From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 25 1997 - 14:58:44 EDT
At 9:48 PM -0400 7/24/97, Wes Williams wrote:
>> The guess I would hazard is that
>> he wants to distinguish between the divine and the human factors involved
>> in the safeguarding. Alternatively it might be that this is simply a
>matter
>> of rhetorical variation. In any case, for my part, I wouldn't try to draw
>a
>> very sharp distinction between the semantic function of the two
>> constructions here.
>>
>
>I am deeply grateful for your commentary and 'hazardous guesses.' Thank you
>very much Carl.
>
>The 'guess' does seem to make sense, does it not? The distinction between
>divine and human... I will keep this in the back of my mind as I go through
>life and read other instances where DIA and EN of means are used closely
>together.
>
>Corresponding with you *through* email *by* computer is beneficial and
>enriching.
For my part, I'll have to say that your questions are always provocative of thought and, I think, of interest to many.
An addendum to my thoughts: what particularly bothered me about the DIA + genitive construction was that with the genitive, DIA seems most often to have a sense of "in the course of ...," "by way of." The meaning "owing to," "on account of" seems generally associated with DIA + accusative. I'm not altogether convinced that these case differentiations are uniformly observed in NT writers, but I don't think I'd venture that observation openly on the list!
Regards, Carl
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