Sure! I am not trying to convince anyone, but I am just pointing out the inadequacies of the present "established" system of categories. Relevant to this is the proposition of the categories of the "gnomic present", "gnomic aorist", "gnomic perfect", "historical present"... Instead of those numerous categories, I proposed a more fundamental and simpler view. That is all. I mentioned that I don't have any resources, so of course it is fine with me if anyone doesn't want to consider my proposition based on my lack of evidence.Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:I find it difficult to get into your thought. It seems like you are willing to rewrite the grammar of Greek verb. There might be something in it, but it requires more than couple of internet posts. Until then I'll stick to the old one. I'll still try to understand your point, but right now I agree with Jason:
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Although I believe you think it's logically consistent in Greek, too, I don't believe it is consistent. The present tense just doesn't work that way. You still haven't shown paralles which can't be explained by well-established categories. You only explained the perfectly good explanations away by saying that conventional classification is perhaps not really valid. Not very convincing.
By the way, Jason, I don't understand what you are saying. I took all pieces into account. "πριν αβρααμ γενεσθαι" forces the situation to be in the past, in the time before Abraham, and "ειμι" was chosen to force the time in focus to be that very time, exactly as the context of a historical present forces the situation to be in the past, and the present verb was used to force the time in focus to be in the past, so that the audience is given the perspective of an observer at that time. As I said, it is fine if you disagree, but I don't think you can say that I am simply eliminating the difficult part of the sentence to produce something logically consistent in English.