Grammar is politics by another name. I find myself returning to the clash of verb tenses in the discussion about divine authority and life in the gospel of John, 8:58: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” I should say: grammar becomes politics. The linguist Jean Gagnepain puts it more clearly. Grammar is something implicit and part of the dialectical framing of human activities, whereas discourse (rhetoric) is the emerged part, the visible, negotiated, partial, political therefore, reinvestment of our implicit capacity for grammar. And so the question is, what politics engendered the saying attributed by the author to Jesus in his discussions with the specialists of the time of divine authority? Ἐγὼ δαιμόνιον οὐκ ἔχω, ἀλλὰ τιμῶ τὸν πατέρα μου, ὑμεῖς ἀτιμάζετὲ με. “I have not a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me.” Does the ensuing discussion about Abraham and genetic understanding of history not signify and excuse the control of men and women at work in the engine-rooms of history: Ἀβραάμ ἀπέθανεν καὶ οἱ προφῆται… σὺ μείζων εἶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν Ἀβρααμ, ὅστις ἀπέθανεν; τίνα σεαυτὸν ποιεῖς; “Abraham died, as did the prophets; […] Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? Who do you claim to be?” … Abraham and the prophets died. There is finality to this death, which seals the expression of divine will and vision of history that we inherited from them. From Ezra on (or what Ezra stands for, no matter the chronological precision for now), the proclamation of the text engenders a dynamics of interpretation from which no one can escape. See Yerushalmi, “Réflexions sur l’oubli,” in: Usages de l’oubli (Paris, 1988: pages 7–21, 15). The expressions of divine will that one gets in the law, in its correct, on-going interpretation, or in the visions of the prophets, they are all at two removes from the original, as in politics.

The answer put into Jesus’ mouth is meant to be reactive if not rebellious, no doubt. It is anti-genetic, even though it uses fatherhood as the exclusive image of ultimate authority: πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί. “Before Abraham was, I am.” Two twists on tenses: an infinitive (aorist middle) after a conjunction, and this present forever tense, the contrary of an aorist. The clash of tenses is one thing, the choice of verbs another indication of the tension between a temporary existence, a being that died, and a being that has no predictable past and future. A being that claims not so much eternity as the right to go beyond the politically convenient adaptation to the “conditions of life.” It’s not so much the dualism of the inchoate Christian doctrine that is at stake for this author, with its forever refinable hope for an eternal life beyond Abraham, a hope within the mean-, un-redeemed time, justifying the hiccups and bogging down of political discussion and action into this aoristic world reduced to a succession of moments. In a single-substanced world, however, the present tense of eimi, I am, is not only a claim of direct access to divine will. It is calling for a history in the present and the renegotiation of all sclerotic political deals.