Charles Ellicott Commentary John 8:25

"They said therefore unto him, Who art thou? Jesus said unto them, Even that which I have also spoken unto you from the beginning." — John 8:25 (ASV)

Then they said to him, “Who are you?”—They ask the question in the tone of scorn which they have already expressed in John 8:22. The pronoun is the emphatic word: “You, who are you?” and the phrase was frequently used to express contempt.

He had said, “I am;” but they do not understand the words to be a divine name. Long before this time, the name formed from these words (which is now usually, but wrongly, read “Jehovah”) had been regarded as too sacred to be uttered.

They appear to take the sentence as though it was incomplete: “I am . . . ; Well, who are you?” We have again, as in John 8:19, to note the attempt to draw from Him some definite statement that might be made the ground of a technical charge; but this He again avoids.

And Jesus said to them, “Even the same that I said to you from the beginning.”—Almost every word of this answer is, in the Greek, capable of more than one meaning, and the true interpretation of the whole sentence cannot be decided with certainty. To discuss it with any fullness would be to encumber the page with details that would be unintelligible to the general reader; to discuss it with anything but fullness would be unsatisfactory to the student.

There is little room for addition to the investigations that are now accessible. The full notes of Meyer and Stier and Tholuck may be read in English; and Dr. Moulton’s addition to his Translation of Winer’s Grammar (eighth edition, 1877, pp. 581–582), gives, in a few words, nearly all that can be said on the grammatical difficulty.

After careful consideration of the whole matter, it is believed (though not without hesitation) that the rendering least liable to objection on any ground is that which regards the answer as itself a question: “What I from the beginning am also speaking to you?”

“You ask who I am. This has formed the substance of My teaching from the beginning and is the substance of My teaching still.” (Compare John 8:58.) “Can it be that you ask this?”