Jonathan Robie wrote: ↑August 9th, 2021, 8:45 am
According to Chrysostom, this would be the normal way to write it -- without a time clash:
Πρὸ τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγὼ ἤμην
That it is written this way instead is significant:
∆ιατί δὲ μὴ εἶπε, Πρὸ τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγὼ εἰμι;
Jonathan, I agree with both points of your interpretation. However, I want to be extra careful with everything about this passage. Therefore I have to admit that what Chrysostom says about the second point is his theological interpretation and doesn't necessarily tell us that εἰμι couldn't have been natural, too (to be exact you didn't say anything about that, either, only that it's "significant"). But at least this tells us that a Greek speaker saw the imperfect as a natural option, contra some modern interpreters who claim that the present tense was the only option.
Rolf Furuli says in
https://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-g ... 33137.html:
the question is whether Jesus' use of Greek present in John 8:58 is strange
or unusual. My answer is No, because he hardly had any other choice
when he should describe a state which held before a point in the past
and still held.
Wrong: he had a good choice.
Whether the present tense was a natural choice, too, is a different matter and must be argued by other means. You (Jonathan) and Barry described the problem you saw in the grammar in more grammatical terms while Stephen described it in more linguistic terms. My explanation is maybe between them, but I think the phenomenon is the same for all of us. We all have an uneasy feeling about the grammar because of the time clash.