srd44

And the winner is....

Correct. The phonological similarity between ehyeh and yahweh makes this a homonym ... both deriving from the verb 'to be' 'exist.'

Chili

Just a linguistic fallacy called Lexischemy that was used in sophistry and still exists today, wherein:


What I find more interesting is that 'the son' must be the one to make the being known in the genus of man under God before even I AM can be a name.

spin

It means, as a famous politician and peanut entrepreneur used to say, "now don't you worry about that!"

Or "I'm who I am (who I will be), i.e., f-- off and stop asking stupid questions."

Lugubert

It's a stylistic feature in Semitic languages to use the same root twice to reinforce a message. So, "I hit him a hard hit" translates as "I hit him really hard".

So, I think it's not too wide a stretch to make I am who I am -> I really am. (How you then interpret that sentence is another question.)

Robert Tulip

Aha, a Queenslander! Whatever will be will be, indicates Doris Day as the great interpreter of Moses. Translations might include kismet, honi soit, que sera sera.

Chili

It actually does away with the historical Jesus and shut the Gutenberg press down for good, because if Moses was already the firstborn son, even as imposter, what is this Jesus all about?

And why do you think Shakespeare wrote: "To be or not to be" other than in not being you are in "I AM."

spin

You don't appreciate the benefits of the internet.

Jaybees

It all depends on the meaning of "am."

spin

That parenthesis is the problem you create with your interpretation. Either god gives Mose a name or he doesn't. If he gives a name, what kindaname is it? If he doesn't, what exactly is he saying?

Bingo the Clown-O

Yep. That explanation actually makes a lot of sense in context. The author may have written it to conflate two deities - to downplay a controversy concerning who the “god of the patriarchs” actually was.

Was the god of Abraham the benevolent Canaanite father god named El? Or was the god of Abraham the desert war god named Yahweh?

It looks to me like the author may have written that episode as a setup to have God belittle the issue of His proper name. The moral of the story was: Don’t ask God which god he is!