Then said they unto him, Who art thou? — They ask the question in the tone of scorn which they have already expressed in John 8:22. The pronoun is the emphatic word: “Thou, who art thou?” and the phrase was in frequent use 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, and 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 art thou?” We have again, as in John 8:19, to note the attempt to draw from Him some definite statement which may be made the ground of a technical charge; but this He again avoids.
And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto 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 fulness would be to encumber the page with details which would be unintelligible to the general reader; to discuss it with anything but fulness would be unsatisfactory to the student. There is little room for addition to the investigations which 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. 581-2), gives in a few words nearly all that can be said on the grammatical difficulty. After a careful consideration of the whole matter, it is believed, though not without hesitation, that the rendering, which is 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.” (Comp. John 8:58.) “Can it be that you ask this?”