Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
Who art thou? (Su tiv ei). Proleptic use of su before tiv, "Thou, who art thou?" Cf. John 1:19. He had virtually claimed to be the Messiah and on a par with God as in John 5:15. They wish to pin him down and to charge him with blasphemy.
Even that which I have also spoken unto you from the beginning (thn arxhn oti kai lalw umin). A difficult sentence. It is not clear whether it is an affirmation or a question. The Latin and Syriac versions treat it as affirmative. Westcott and Hort follow Meyer and take it as interrogative. The Greek fathers take it as an exclamation. It seems clear that the adverbial accusative thn arxhn cannot mean "from the beginning" like ap arxhv (John 15:27) or ec arxhv (John 16:4). The LXX has thn arxhn for "at the beginning" or "at the first" (Genesis 43:20). There are examples in Greek, chiefly negative, where thn arxhn means "at all," "essentially," "primarily." Vincent and Bernard so take it here, "Primarily what I am telling you." Jesus avoids the term Messiah with its political connotations. He stands by his high claims already made.
Other Robertson's Word Pictures (NT) entries containing John 8:25:
John 10:24
John 19:9
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