At the end of the Wikipedia article on Jerusalem Colophon, it reads (regarding whether a text was written in Jerusalem vs. Greece),
According to Caspar René Gregory it would be possible that the manuscript Tischendorfianus III was written and corrected in Jerusalem.
This is probably because on page 360 in the cited reference, Gregory wrote,
It would be possible that this manuscript itself was thus written and corrected in Jerusalem.
Gregory should have written
Thus, it might be true that the manuscript was written and corrected in Jerusalem.
(He could have been mixed up. Although born in the U.S., he was the German army's oldest WWI volunteer.)
Two questions arise:
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Should the article's last sentence be revised to a more-direct form?
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If I make this change, what is the justification? It seems weak to say it sounds bad, and vague or perhaps wrong to say it misuses tense, case, or subjunctive mood. Is there a proper grammar-based explanation for changing it?
Best Answer
"Would be" is in the subjunctive mood, which means that it depends on something that may or may not have happened. In the original, it's possible that he's debating whether or not that's true. However, in the Wikipedia article, there is no reference that I see to an unknown possibility. As such, I think it makes more sense to replace "would be possible" with "is possible".
You'd have to say "would be possible" if it were this sentence, though:
That said, we're splitting hairs about the original.