I AM speaking to you
Isaiah 43:1-7
1 But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.
4 Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you,
peoples in exchange for your life.
5 Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you;
6 I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Do not withhold;
bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 every one who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
15 As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,[a Greek ὁ χριστός] 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with[b, Greek ἐν] the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
21 Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”[c]
Footnotes
[a] 3.15 Or the Christ
[b] 3.16 Or in
[c] 3.22 Other ancient authorities read You are my Son, today I have begotten you
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The Isaiah reading sets the stage that whoever owns you has the right to name or rename you, thus, in the gospel, the voice from heaven, God, claiming and naming Jesus as Son.
The alternate and likely older wording of Luke 3:22, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you" is lifted verbatim from Psalm 2:7, which has the anointed king claiming adoption as son of God, a common honorific for the Davidic kings, son of David, son of God. Some translations (SV) render 3:22b a little more startlingly, And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; today I have become your Father."
In the likely oldest manuscript, Codex Bezae, Luke 3:22 reads Today have I begotten you. Which causes problems for the church - - calls Luke's own nativity story into question; different from what the voice at Jesus' baptism says in Mark; at odds the Prologue of John; problems for the church's creedal doctrine of Jesus Christ as the eternally begotten Son of God and Jesus Christ the Word as God the Son. It is reasonable to conclude that the early church edited Luke 3:22 to conform with other gospel readings and with church doctrine.
What did the voice from heaven actually say? It depends on whose story you are reading. Mark has the voice say to Jesus, "You are my beloved Son." Matthew has the voice speaking to the crowd, "This is my beloved Son." Luke likely had the voice say, "today I have begotten you." All this becomes an issue if one is a literalist inerrantist who panics at differences.
What was the source of the voice? To the flat earth gospel writers who saw Jesus lifted bodily into the clouds and beyond, i.e., heaven, the voice came from just beyond the clouds, not an issue. A twenty-first century person who has looked through a telescope might take the story skeptically.
Anyone who has personally heard the voice of I AM might not puzzle over where the voice came from, satisfied that, notwithstanding all the scientific considerations, there was a voice, a voice was heard.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
Images. Top, classroom poster available online. Bottom: image from JWST.