Scott Lawson wrote: ↑August 1st, 2021, 3:55 pm
I can’t concede that Jesus didn’t have the glory he had at the time before the world was.
Maybe you misread what I wrote? Jesus having the glory before the world was is what is stated explicitly. But implictly it continues even after the world began to exist. My point is that choosing between the imperfect and present tense doesn't depend on how the event happens in extralinguistic world, i.e. using imperfect doesn't mean that the event is actually limited to the past. Therefore "I was" would have been proper in John 8:58 even though Jesus' existence continued after Abraham.
John 17:5 uses the imperfect in the main clause because
And again I think εἶναι is a forced choice because there isn’t a full paradigm of forms to choose from.
There are now different passages quoted in different posts, and previous posts quoted and answered so that the result is difficult to follow. Therefore I try to be explicit about which passage I'm talking about. Please clarify which εἶναι is a forced choice in your opinion and in which way. In John 8:58 we need to choose only from two options, present and imperfect, and missing paradigms or other words which are used for missing paradigms are irrelevant.
And there is a circularity between the temporal preposition and the main verb. I don’t think you can say one causes the other. It’s just the way it works. But the main verb does influence the time of the infinitive in the subordinate temporal clause.
What you have been saying about this is now probably sinking in. Because a certain form is used in the main clause you could expect certain form in the other clause. I just would rather say it's expectation for interpreting the forms, not that it for example "influences the time". But interpreting language isn't so simple. Knowledge about extralinguistic world affects it, too, and that's why I have insisted that we know Abraham was born in the past which causes certain interpretation. No grammar can change that, and that's why we can't interpret "whenever Abraham is born, I already exist before that".
Compare this with Matthew 6:8 in Daniel's post. There's no unique event of asking we can see there. Therefore both the infinitive aorist and the present main verb are interpreted more generically, maybe gnomically and/or iteratively.
That's why my request for parallels must narrow down the πριν + infinitive to those instances where the event referred to by the infinitive is known to be in the past. Only that way it limits the time of the main verb to the past and we can see if the present tense can be used there.
EDIT: I called οιδα present. It's partly because this thread is so exhausting and I may make mistakes, but I don't regret because it's practically a present. (It's a fossilized word which in my opinion shouldn't be used at all when semantics of the perfect tense is discussed.)