Stop Misreading the Bible: Exodus 3: 14 does NOT say "I AM THAT I AM."

How much of your theology is based upon what God said to Moses in Exodus 3: 14, "I AM THAT I AM"? 

This passage has not a thing in the world to do with God's "name"; it has to do with his nature. The word shem, translated as "name," actually means nature.

Moses was a student of miraculous increase, of creation. The word jethro means "jutting-over, exceedingly abundant increase." Such increase was what Mose thought about "24/7," as we say nowadays, indicated by his "wife" zipporah, a constantly chirping little bird. 

God is saying, "It's my nature."

The word AHYH, translated as "I AM," means "the One Who Comes in His Coming," the absolute sense of  "the One Who Comes."* It is distinctly FIRST person and has to do with the process of transition. The word YHWH means "his becoming." It is distinctly THIRD person and also indicates a process of transition. The two transitions are the patterns of this process: "I come," and "he, she or it becomes." These two are God's eternal nature. (* This definition according to Victor Alexander, as noted in his translation of Exodus 3: 14 from the ancient Aramaic, see v-a.com.)


The link between these two transitions is Ashur: "the Beginning Spark that kindles the Fire" or "the Light"--"the Uncreated Creator who Creates Everything from Nothing." Ashur also signifies "Above-the-Flames” (which is the Hebrew designation for God, Elohim).

I believe that Moses was in a meditation (horeb) and God was speaking to him as his own imagination. Where does increase come from? Imagination is "the uncreated creator who creates everything from nothing" by its own spark or heat of desire. By his desire the Ineffable Most High God becomes manifest as the expansion of ourselves, the provision of abundant increase which saves us from need. Need is unlike God, so it is a variance from his nature: it is "sin." Moses gives us a Gospel of salvation from sin.

Here are some other ways we might translate Exodus 3:14 and read a more accurate basis for which the Bible was written:

"I become whatever is desired or needed by the powerful fire of imagination."
"I myself come through the passionate heat of desire as what you need."
"By intense heat of imagination I myself manifest as answer to your need."
"My desire to transcend is the creator of life in your world."

It seems to me that if God is our imagination, then the "I" in "I come (as your need's fulfillment)" is Moses' imagination itself. OUR imagination is the creator of our worlds. See Victor Alexander's translation of Ephesians 4: 7-8, "To each one of us, however, He gave us grace according to their measure in appreciating the Messiah. Because of that it is said [in Scriptures,] 'He ascends to the highest, He furnishes a resting place and He grants rewards to humanity.'"

EVIDENCE

Adam is the portrait of God. Adam's root is adam-tha: portrait. Adam also indicates the divine life, as the word dam means blood and aleph deity. The divine life, Adam, has a focused, intense, passionate desire, "heat" as it were, a "rib." Life's "rib" becomes "mother" of the living manifestation of what was desired. There is no man or woman in the story: life itself desires to become, and is what it becomes. This isn't hidden; this is the story plainly read.

Noah retreats into his ark with all of life (noah, rest; argo, continence). This is meditation. Facts flood the world, but he has desired a new world. His sons are shem, nature; ham, heat; and japheth, expansion. These are not human children, these are the nature of what is desired, the intensity of desiring, and the corresponding increase.

This barely scratches the surface.