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Tue May 3 10:41:24 EDT 2011


tense taking the place of a perfect. The imperfect would not have been
appropriate, because it is used either as a background description or with a
past-and-not-present tense notion. The perfect notion of being in the past
and also being in the present seems to require a present tense form of EIMI,
because the perfect does not exist.

If this is correct, the translation might be something like: "I was there
already before Abraham came into being" or "I have been around since before
Abraham" or "Before Abraham came into being, I was already existing".

I am aware that this verse is often translated into ungrammatical English,
but I am not convinced that the Greek text is ungrammatical. I am willing to
be corrected, though, by grammatical and linguistic reasoning.

Iver Larsen




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