我遇到的最难英文单句——双重虚拟语气

按：今天比昨天更纠结。一句话，拉着Emma一起想了12分钟。

Emma安慰我说，你认为Bruce写作的时候，会想到有人会翻译为中文，为中国教会使用吗？

好吧，继续玩。我接触了许多译者，对虚拟语气的处理都不太好。毕竟，虚拟语气有四种，各有不同的玩法。但是，我还从来没有遇到过双重虚拟语气：

The relations between Paul, Peter, and James of Jerusalem are presented in a way which would be more natural if all three of them had died and the author had been able to view their lasting achievements in a more satisfactory proportion than would have been so easily attained if they had still been alive.

好了，我已经给出提示。下面要给出上下文，请感兴趣的朋友试一下翻译了。

One consideration, admittedly subjective, is the perspective from which the work has been composed. The relations between Paul, Peter, and James of Jerusalem are presented in a way which would be more natural if all three of them had died and the author had been able to view their lasting achievements in a more satisfactory proportion than would have been so easily attained if they had still been alive. Certainly the impression he gives us of their relations is not the impression received from Paul’s letters, and this is more intelligible if they had been dead for some years and their disagreements (in the eyes of a man like Luke, at any rate) no longer seemed so important as they would have done at the time.

我对上一篇中几个例句的翻译：

So far as the Neronian persecution is concerned, even Tacitus (no friend to Christians) admits that it was the action of one man’s malignity rather than an expression of public policy, and the official reprobation of Nero’s memory and actions at his death could have been held to cover his persecution of the Christians of Rome.

论到尼禄皇帝对基督徒的逼迫，连塔西佗（并非基督徒的朋友）也承认，这是出于皇帝个人的恶意而非帝国的公共政策，当尼禄死的死后，帝国官方指责他已经记忆和行为错乱，不过是为了掩盖他在罗马逼迫基督徒的失当行为。

The argument that there is nothing in Acts—or even in Luke—that presupposes the Jewish revolt and the resultant destruction of the temple and city of Jerusalem (A.D. 70) has been used in defense of a pre-70 dating for the twofold work—early in the twentieth century by Adolf Harnack and over sixty years later by J. A. T. Robinson.

20世纪早期的哈纳克（Adolf Harnack）以及60年之后的罗宾逊（J. A. T. Robinson），论证说使徒行传里面——甚至路加福音里面——没有任何迹象表明犹太人已经开始叛乱，并最终导致了圣殿和耶路撒冷的毁灭（公元70年），因此认为这两卷作品乃是70年之前完成的。

The Jewish client king Agrippa II agrees with Festus that Paul had done nothing deserving either death or imprisonment, and that he could have been discharged on the spot had he not taken the decision out of the procurator’s hands by appealing to have his case referred to the imperial tribunal in Rome.

来访的犹太王亚基帕II世也同意非斯都的看法，保罗没有犯什么该判死刑或处以监禁的罪行，如果他不是自己提出向罗马帝国法院上述，因此超越了总督管辖的权限，早就可以直接无罪释放了。