![]() This much is the same as any ordinary use of past perfect - if there is a series of past events, and we are comparing all the earlier ones to the most recent, then the most recent is in the past, and all those previous events at different times are lumped into the past perfect.īy the time Michelangelo painted the Last Judgement, he has already done X, had carved Y, and had painted Z. You see, the funny thing is - if multiple events happen at different times, but all in the past for the speaker or for the person who held the beliefs, then all of those events at different times, have the same tense: past perfect. That's why there's a tense difference between the first two verbs and the last. In other words, if we went back in a time machine and interviewed them, they would say, " God separated the waters and dry land appeared a long time ago, but right now, as we speak, there's another ocean up there above the firmament." Anything that is present tense for the people who held those beliefs must be in the simple past tense in indirect speech. Both " appeared" and " separated" are in the past of the people who had these beliefs therefore, both these verbs should be in the past perfect tense.īy contrast, the existence of the second ocean, above the firmament, would have been a present event for the folks who had these beliefs. Anything that was a past event from their perspective should be in the past perfect in indirect speech. The people with these beliefs are in the past, which is why "believed" is in the past tense. The people of the ancient Near East believed that the Earth’s dry land first had appeared when the Creator had separated the “water above” from the “water below”, and that there was another ocean in the sky, above the firmament. The difference between (D) and (E) in this version is too slight and nit-picky to be a good GMAT question. Technically, the issue is sequence of tenses, which governs tense rules in indirect speech. I am no longer super-happy about the version that is posted here. ![]() To be honest, this question has gone through several revisions internally, making the differences much more clear between right and wrong answers. Waiting for a stunning explanation from Mike. I marked E and I am surprised that the answer is D.
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