<< But I have a real problem with John 8:58 :
Joh 8:58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Before Abraham was, 'Fred'.
If 'I AM' is a proper name, should not this make sense. It seems to
me that what does not make good English also does not make good
Greek.
>>
That isn't necessarily true. Often times we need to supply certain various
words to make an accurate grammatically correct English translation. It
would be nice if we could always stick with an exact word for word
translation, but such is not always the case.
The phrase in question above is: PRIN ABRAAM GENESQAI EGW EIMI. This verbal
infinitive construct is common in the Koine Greek of the Bible. Take Mark
14:30 for example: PRIN H DIS ALEKTORA FWNHSAI PRIS ME APARNHSHi (cf. John
4:49; Acts 2:20). The writer uses this infinitive with PRIN to form a
temporal clause similar in some respects to an Aorist adverbial participle.
Then the statement of EGW EIMI. This is a pronoun and a verb as far as the
grammatical construct is concerned, but the question discussed has been what
that construct was intended to communicate to the originial hearers.
-Jim