John 9:9
John 9:99Some claimed that he was, but others said, “No, he just looks like him.” But the man kept saying, “I am the one.”
JWs cite this verse to argue that egō eimi is an ordinary phrase with no inherent divine weight. The man Jesus healed of blindness uses egō eimi to identify himself, and clearly he is not claiming to be God. Therefore (the argument runs) Jesus' egō eimi statements in and 8:58 must also be ordinary self- identification, and the divine-name claim Trinitarians read into them is forced.
Context determines meaning. The blind man uses egō eimi as simple identification: "That's me." Jesus uses it without a predicate, in solemn covenant-making contexts, where the hearers respond with stones or a treason charge. The NWT itself acknowledges this difference by rendering the same Greek phrase differently in different mouths — "I am he" in 9:9 (the man's defensible self-ID), "I am the one" in 8:24 (the supplied predicate that diffuses Jesus' claim), and the unique past-tense paraphrase "I have been" at 8:58 (the verse the NWT works hardest to soften). Same Greek, three different renderings — all driven by which divine-claim weight the translation needs to admit at each point. The blind man's egō eimi proves nothing about the others because nobody picked up stones in response to him.
The NWT renders the man's egō eimi here as "I am he" — defensible self-identification. But the same egō eimi at becomes "I am the one," and at 8:58 becomes "I have been." The inconsistency is theologically motivated: where ordinary self- identification is in view, the NWT translates ordinarily; where the absolute divine self-disclosure is in view, the NWT smooths the Greek into something less weighty. Compare in your own NWT.