GAR KAI DIOTI
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Tue Jul 30 17:22:23 EDT 2002
> Dear B-greekers,
>
> I have continued my memorization of Rm 8 in Greek. I've gotten as far as
> vs. 23. I've noticed that Paul uses GAR a lot in this chapter (16 times
> in all). But he does use DIOTI once. (I do not count the v.l. in vs. 21
> which is not as well attested as hOTI.) They seem to mean the same thing,
> unless I've missed some nuance of meaning here. BDAG divides the lemma
> for GAR into three sections. All the citations from Rm 8 are in the first
> subdefinition:
>
> 1) marker of cause or reason, for
>
> BDAG defines DIOTI in Rm 8:7 as:
>
> 3) marker used to indicate why something just stated can reasonably be
> considered valid, used in place of hOTI: for
>
> My question is why does Paul use DIOTI this one time among the 16 GAR's
> of Rm 8? Surely it's not to vary his style. Then he would have used
> perhaps 3 or 4 DIOTI's not just one. Does DIOTI have some DA funciton
> here that I'm missing?
It is a good question, and I made some slight adjustment in my own
translation of Romans 8:7, thanks to you.
GAR and DIOTI have different areas of meaning and different discourse
functions, although there is some overlap between them.
As I have said before, GAR is - according to my analysis - and many others -
not really a marker of cause or reason, but an explanatory marker that
introduces a statement which gives more background for what has just been
said or in some way supports, explains or develops the thought. In some
cases, this is close to a cause or reason, but to gloss the word as "cause
or reason" is IMO inadequate. There is nothing just like it in English, but
the closest is either silence, "for" or "I am saying this because". (It
cannot denote "inference" since this is logically too far removed from
"explanation".)
I would agree that Paul could have used GAR in 8:7, too. The difference in
my estimation is that DIOTI seems to have a stronger sense of reason. It is
"because" with stress on it, not just the common GAR ("for"), and as you
say, it refers to the first half of the preceding verse.
Iver Larsen
PS: I must pack my computer down now, but couldn't resist another GAR
question.
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