John 1:4

ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἐστιν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων

ἐν preposition dative "in"

αὐτῷ pronoun dative masculine singular "him"

ζωὴ noun nominative feminine singular "life"

ἐστιν verb present indicative 3rd singular from eimi "is"

καὶ conjunction "and"

ἡ definite article nominative feminine singular "the"

ζωὴ noun nominative feminine singular "life"

ἦν verb imperfect indicative 3rd singular from eimi "was"

τὸ definite article nominative neuter singular "the"

φῶς noun nominative neuter singular "light"

τῶν definite article genative plural "the"

ἀνθρώπων noun genative masculine plural "of men"

Rough Translation:
in him life is and the life was the light the of men

Smooth Translation:
In him is life and the life was the light of men.

Comments and Questions:
Is there any significance to ἐστιν being present indicative?
Is this "historic present"? Most translations seem to treat it this way.
It is a "continuous" tense. Could John be pointing out that life is continuously in Jesus?


Note: UBS4 does not use ἐστιν here, but rather it uses ἦν, it appears that the version used by greekbiblestudy.org does.
This is a textual issue that is discussed by Wieland Wilker at http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/index.html in his pdf on John.