an_agnostic

Christians sometimes say that when Yahweh identifies his name as "I am that I am" (IIRC) that he is expressing something profound about his timeless nature, or him being the creator.

Is that how it is meant in the Bible? Or is it more of "you don't get to know my name" as to know a name was supposed to give you power over a thing in those days?

NoeL

Maybe it's like an "I think, therefore I am" kinda dealio?

gurugeorge

I think the most likely meaning is this (quoted from an online discussion):

"But here god first tells Moses its meaning: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, probably best translated as 'I Will Be What I Will Be,' meaning 'My nature will become evident from My actions.'" [my bolds]

(page 111, 3:14b) The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, Oxford University Press, Oxford New York.

Corroboration of this from AllExperts:

show_no_mercy

If "I will be what I will be" is the proper translation, why did Greek speaking Jews translate "ehyeh asher ehyeh" of Ex. 3:14 as "egw eimi ho wn" (i.e. I am [the] being)? It might be that YHWH is saying here that he is just existence (be-ing, as opposed to say living) in general. I'm pretty sure "I will be what I will be" would be translated in Greek as "esomai poios esomai" (esomai - "I will be" - is used the LXX of Ex. 3:12) .

Not that I'm asking you in particular, but I guess the author you're quoting...

DCHindley

Perhaps, and this is only a guess, it means something like:

"I am what I am and that's all that I am, I'm YHWH the Godhead, man."

DCH (on lunch, boss)

PhilosopherJay

Hi DCHindley,



"I am what I am and that's all that I am, I'm YHWH the Godhead, man."
{Toot, toot}.

It could be a Popeye-like apology for being who he is, but it seems to me designed to be funnier. As Popeye had one big eye, so did the Cyclops that Odysseus faced. The Cyclops asks Odysseus who he is and he answers "Nobody."

The name "Nobody" appears to be an attempt by Odysseus to hide from the awesome Cyclops by hiding his name. Later, it turns out to be a great trick played on the Cyclops when his brothers refuse to help him after he claims, "Nobody blinded me."

We may assume that the "I am" played some similar role in the story, a role that has been censured out.

Here is the passage:

13 Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

14 God said to Moses, "I am who I am . [b] This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "

15 God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, [c] the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.

We can imagine a later scene in which Moses says to the Israelites, "The Lord of your father - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me."
The Israelites say to Moses, "Who is the Lord?" Moses answers "I am".
"Who is the God of Abraham?"
"I am."
"Who is the God of Isaac?"
"I am."
"Who is the God of Jacob?"
"I am."
"Show us signs."

Moses then performs the snake-on-the-ground, leper-hand, and water-into-blood tricks.

This scenario explains why the Hebrews say in Exodus 5:3:

"The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword."

This line only makes sense if the Israelites had thought that Moses was the God of the Hebrews. It was Moses that they met, nobody else. They would only have thought that if Moses had obeyed God and said "I am" when they asked who sent him.

A century or two later, the idea of Moses pretending to be God would have rang blasphemous and so the scene was censured and we ended up with the puzzle we have today.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Darklighter

Interesting take Jay... That certainly is one of the more enigmatic scriptures in the Bible.

Mageth

Karen Armstrong's interpretation:

From A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Ch.1, p. 21-22).

No Robots

Armstrong is wrong to say that Jahveh does not involve the concept of self-subsistent Beingness. As Spinoza puts it:

Moses conceived the Deity as a Being Who has always existed, does exist, and always will exist, and for this cause he calls Him by the name Jehovah, which in Hebrew signifies these three phases of existence.

Constantin Brunner develops this line of thought:

Jahveh ehad, cried Moses: "Hear O Israel, Being is our God, Being is One" (Deut. 6:4).

Yet this quotation provides precisely the historically monstrous example of how Israel hears and how the truth is straightway transformed into superstition in Israel's ears. For this magnificent saying is at once a hymn of exultation and a wrathful protest against idol worship of any kind; but despite this protest, it now signifies—in the conception of Israel, the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Israel—the well-enough known, imbecilically wrong translation: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our god is the only God!" (Brunner, Spinoza gegen Kant, page 43). Moses said that thou shalt not make unto thee any image of this Jahveh, no imagination of it, i.e., it is that which cannot be thought as things are thought, as if it had the same sort of being as things—I am that I am (Ex. 3:14)! Jahveh, Being, is the term for the wholly abstract spiritual; it has no relation to the relative world. By Jahveh, the wholly great is meant. It means the same thing as Spinoza does in his great—his absolutely great expression, Ens constans infinitis attributis (Absolute Being with infinite attributes.) And Jahveh Tsebaot, Jahveh of infinite powers, is nothing but the mystical expression of the same thing as is expressed philosophically by Ens constans infinitis attributis. The whole tremendous concern of Judaism lies in this phrase Jahveh ehad [Ehad=one and only. Pronunciation; with a gutteral 'kh', accent on the second syllable], in that single word Jahveh, which was ultimately forbidden even to be pronounced, and to pronounce which was a deadly sin. The mystical primordial character of Judaism—so naturally mystical that the Jews, in spite of their having made Jahvism into religion, never established a mythology, even while their Jahveh always remained exalted as God over every god of other religions, so that other ancient civilizations did not recognize him as a god, and said the Jews were without religion and atheistic—the mystical primordial character of Judaism expressed itself in this, its ineffable holy word.—Our Christ, p. 157-8.

Jahveh is synonymous with all the other words used to denote self-subsistent Beingness: the Ileatic One, Nous, the Stoic Logos, the Absolute, Brahman, the Tao, Spinoza's Substance, Christ's Father, Brunner's Cogitant. This abstract principle is only directly accessible to the small minority of thinkers, the great geniuses of art, philosophy and mysticism. These few spiritually creative individuals establish the conditions under which the rest of humanity exists. Everyone, without exception, is carried in the wake of the geniuses. This may take the form either of conscious, active appreciation and reproduction; or of unreflective imitation. The abstract, mystical insight of Moses has almost always been distorted through unreflective imitation into a crude anthropomorphic materialistic religion.

lintrap

I think this proves my theory that the God of the Bible is Eminem reencarnated into the past.

"I am whatever you say I am, if I wasn't, then why would you say I am?"