What is a good way to translate ではある?

Question

I came across the following sentence at one point.

もともとおかしな話ではあった。

I did some research on ではある, because I wanted to understand this term better. This is what I found.

• The difference between “ではある” and “である” and “です”?
• Weblio entry on “ではある”

The answers in the first link indicate that “ではある” is an “X is Y” statement, but it implies that there is a slight possibility that “X is not Y”.

The Weblio entry indicates that the “は” in “ではある” is the “contrastive は”.

Since the above sentence is a comment on a statement that someone made, I think some possible translations are as follows.

It was an odd statement from the first, but maybe it wasn’t.

It might or might not be an odd statement from the first.

I think I have the right idea, but I have to admit nuances can be difficult to translate. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

EDIT:

The context goes something like this:

A club of high school students attack one high school student. But that student beats the stuffing out of them. Emi, the club leader, is the only one among them left standing. Furious, she says to the high school student, 「冷子、あんたタダの漫研じゃないね！？」(“Reiko, you aren’t just CA, are you!?”) Then the narrator says もともとおかしな話ではあった。The narration also explains the context surrounding Emi's statement.

Does this help in answering the question?

Answer 1

After seeing the context I think it means...

"Come to think of it now, there was something fishy/strange about it from the beginning (but we somehow followed the command)."

The は is contrastive. It marks, or limits, the "scope" of であった. (部分的な肯定?) It's like "I must admit that it sounded strange/fishy, at least partially/to some extent, if not totally."

Similar use of this は:

「反対か賛成かと問われれば、賛成ではある。」(implying "not fully agree")
「免許は、持ってはいます。」(implying "don't drive")
「結婚したいと思ってはいます。」(implying そんなに強く思ってない or でも特に何もしてない)

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I don't think the 話 is "statement", but the 話 in phrases like 「ばかげた話だ」、「変な話だ」、「ひどい話だ」 etc.

まったく、ひどい話だ！ "That's terrible!"
ばかげた話だ！ "That's absurd!" "That's utter nonsense!"

Answer 2

To answer your question in the simplest way, I'd say "では" is a formal way of answering. ではある literally means "It was / There was" (pointing towards an inanimate / non-existent objects hence, ある, animate objects are described as いる).
i.e. If i wanted to say "my best friend is not an otaku" i'd say, 友人がオタクではないです (いない)

There's one more way translate it if you're using the kanji form 出会った (であった, meeting) but that's simply not the case here

Answer 3

There could be multiple ways of understing this. One way to make sense of it (perhaps a bit contrived) is to regard the part ending in で as a single object (a noun clause). The particle は turns that whole object into the topic of the sentence.

For example おかしな話で would mean "the fact of its being a strange statement"　（the specific meaning of 話 depends on context so I will adopt your translation as "statement"). The は particle tells us that such fact is the topic of the sentence, and あった tells us something about that fact -- that it existed.

If you include　もともと, then もともとあった　means that this fact existed in the origin. So the full meaning is "its being a strange statement originally existed", which is certainly a weaker assertion than "it was a stange statement", as would have been であった。

You can think of the standard negative ではありません in the same way. The opposite of your sentence, i.e. おかしな話ではなかった means "its being a strange statement didn't exist." But the negative affords the more direct translation "it wasn't a strange statement", perhaps because of the stronger effect of a negative form.