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Originally Posted by Esaias
Unless you all believe that I am, you all shall die in your sins.
That's the Greek, is it not?
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Yes, as far as I can tell.
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So, unless they believe He is WHAT? He is not saying "unless you believe that I exist", for that would be absurd, He was standing there talking to them. So it must be "unless you believe that I am SOMETHING or SOMEONE." So the Jews asked "who are you?" And He said "even the same that I said unto you all from the beginning." Which as you pointed out goes back to John ch 5.
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I think the "I am" refers to the verse before, essentially meaning "Unless you all believe that I am [from above], you all shall die in your sins", since, in the verse prior, Jesus was quite emphatic "I AM FROM ABOVE". That seems to be the correct antecedent, because you are correct, it's not a mere statement of existence, there has to be a referent.
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But that's where it gets interesting, because in John ch 5 Jesus claims for Himself numerous prerogatives that belong to God. Now, the trinitarian or binitarian has no problem with this, because they see Him as god number 2, essentially. But to the Jews of that day, such a claim could ONLY MEAN ONE THING: "Thou, being a man, makes thyself GOD". And to them, "God" did NOT include the idea of "multiple persons in one Godhead". If they thought Jesus was claiming to be God, then they thought He was claiming to be THE FATHER, because the two terms are synonymous in monotheistic thinking.
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Jewish Monotheism didn't really come into it's own and become proclaimed full orthodoxy until around the second century AD. During Christ's time, henotheism was a viable theological world view, as was the Two Powers view of the Godhead. It's pretty hard, then, to say, I think, exactly how the Jews were interpreting His remarks. I note, for example, that the text reads Jesus made Himself, in their minds, to be equal with God, by proclaiming God as His Father, instead of it reading that the Jews assumed He meant He was the Father Himself.
The phrase "equal with God" could refer to the identity of God (the Father), or it could have a meaning more along the lines of equal in the sense of authority and power, like how the sons of various kings in the Old Testament routinely ruled with their fathers as co-regents and were equal in authority and power.
Therefore, I think it's a little hard to say for sure exactly what the Jews thought Jesus meant; for all we know, they could have been misunderstanding him, and the evangelist who wrote John may have only desired to give us an insight into their thinking without commenting on its accuracy or warrant.
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The Jews accused Jesus of claiming to be God on the basis of him saying he is the Son of God.
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It really depends on if "equal with God" means "the same being as God" or not.
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Yet Jews had no idea of later trinitarian concepts of God the Son vs God the Father etc.
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That seems to be true, at least in the context of later Trinitarian developments, but as already shared, the Two Powers view was a common view, as was henotheism, so how the Jews perceived the Son of God and God the Father is hard to know, since these were not common terms to the Old Testament authors. In a sense, they become something new to the Jewish people by the time Jesus is using them so frequently in the Gospels, John in particular.
Yes, there are a few verses in the OT that call God "Father", but it's not common. And "Son of God" was more a term designating King David, then anything else, at least in the Psalms.
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So why would they think He was claiming to be GOD by saying God was His Father? Because of His statements in John ch 5 whereby He says things like "as all men honour the Father they are to honour the Son", that it is the voice of the Son which shall raise the dead from the graves. And in John ch 8 where He claimed that HE HIMSELF was "the light of the world", making Himself (in Jewish thinking) to be the very effulgence or perception of God.
So, when He said unless you believe that I am (someone previously explained to you guys), you guys will all die in your sins", He was in fact pointing to the Father - albeit theologically, not grammatically.
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There is definitely a possibility that the text is meant to be understood theologically and not grammatically, but that's a difficult nut to crack. I lean more toward seeing
hoti ego eimi referring to "I am from above" in the previous verse, thus making it a grammatical issue first, then only a theological issue second.
Certainly, for Jesus to say He was from above already is fraught with heavy-hitting theological content, regardless of any potential grammatical quandaries.
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