Stephen Carlson wrote:John 3:13 wrote:καὶ οὐδεὶς ἀναβέβηκεν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν εἰ μὴ ὁ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καταβάς, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.
Madison N. Pierce and Benjamin E. Reynolds ... argue that the perfect ἀναβέβηκεν is really an imperfective, which they translate with a simple English present "no one ascends to heaven
Thoughts on the article or the perfect more generally?
That is not the only "simple" English present that it could be translated by - actually the English present is not simple. Let me explain what I think about the artificial constraints that the perfect is made to labour under to get transformed into English.
The first problem is that the grammar (that I learnt at least) said that it was up to the addition of auxiliaries - which students had to add - to bring out the sense of the perfect. Like what synthetic construction of English can be used to bring out the sense of the perfect. It's like asking someone to take a look at the sunrise but insisting that they don't get out of bed - if they are lucky enough to have a bed facing east across from the window then good and well, otherwise the followance of such a stipulation requires stretching and/or contortion into unnatural arrangements. In the example question that Randall asked three people the bed is under the window - the English word "stand"
happens to have both the meaning of "get to the upright position" and "be in the upright position". For other sequences of verbs like this one in this verse that you have read the article about, the next logical step after "go up to heaven (on his own steam)" is "be in heaven (after getting there on his own steam)" - Enoch, Elijah, perhaps other may be there too after a bodily ascension, but they were simply taken there. By using the perfect of a verb of automotion here, the unique quality of the Son of Man is that He got himself there. The "simple" English present that I would use to translate this perfect "ἀναβέβηκεν εἰς" is "is in". Also when considering this verse you are interested in, there is the old question of "Who said this? Jesus or the narrator?". To my limited understading it is the narrator, so the time that it is said it after the resurrection and ascension. If it was Jesus speaking, then he would be referring to somebody else that was in heaven, called the Son of Man, who was not himself, but a thought like that is tomfoolery and nonsense.
It seems that the perfect could be translated as the next verb in the natural / understood sequence of the actions, not all these strange un-English-like conglomerations that were in traditional grammars. The loss of the perfect (relatively soon after the NT times) is quite simply the expression of the next step using its own appropriate verb. The pronoun "εἰς" that in the perfect of this verb of motion, has (for us in Koine) the sense of "in" was used too in this "stationary" sense.
What is needed to teach the [erfect in this way is to locate verbs within their natual sequences. That is of course spelt out well for οἶδα whose next logical verb to express what comes after "to see" is to "know". That is not the exception it is an example of the norm which was unable to be grammaticised over - presumably because "to have seen" was too very vague. Verbs need to be learnt in their groups expressing the parts of a greater action (within their taxonomical order). Of course in different situations the next logical verb in a sequence will be different. In general, despict this way of grammaticising the "tense" with unnatural constructions, so that the student doesn't have to use another basic verb in English, translations are fairly understandable, but the natural English (and Modern Greek) way is to use it's own verb for the next verb in sequence.