Texts in Conversation
Exodus 3 depicts God answering Moses with language emphasizing existence and presence. The Greek Septuagint changes this to “the One who is,” harmonizing the divine name with ideas in Greek philosophy and adapting it to more abstract ideas of existence.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 3:14
Hebrew Bible
13 Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’—what should I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM that I AM.” And he said, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘The Lord—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, and this is my memorial from generation to generation.’
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Exodus 3:14
Septuagint
13 And Moses said to God, Look, I shall go forth to the children of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they will ask me, What is his name? What shall I say to them? 14 And God spoke to Moses, saying, I am he who is; and he said, Thus you will say to the children of Israel, He who is has sent me to you. 15 And God said again to Moses, Thus you will say to the sons of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, has sent me to you: this is my name for ever, and my memorial to generations of generations.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... in saying "I am who I am," God might not have been putting Moses off, but revealing to him something about His very nature. So it appeared to the ancient Greek translators of the Bible ... This translation - which clearly seeks to deviate from the biblical text, since there are more literal ways of saying 'I am who I am' in Greek - understands God to have been telling Moses something about His nature, 'I am the One who is.' This translation was of great significance to Greek-speaking Jews, since it resonated with elements of the Greek philosophical tradition; 'the One who is' became a way of referring to God ..."
James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 303.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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