John 8:25

John 8:25 o[ ti {B}

Since the older Greek manuscripts lack punctuation and are written without division between words, it is possible to interpret Th.n avrch.n … u`mi/n in several ways:

1. As a question, with o[ti = why? (“Why do I speak to you at all?”).
2. As an exclamation, with o[ ti in the sense of the Hebrew hm' (“That I speak to you at all!”).
3. As an affirmation, with o[ ti and supplying evgw, eivmi (“[I am] from the beginning what I am telling you” or “Primarily [I am] what I am telling you” or “[I am] what I have told you from the beginning”).

Several Latin witnesses (and the Gothic), misunderstanding the Greek, translate Principium, qui et loquor vobis (“[I am] the Beginning, even I who speak to you”). The Ethiopic omits o[ti (“[I am] the Beginning, and I told you so”). The Bodmer Papyrus II (î⁶⁶) reads, according to a marginal correction that may be by the original scribe, Ei=pen auvtoi/j o` VIhsou/j( Ei=pon u`mi/n th.n avrch.n o[ ti kai. lalw/ u`mi/n (“Jesus said to them, I told you at the beginning what I am also telling you [now]”). ¹²

¹² For full discussions of the difficulties of the passage, see R. W. Funk, Harvard Theological Review, LI (1958), pp. 95—100, and E. R. Smothers, S.J., ibid., pp. 111—122, who independently prefer the reading of î^66c.