The past tense prediction of Mark 13.19-20.

[rakovsky]

Mark 13.19-20: 19 "For those days will be [ἔσονται, future indicative] a time of tribulation such as has not occurred [γέγονεν, perfect indicative] since the beginning of the creation which God created, until now, and never should [καὶ οὐ μὴ γένηται, aorist subjunctive]. 20 And if the Lord had not shortened [ἐκολόβωσεν, aorist indicative] those days, all flesh would not have been saved [οὐκ ἂν ἐσώθη, aorist indicative]; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened [ἐκολόβωσεν, aorist indicative] the days."

I took it to mean that the days WILL BE a tribulation, and if the Lord had not chosen to shorten these coming days, then the flesh would not have been saved. As a result, he shortened those days that are going to happen.

I don't see any grammar or conceptual problem when expressed in English at least.

Analogy:
A festival with free beer is coming next month, and if the festival organizers hasn't shortened the dates for the festival, we would have been dangerously drunk out of our minds to the point of catastrophe.

[Ben C. Smith]

Mark 13.19-20: 19 "For those days will be [ἔσονται, future indicative] a time of tribulation such as has not occurred [γέγονεν, perfect indicative] since the beginning of the creation which God created, until now, and never should [καὶ οὐ μὴ γένηται, aorist subjunctive]. 20 And if the Lord had not shortened [ἐκολόβωσεν, aorist indicative] those days, all flesh would not have been saved [οὐκ ἂν ἐσώθη, aorist indicative]; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened [ἐκολόβωσεν, aorist indicative] the days."

I took it to mean that the days WILL BE a tribulation, and if the Lord had not chosen to shorten these coming days, then the flesh would not have been saved. As a result, he shortened those days that are going to happen.

I don't see any grammar or conceptual problem when expressed in English at least.

Analogy:
A festival with free beer is coming next month, and if the festival organizers hasn't shortened the dates for the festival, we would have been dangerously drunk out of our minds to the point of catastrophe.

I disagree with the fitness of your example, even in English; "would have been" clearly marks the state of being drunk as a past tense event that never came to pass. Can you find a past contrary-to-fact condition being used of a future event in real texts (not just something you made up for the occasion)?

The best way, in English, of expressing a future contrary-to-fact status with a past condition is probably just to use a mixed condition: "If the organizers had not limited the number of days, we would be drunk by the time the festival ends." This mixed condition borrows its apodosis from a future-less-vivid conditional statement (should/would) and its protasis from the past contrary-to-fact. Greek has mixed conditions, too (in fact, most Greek conditions are mixed).

However, I will readily grant this much: most people are not very grammatically "up" on conditional statements. So it is possible that somebody might be forced by lack of knowledge to use a form which is not quite fitting for the context. That may be the case here. My OP was presenting an option that does not depend upon poor syntax or grammar.

[Ben C. Smith]

(Also, to be clear, as I mentioned to Bernard recently, there is no problem with God shortening a future set of days in the past. That is fine, just like it is fine for festival organizers to limit the number of days of the festival in advance. The problem is that "no one would have been saved" is, on its face, a statement of what happened in the past.)

[rakovsky]

The Russian Orthodox translators in Russia translated it this way:
И если бы Господь не сократил тех дней, то не спаслась бы никакая плоть; но ради избранных, которых Он избрал, сократил те дни.

If the Lord hadn't shortened those days, then no flesh wouldn't have been saved; but for the sake of the chosen, which he chose, he shortened those days.

That's word for word "no flesh wouldn't have been saved", but Russian uses a double negative, so you can make it "no flesh would have been saved" or "the flesh wouldn't have been saved".

I understand what the phrases mean, although Yes for all I know this could be considered by someone to be bad grammar. The phrases mean to me that God chose to shorten the days of trouble, and that if he hadn't chosen to shorten them, then no flesh would have been saved. But he did make that decision to shorten the days, so at least some flesh will be saved.

You are also dealing with a religious sect that likes to think alot about God as outside of time, so I foresee that sometimes weird sounding expressions will come up. And then you have weird conceptual chronological situations that arise out of Biblical thought, like how the future of people can be foreknown and foreordained and yet people can still have free will for their futures. Or like how God supposedly doesn't change his mind according to the Old Testament, and yet told Jonah that Nineveh would get destroyed by Him, but then when Nineveh repented, God decided not to destroy Nineveh even though he said that he would destroy it.

So God can be existing right now before and after the end of the world, and at the beginning he decided to limit the days of trouble, and then looking back after its end, he can see that if he hadn't made that merciful decision, "then no flesh would have been saved".

[rakovsky]

The problem is that "no one would have been saved" is, on its face, a statement of what happened in the past.)

I know what you mean. My guess is that Jesus is trying to express himself in a prophetic way, as if he is the Alpha and Omega, able to view events by spiritually going outside time, and looking back at the tribulation, even though he is talking to people who are hearing him in 33 AD.
Remember, this is the same teacher who considered the verb in the statement in the Bible "I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, etc." instead of "I WAS THE GOD OF ABRAHAM" to be a major proof that Abraham et. al are still alive.

[Ben C. Smith]

After considering it a bit, rakovsky, in a way you may be right; it may not, however, be so much about the passage trying to sound prophetic, as such; it may be more about the passage sounding Semitic:

Judges 8.19 LXX: 19 And Gideon said, "They were my brothers, the sons of my mother. As the Lord lives, if you had let them live, I would not have killed you."

Gideon says this immediately before Zebah and Zalmunna are dead, as if the act of killing them is a done deal in his mind (though not yet in the real world). The Greek of this passage uses a conditional sentence similar to what we find in Mark 13.20; it is actually a mixed condition (like I said, most are), but the apodosis is that of a past contrafactual (same as the entire condition in Mark 13.20). Now, it is not the Greek that is relevant here, however, since it is actually just a faithful rendering of the underlying Hebrew conditional, which uses לוּ + the perfect in the protasis and the perfect in apodosis: a simple (textbook) Hebrew past contrafactual condition.

Either (A) contrafactuals using the perfect both in the protasis and in the apodosis in Hebrew can express present or future contingencies (and I admit a search of 10-12 of them has yielded no examples yet) or (B) Gideon has expressed in the past tense, dramatically, something that is about to happen in the immediate future. And I think I have seen examples of this "done deal" sort of writing in other Hebrew contexts. I will have to consider that a bit more and come back to this.

[rakovsky]

I think that in Russian there may be no difference between present and past conditionals. The conditionals are always in the past.

Literally it's always "If the weather was good, I would gone to the store", never "I would go to the store", even if that is what is meant.

[Ben C. Smith]

Subject: Let the reader understand... Again

I haven't given Ben's case the attention it deserves, and haven't really spent much time on it, but I would want to account for the shift in tense between Mark 13.19 & 20 differently. I hope I have Ben's position right in what follows. Verse 19 is a predictive prophecy of the future. But then verse 20 seems to be an accomplished fact in the past.

As it appears, yes.

We seem to be shifting from a predictive prophecy in v. 19, to an accomplished fact in v. 20. So it sounds like v. 20 might be a later addition by someone who had seen the tribulation and it turned out not to be as bad a described in v. 19. My problem with this interpretation is that we're dealing with God and prophecy here. God can give a prophetic timeline and then alter the prophetic timeline. This happens in 2 Kings 20.1-6.

....

Returning to Mark, verse 20 may just mean that, for the sake of the elect, God has shortened the period of tribulation that had originally been foretold. It doesn't necessarily mean the period of tribulation has already happened; it's merely being foretold to be shorter. This is, in a way, the same thing as Ben is suggesting, except that the human author need not have lived through the event to know that God shortened it.

As I mentioned to Bernard some time ago on a different thread (things can get scattered on the forum sometimes, sorry), I have no issue with God shortening in the past a period of time which has yet to happen in the future. This is not too terribly different than the motif we find elsewhere of cutting short the current time period (the one in which the author and readers are living):

1 Corinthians 7.29-31: 29 But this I say, brethren, the season has been shortened [ὁ καιρὸς συνεσταλμένος ἐστίν], so that from now on those who have wives should be as though they had none; 30 and those who weep, as though they did not weep; and those who rejoice, as though they did not rejoice; and those who buy, as though they did not possess; 31 and those who use the world, as though they did not make full use of it; for the form of this world is passing away.

Paul here uses (a periphrastic form of) the perfect tense, quite appropriately in my view, since the time period which has been shortened is obviously the present time period from his point of view. But I see no real difference between God cutting short (in the past) the present time period and God cutting short (in the past) a future time period (in our case, the time of tribulation). If that is all we had to reckon with in Mark 13.20, all would be well (from my point of view).

I can foresee two objections here (though I expect there are many more). In the 1 Kings passage, the prayer of Hezekiah intervenes in between the prophecy he would die and the prophecy he would live, whereas in Mark nothing intervenes, it's just stated that God did it "for the elect." There I would argue that this may be Mark's way of communicating how much god loves the elect or he may be aware of an earlier prophecy (like Daniel) which he needs to reinterpret to make the arrival of the eschaton more immanent. One might counter-argue that both of these can actually be incorporated into Ben's position, but are not strong enough to stand by themselves, and therefore Ben's explanation gives a stronger account of the data.

Verse 20 is a bit sudden. It does carry with it its own explanation (God did it in order to spare the elect), however. This suddenness, on its own, would probably not be enough to make me suggest other options.

Second, it isn't just that the days that have been shortened, but that all flesh would not have been saved, which implies some flesh has been saved.

This is the heart of the matter, yes.

But then we're talking about the notorious already/not yet problem in regard to salvation in the New Testament. Are Christians saved already or will they be saved at the judgment? The answer seems to be both, which is why NT scholars love to use the word "proleptic' (the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished).

Let me grant for the sake of argument the theological significance of the word "save" (σῴζω) in 13.20. The usage in 13.13 seems to carry theological weight, but that salvation comes across as strictly future, and not in a proleptic way. Thing is, though, it comes across in much the same way in 13.20: strictly past, but still not in a proleptic way. Had Mark played around with the notion of whether one can be considered "saved" before the end, we would have to deal with the already/not yet issue. But in both verses, 13 and 20, Mark envisions a period of testing with salvation at the end of it. The only difference is that both this period of testing and the salvation at the end of it are in the future tense in the former verse and in the past tense in the latter. (I am not sure that the already/not yet issue ever really arises in Mark.)

The instance of "saved" in 13.20, however, may well be more literal, may it not? We may be pouring too much theology into the word. Mark is perfectly capable of using this word in the more mundane sense of saving one's life or health (as opposed to dying or continuing to suffer disease), as in 3.4; 5.23, 28, 34; 6.56; 10.52; and 15.30-31. The salvation in 13.20 may simply be the preservation of human life which would have otherwise been lost.

Just upthread, however, I responded to rakovsky and held out the possibility that the author is writing in a "done deal" manner which may occasionally be found in the Hebrew scriptures. I presented one instance of this (Judges 8.19), but I think I recall seeing others. Still pondering all of that.

What has struck me for a good while now in Mark 13.20 is how straightforward the past tense condition is, and how many of the translations warp the apodosis so as to make it sound more futuristic. I cannot say that my suggestion ("position" is probably too strong a word) is necessarily the best or only way to deal with the verb tenses, but it popped into my head as an option, so I floated the possibility.

Thanks for the feedback.

[rakovsky]

Just upthread, however, I responded to rakovsky and held out the possibility that the author is writing in a "done deal" manner which may occasionally be found in the Hebrew scriptures. I presented one instance of this (Judges 8.19), but I think I recall seeing others. Still pondering all of that.

Ben,
Consider that in Hebrew, the past tense was sometimes used to indicate the future (even though that does not work in English). Maybe that applies to the passage in Judges. Consider also that the gospels could have "Semitisms" if they originated in a native Semitic speaker.

[Ben C. Smith]

Consider that in Hebrew, the past tense was sometimes used to indicate the future (even though that does not work in English). Maybe that applies to the passage in Judges.

There is no past tense in Hebrew. There is perfect, and there is imperfect. But the condition in Judges 8.19 is elsewhere used, so far as I have been able to ascertain so far, only of events which have already happened (or not) in the past.

Consider also that the gospels could have "Semitisms" if they originated in a native Semitic speaker.

That is very much on my mind.