Putting the Mystery Where it Belongs: History and John 8

The problem with developmental approaches to Christology is the absence, however early we look, of the thing we think we know must be there--a group of Christians gathered round the testimony of a powerful prophet, risen from the dead and vindicated by God, but not himself divine. A common response to, eg., Jesus' statement in John 8 that "before Abraham was, I am," is to construe these words as later retrojections of Christian convictions into the mouth of Jesus.

I do quite often find myself wondering
why God is sooo stubborn. Now I have it!

A significant problem for this thesis is that the conviction seems so clearly to predate commonly given dates for John's gospel. Time and space do not permit of much more than proof texts, but it is worth mentioning the reworking of the Shema around Jesus in 1 Cor. 8:6, by a man who knew Jesus' very first followers somewhat intimately. The relation that Paul conceives of believers having with Jesus (so argues Chris Tilling anyway), has only one analogue--namely, that between Israel and YHWH.

In Luke (even at the later datings of it), Zechariah is said to prophesy over his son that that he will "go before the Lord" to prepare his way. In the late second century, Clement of Alexandria refers to the cross as "the sign of the Lord." And Alexamenos' graffito mocks the credulous Alex's piety to his God (σεβετε θεον). It is hard, then, to see just which period's views are being retrojected into Jesus' mouth in John 8. Is it the period of Paul and the first followers? Is it those of the second century inheritors of the apostles' testimony?

And here's the real question. If there is no period between the earliest Jesus movement and those of later times in which one can't find the statements that truly apply to Israel's God being used to explain who Jesus is, what is there to prevent us from thinking that the reason John reports Jesus to have said ego eimi is simply that he did in fact say it? Rather than posit a whole host of incredible, inexplicable, and unevidenced developments, let us put the mystery where it belongs, in the mouth of one whose followers told his story precisely because of the bizarre and wondrous things he did and taught (Acts 1:1).