[B-Greek] because vs since: DIA in Ro 3:25-26

sharktacos y_god_y at yahoo.com
Mon Oct 6 14:47:23 EDT 2008


Hi
everyone, this is my first post to the list. My name is Derek, and I am a
grad student at GTU. I've only had first year Greek so I
am a novice here. I am hoping to benefit from all of your collective
knowledge!

I've been translating Romans 3:25-26 from the Greek
and have an alternate translation of the Greek preposition διὰ [DIA]  I wanted to run by you: 

RSV reads:
“...God put [Jesus Christ] forward as an expiation by his blood, to
be received by faith. This was to
show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had
passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he
himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in
Jesus.” 










The
part I am interested in is “This was to show God's righteousness,
because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” 
The preposition translated as "because" here in Greek is  διὰ [DIA]. Normally
the preposition διὰ  [DIA] with the accusative translates as “because of” as it is here
in the RSV. But that results in the rather awkward sentence “This
was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine
forbearance he had passed over former sins.” 






My
question here is with my interpretation of the word  διὰ  [DIA] as
meaning here “accounting for” God's passing over sin, as opposed to God
showing
his righteousness “though” passing over sin. It may be that the RSV translation of "because of" is intended
to mean this, but it is such an odd
formulation in English that it is hard for me to tell the translators intent here.






Could  διὰ
 [DIA] be
translated as “since” or “accounting for” here? So if we break down the sentence into parts it becomes: 





I'd like to avoid
getting into exegesis here since it is outside of the scope of
this list, so what I am really curious about is simply whether  διὰ
 [DIA] can
legitimately be translated as I am here as "since" rather than as
"because"? And while I am at it, what about translating it as "in"
which looses the meaning of that specific word, but produces a more
natural sounding sentence in English?: "This was in order to demonstrate God's righteousness in overlooking the previous sins"
The impression I am getting as I look at many prepositions
is that they are often used in a way that we would not in English so
that a literal translation sounds unnatural in English. I'd appreciate your thoughts.











thanks!



Derek Floodwww.sharktacos.com/God/



      


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