Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> Vadim wrote ,"Whether a translation asnwers a particular question is
> irrelevant, though
>
> one can prefer "I am" to "I will be" only on theological grounds."
>
> I have to disagree. It does matter whether or not a translation fits the
> context it is found in. In this case, God spoke in response to a question.
> An answer does seem reasonable.
>

An answer "I am that I am" seems reasonable to the question of "What is your
name"?? Reasonable? Try answering so to anyone who asks of your name.

We discussed the issue of tenses few weeks ago, and I don't recall your
objections to my suggestion that Hebrew has a coherent system of tenses,
just with deictic shifts. If my suggestion is right - and so far it was not
contradicted - then the translation "I am" is without grammatical grounds.
But even imagining for a moment grammatical admissibility of such twisting
of tenses, there is no contextual reason to prefer "I am" to "I will be" -
only a theological, not even implicit contextually, view that God cannot
confine his existence or promises to the future.

> Please explain what theological prejudice Joseph Baumgarten held when he
> wrote his article in the 1992 edition of the Jewish Quarterly Review. He
> argued that ani hu is primarily used in the Hebrew Bible in statements
> made by Yahweh.
>

This is a very specific appellation, very high-flying, naturally expected
for the divine. It doesn't mean we should automatically attribute any such
appellation to God. I don't see your point.

> The Hebrew Bible often uses ani hu in a way that appears to be synonymous
with YHWH.

Of course.

> This suggests to me that "I am" is a reasonable way to translate the
divine name.

How is "I am he" related to "I am"? Quite a leap of imagination. 3ms pronoun
merely replaces more common YHWH, likely because of the particular scribe or
author's piety. I don't recall, but I believe that some kings used to
address themselves in the third person; surely they called themselves in
plural. The same kind of superstitious piety or inflated ego.

> There is even some evidence from the Egyptian language that suggests the
translation "I am."
> Johannes De Moor stated, "the enigmatic, `I am who I am'.  For centuries
people have puzzled over the problem of what that could mean. The solution
would seem to have been found now in an Egyptian religious text from the New
Kingdom.  Here the god Re says exactly the same thing, `I am who I am' (iw.
i-m.i).  [268] From the context it appears that the meaning of this
declaration is that the god Re will remain himself, in the sense that in the
present time and in the future he will continue to act precisely as he had
done in the past."
>

Can't say anything about the Egyptian, though commonsensically a symmetric
phrase like "I am who I am" should be symmetric in the target language as
well, and "iw. i-m.i" is not symmetric.
Anyway, Ex3:14 has a totally different meaning: a name, not a description.
You don't say that God meant, "I will be with you faithfully forever," like
in the Egyptian saying. No, you maintain that "I am who I am" is a name.
This is quite unlike your Egyptian example.

> I would like for those better schooled in Hebrew to clarify one thing
about the use of the imperfect. M. H. Segal's Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew
states that "The imperf. describes a single act or event which has not yet
taken place." When the imperfect is used for the future tense in Biblical
Hebrew does it refer to a single event as opposed to a continual state? If
that is the case, I cannot see how one would translate God's name as "I will
be."

You mean, you can't say in Hebrew, "I will study Hebrew" or "I will live in
that town"?

Vadim Cherny