More context please!

The particular phrase "the powers that be" is still standard BE, AFAIK.

"Oh yes we be" sounds somehow familiar but non-standard dialect to my ears. I think of someone with a Devon (?) or Somerset (?) accent contradicting a statement by someone else (Sind wir doch!). Or did you have a different meaning/context in mind.

"the powers thet be" is still used as a set phrase:

"Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
Gore Vidal Delivers State of the Union: "Let the Powers That Be Know There is Something Called We the People of the U.S. and all Sovereignty Rests in Us."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06...

"Oh yes, we be" might be used in a joking way with rustic accent but I wouldn't say is standard.

Morning Mike E. - once again you are faster. Must improve my typing skills...

@Marianne
Do we get a point for that?

Still, glad to see "great minds think alike".

As you may have noticed from other contributions, my secret is to correct the spelling and punctuation after clicking on "Send".

I grew up in Devon and the farmers used to say "'Er be .... ". In fact, most inanimate objects were referred to as "'er". (Her) (The word "she" was not in their vocabulary")

Blackadder: Tell me, young crone, is this Putney?
Young Crone: That it be! That it be!
Blackadder: [correcting] "Yes it is", not "that it be."

I have just found in an Etymology Dictonary:
"The only non dialectical survival of the be in this sense is the power that be. But in Southwest England, we be (in Devonshire us be)remains non-standard idiom as a contradictory positive ("You people aren't speaking correct English." "Oh, yes we be!"
Aren't, contradiction of are not, is first recorded 1794.

I think the two examples given here are very different grammatically.

"The powers that be" is a biblical quotation from the chapter 13 of the Epistle to the Romans, in which St. Paul says (in the King James Version): ?Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.? This is a present subjunctive form of the verb 'to be.' Basically, St. Paul is saying that any government/authority that might exist [note the subjunctive] on earth is ordained by God.

The present subjunctive still exists in modern English, but it is becoming rare. Modern translations of this passage do not use a subjunctive form. Most people just substitute the present tense for the present subjuctive, partly because for most verbs, the two forms are identical except in the third person singular (there is no 's' on the present subjunctive in the third person singular). The highly irregular verb 'to be' is the verb with the most distinctive present subjunctive form, and so its appearance in modern texts strikes many people as strange.

The most common occurence of the present subjunctive for the verb 'to be' is probably when people quote the famous line "the powers that be" from the King james translation of Paul's epistle. This has become a set phrase, and most people do not understand its grammatical construction.

I am not familar with the "oh, yes we be" phrase, but it does not appear to be a subjunctive form.

Certain dialects in the United States, mainly concentrated in the Black community, use a verb form with "be." Apparently the origin of this construction is from African languages spoken by the slaves imported from Africa. So it does not have anything to do with either the present subjunctive form or (presumably) any dialects in England.

@Jenny: We ought to mention that the negative of "er be" is "er baint". I know you'll understand this exchange;-):
Wur be gwain?
I baint gwain nowur.
Well ee must be gwain zumwur.
No I baint. I be gwain 'ome.

@Hermann: Aren't is not the contradiction, but the contraction of "are not"; the contradiction would be "(we) are", or, in your example, "oh yes, we be". The last sentence in your comment therefore doesn't really have anything to do with "we be" (it would have to say when the use of "we be" was first recorded instead).