How many 'I am' in John's gospel?

Answer 1

Jesus says "I am" several times in John's Gospel, in a play on words that has Jesus claim to be God. When the Jewish authorities came asking for Jesus, he answered 'I am', using the absolute form of ego eimi, which is the Greek translation in the Septuagint for Yahweh, based on a possible meaning of the tetragrammaton (YHWH). The reaction of the authorities demonstrates John's intent:

Jesus asked, 'Whom seek ye?' They answered him, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' He said to them, 'I AM' [the KJV makes this 'I AM he', with 'he' in italics to show that it is not a literal translation; other Bibles, more correctly, do not]. When he said to them, 'I AM', they turned away and fell to the ground.

Provided that he spoke in fluent Greek, the language of the Gospel, Jesus was claiming to be God by saying 'I am' in the absolute form, and the Jews clearly understood his intent. However, in another version of the same word game earlier in this Gospel, the Jews did not at first understand the hidden meaning, that Jesus spoke to them of the Father. At John 8:23-24, with translations from both the King James Version and the New American Bible:

(KJV) And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above; ye are from this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins; for if ye believe not that I AM he, ye shall die in your sins.

(NAB) He said to them, 'You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.'

In the above passage, KJV again has 'he' in italics to show that it is not a literal translation, and in any case there is no one previously mentioned, that the pronoun 'he' can refer back to. NAB acknowledges that the reference is to Yahweh. John was causing Jesus to make a claim to divinity in a very careful way.

In the next verse, the Jews again asked who he was. His answer can only mean that he was confirming his previous claim to divinity:

(KJV) Even the same that I said to you from the beginning.

(NAB) What I told you from the beginning.

Finally, at verse 28 Jesus could be explaining that he was the Son of man, at least in the KJV, although this is out of context and improbable, and again the KJV has 'he' in italics:

(KJV) When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then ye shall know that I am he.

(NAB) When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM

This is followed by:

(KJV) As he spake these words, many believed on him.

(NAB) Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

In other words, of those who understood the meaning of this subtle wordplay, many believed in Jesus, just because he said he was God.

Of course, this does not make the same sense in English because we can not make the connection between 'YHWH' (Yahweh) and 'I am'. It would also be difficult to contrive the above two dialogues in Aramaic, the language that Jesus would have spoken, but John wrote in Greek for Greek-speaking readers who would have appreciated the nuance of his narratives.

A seemingly similar claim is at John 10:30, where Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." However, in this case it may be a less absolute claim than it seems. Apparently, this was not written in the sense that would identify Jesus as the Father, because the Greek word used for 'one' is neuter, whereas a claim to be one with the Father in the sense of identity would require the masculine gender. The use of the neuter form indicates that 'one' means 'united' rather than 'identical' or 'the same person'. A modern example in English could be, "We were as one in deciding to go ahead."

Answer 2

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