I have a question about the following passage in St Mark’s Gospel (12:12):
et quaerebant eum tenere et timuerunt turbam cognoverunt enim quoniam ad eos parabolam hanc dixerit et relicto eo abierunt
In the Douay–Rheims Bible this is translated as “And they sought to lay hands on him: but they feared the people. For they knew that he spoke this parable to them. And leaving him, they went their way.” My question: why the use of dixerit (future perfect) instead of dixerat (pluperfect)?
It may be that others will correct me, but it seems to be to be just one example an unclassical usage of the sequence of tenses. In Classical Latin you would have indeed had the pluperfect, but the pluperfect subjunctive, so dixisset. Here the Latin text keeps the memory that there should be a subjunctive but doesn’t get the sequence of tenses right, and uses the perfect (subjunctive) instead.