You claim that there is no doubt that Jesus claims eternal existence here in John 8:58 with the absolute phrase used of God, and yet you give a list of other occurrences of the same phrase in other passages.
The I AM who exists
In several places the I AM is used in connection with Yahweh’s timelessness or his eternal existence, that he is the God who has been there from the very beginning and shall continue to be there till the very end:
“Who has wrought and done these things? he has called it who called it from the generations of old; I, God, am first, and to all futurity, I am (ego eimi).” Isaiah 41:4
“Hear me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of Israel, who are borne by me from the womb, and taught by me from infancy. Until your old age I am (ego eimi), and until you shall have grown old I am (ego eimi); I bear you, I have made, and I will set free, I will take up and save you.” Isaiah 46:3-4
“Hear me, O Jacob, and Israel whom I call; I am the first, and I am (ego eimi) forever/into eternity.” Isaiah 48:12
Apparently this is how the translators of the LXX understood the meaning of the Hebrew phrase in Exodus 3:13-14, namely Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (“I AM/WILL BE WHAT I AM/WILL BE”) since they translated it in the following manner:
“And Moses said to God, Behold, I shall go forth to the children of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of our fathers has sent me to you; and they will ask me, What is his name? What shall I say to them? And God spoke to Moses, saying, I am THE ONE WHO IS/THE BEING (ego eimi ho on); and he said, Thus shall ye say to the children of Israel, THE ONE WHO IS/THE BEING (ho on) has sent me to you.”
The Greek word ho is the definite article “the,” while on is the present participle of eimi. The present participle in Greek expresses continuous or repeated action or state. And yet since both on and eimi are in the present tense they basically have the same meaning.
Thus, by using ho on the Jewish translators seemed to have understood Exodus 3:14 to be emphasizing God’s timelessness as well as stressing the fact that Yahweh is the necessary Being from which all other beings spring forth. After all, the Jews knew that their God is the One who simply is, being pure existence:
“Surely vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things that are seen know him that is: neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the workmaster;” Wisdom 13:1
They realized that without the One who always is all other beings could never exist. As one renowned Bible commentator explained it:
EHEYEH asher EHEYEH. These words have been variously understood. The Vulgate translates EGO SUM QUI SUM, I am who am. The Septuagint… I am he who exists. The Syriac, the Persic, and the Chaldee preserve the original words without any gloss. The Arabic paraphrases them, The Eternal, who passes not away; which is the same interpretation given by Abul Farajius, who also preserves the original words, and gives the above as their interpretation. The Targum of Jonathan, and the Jerusalem Targum paraphrase the words thus: "He who spake, and the world was; who spake, and all things existed." As the original words literally signify, I will be what I will be, some have supposed that God simply designed to inform Moses, that what he had been to his fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he would be to him and the Israelites; and that he would perform the promises he had made to his fathers, by giving their descendants the promised land. It is difficult to put a meaning on the words; they seem intended to point out the eternity and self-existence of God. Plato, in his Parmenides, where he treats sublimely of the nature of God, says… nothing can express his nature; therefore no name can be attributed to him…
IN this chapter we have much curious and important information; but what is most interesting is the name by which God was pleased to make himself known to Moses and to the Israelites, a name by which the Supreme Being was afterwards known among the wisest inhabitants of the earth. HE who IS and who WILL BE what he IS. This is a proper characteristic of the Divine Being, who is, properly speaking, the only BEING, because he is independent and eternal; whereas all other beings, in whatsoever forms they may appear, are derived, finite, changeable, and liable to destruction, decay, and even to annihilation. When God, therefore, announced himself to Moses by this name, he proclaimed his own eternity and immateriality; and the very name itself precludes the possibility of idolatry, because it was impossible for the mind, in considering it, to represent the Divine Being in any assignable shape; for who could represent BEING or Existence by any limited form? And who can have any idea of a form that is unlimited? Thus, then, we find that the first discovery which God made of himself was intended to show the people the simplicity and spirituality of his nature; that while they considered him as BEING, and the Cause of all BEING, they might be preserved from all idolatry for ever. The very name itself is a proof of a Divine revelation; for it is not possible that such an idea could have ever entered into the mind of man, unless it had been communicated from above. It could not have been produced by reasoning, for there were no premises on which it could be built, nor any analogies by which it could have been formed. We can as easily comprehend eternity as we can being, simply considered in and of itself, when nothing of assignable forms, colours, or qualities existed, besides its infinite and illimitable self.
To this Divine discovery the ancient Greeks owed the inscription which they placed above the door of the temple of Apollo at Delphi: the whole of the inscription consisted in the simple monosyllable EI, THOU ART, the second person of the Greek substantive verb… I am. On this inscription Plutarch, one of the most intelligent of all the Gentile philosophers, made an express treatise… having received the true interpretation in his travels in Egypt, whither he had gone for the express purpose of inquiring into their ancient learning, and where he had doubtless seen these words of God to Moses in the Greek version of the Septuagint, which had been current among the Egyptians (for whose sake it was first made) about four hundred years previously to the death of Plutarch. This philosopher observes that "this title is not only proper, but peculiar to God, because HE alone is being; for mortals have no participation of true being, because that which begins and ends, and is continually changing, is never one nor the same, nor in the same state. The deity on whose temple this word was inscribed was called Apollo… from… negative… and… many, because God is ONE, his nature simple, his essence uncompounded." Hence he informs us the ancient mode of addressing God was, "EI ‘EN, Thou art One… for many cannot be attributed to the Divine nature… in which there is neither first nor last, future nor past, old nor young… but as being one, fills up in one NOW an eternal duration." And he concludes with observing that "this word corresponds to certain others on the same temple, viz.,… Know thyself; as if, under the name EI, THOU ART, the Deity designed to excite men to venerate HIM as eternally existing… and to put them in mind of the frailty and mortality of their own nature."
What beautiful things have the ancient Greek philosophers stolen from the testimonies of God to enrich their own works, without any kind of acknowledgment! And, strange perversity of man! these are the very things which we so highly applaud in the heathen copies, while we neglect or pass them by in the Divine originals! (The Adam Clarke Commentary; underline emphasis ours)
This next Biblical expositor concurs:
And God said unto Moses, I am that I am…
This signifies the real being of God, his self-existence, and that he is the Being of beings; as also it denotes his eternity and immutability, and his constancy and faithfulness in fulfilling his promises, for it includes all time, past, present, and to come; and the sense is, not only I am what I am at present, but I am what I have been, and I am what I shall be, and shall be what I am. The Platonists and Pythagoreans seem to have borrowed their (to on) from hence, which expresses with them the eternal and invariable Being; and so the Septuagint version here is (o wn): it is said, that the temple of Minerva at Sais, a city of Egypt, had this inscription on it,
“I am all that exists, is, and shall be.”
And on the temple of Apollo at Delphos was written (ei), the contraction of (eimi), "I am". Our Lord seems to refer to this name, (John 8:58), and indeed is the person that now appeared; and the words may be rendered, "I shall be what I shall be" the incarnate God, God manifest in the flesh: (The New John Gill Exposition of the Entire Bible; underline emphasis ours)
As does the following scholar:
In spite of suggestions to the contrary, such a use of the verb haya to designate existence fully agrees with what we otherwise know of the Hebrew language. Here I offer some examples in which we observe that the verb ‘to be’ is negated, signifying that a distinction was clearly perceived between existence and non-existence.
No lion shall be [lo’ haya] there (Isa 35:9).
Would that I had died before any eye had seen me,
and were as though I had not been [lo’ haya] (Job 10:18-19)
… but better than both is he who has not yet been [lo’ haya] (Eccl 4:3)
There are others who are unremembered:
They are dead, and it is as though they had never existed [lo’ haya] (Sir 44:9)
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