence from the past, as grammarian Stanley Porter indicated.
When Jesus said, to name one instance, "I am the fine shepherd (John 10.11)," there is no time adjunct, such as "before," or "long ago" in the phrase. So the correct rendering is "I am." But if it did have a time expression pointing to the past, the translation would have to be adapted accordingly.
To illustrate: John 15.27 shows Jesus saying in the Greek: "and you [plural] but are bearing witness, that from beginning with me you [plural] are." Notice the Greek has a time indicator in the statement: "from [the] beginning" which puts the action starting in the past to the present just as John 8.58 does. The Douay Version incorrectly says, "And you shall give testimony, because you are with me from the beginning." In good English you cannot use a present verb "you are" when there is a time element pointing to the past. The NIV wisely adapts it to the English idiom.
The NIV correctly renders it: "And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning." "From the beginning you are" is uncalled in John 15.27. It is poor English. Also, notice that the NIV reordered the "you have been" and "from the beginning" expressions in the sentence to conform to English idiom. So did the NWT and other versions as well. That is proper.
Coming back to John 8.58, the NW translators were in the right track when they rendered, "...before Abraham came into existence, I have been," just as they did in John 15.27. They took into account the time indicator in the clause, and appropriately used an English perfect tense in the process. A Greek Grammar (Greek
– An Intensive Course) states:
“When [the present is] used with expressions denoting past time,
the
present is the equivalent of the English present progressive perfect:
πάλαι
τοῦτο
ποιῶ
[palai
touto poiō]*.
I
have been
doing
this for
a long time.”
(Hardy
Hansen & Gerald M. Quinn, New York,
1992. Page 731.) *Notice the literal reading, "I am doing this for a long time," rendered with the present perfect by the authors.
Also, it should be mentioned at this point, that another way to tackle the Greek in John 8.58 is by using an imperfect like this: pre { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }a:link { }
“I already was before Abraham was born.” – Worldwide English New Testament.
Is the NWT John 8.58 rendering a perfect translation? No, they erred by following the Greek wording order instead of adapting it to English as they should have. Is there anyone out there who translated correctly using the "I have been" expression reflecting proper English idiom?Yes, The Source New Testament (Dr. A. Nyland, Australia) got it right at John 8.58:
“I have been in existence since before Abraham was born!”