I see your point. If verse 5 contained clauses which were dependent upon
verse 4 then I would need to translate FAINEI in relative time as a
historical present "the light was shining in the darkness" (which is exactly
what I first attempted to do at first). But by understanding this instead
as an independent clause then I can now translate FAINEI in absolute time
from the reference point of John who says: "the light is/has been shining".
The reason that I at first was reading verse 5 as a dependent clause was
because I felt that verses 1 - 3 focused on the time of creation while
verses 4 and 5 were changing the focus to the time of incarnation... but I
can see now that translating FAINEI as a historical present would be a
mistake.
Rich Lindeman