No, I think it's fair to say that it is NOT the standard Greek way of
saying "yes."
>Am wondering if there is possibly more to it than the English
>translations seem to indicate. Is this a way Christ has of intentionally
>veiling some of His glory to His nonbelieving accusers? If He intended
>to simply answer "yes," then why didn't He say something like, EGW EIMI,
>or EIMI?
This is one of those questions that seems to me fun to speculate about but
hard to say anything very definitive about. I've read a number of comments
on this question but have never found any of them particularly convincing.
>Is there not a simpler way of saying "yes" in Greek?
NAI. Yes, that's the word, the normal word, and it even appears in the NT
in the passage cited by Jonathan and glossed by myself in the chicken-liver
exchange of last night. There's also the old standard Platonic
conversational response to a question demanding a "yes" answer: PWS GAR OU?
or "What else?"
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/