Dianoia and Synesis

Consider the following biblical passage:

[Mar 12:29-34 KJV] 29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments [is], Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this [is] the first commandment. 31 And the second [is] like, [namely] this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. 32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: 33 And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love [his] neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him [any question].

Here, Jesus commands man to love God with four faculties:
Heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Similarly, the scribe replies that man is to love God with four faculties:
Heart, understanding, soul, and strength.

A key difference between the two statements is the Greek word dianoia (διάνοια), which is translated as mind, and the Greek word synesis (σύνεσις), which is translated as understanding. What is the meaning of the difference between these word usages?

In English, Dianoia is defined as the mental faculty used in discursive reasoning, where discursive is defined as proceeding by reason or argument rather than intuition.

In English, Synesis is defined as a construction in which an expected grammatical agreement in form is replaced by an agreement in meaning, as in The crowd rose to their feet, where a plural pronoun is used to refer to a singular noun. Synesis is also defined as a grammatical construction in harmony with the sense rather than with strict syntax.

These definitions of synesis shed light on the relationship of verses 30-34 to the seemingly unrelated preceding verse 29, which asserts that The Lord our God is one Lord (albeit composed of three persons). Consider the first verse of the bible:

[Gen 1:1 KJV] 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

where God is a plural noun and created is a singular verb. In Hebrew, verb conjugation is denoted by small diacritical marks such as the jot and the tittle. These marks are by no means insignificant or incidental, as pointed out by

[Mat 5:18 KJV] 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

The Wikipedia article on dianoia explains

Dianoia (Greek: διάνοια, ratio in Latin) is a term used by Plato for a type of thinking, specifically about mathematical and technical subjects. It is the capacity for, process of, or result of discursive thinking, in contrast with the immediate apprehension that is characteristic of noesis.

With this is mind, it occurs that the contrast between dianoia and synesis rests in the fact that the later has to do with an intuitive understanding, and the former with intellectual reason. We intuitively understand that though a human being is made up of many parts, these nonetheless identify and act as a single body. Conversely, it is impossible to gain an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of said parts without rational investigation beyond what can be perceived as obvious.

It then appears that God’s point in drawing attention to the difference between dianoia and synesis is to impress upon the reader the necessity to exercise the mind to find meaning rather than relying on what implicitly makes sense. This discussion relates directly to God’s mandate to dispense with proclaiming “the burden of the Lord,” favoring instead an approach wherein we inquire, “what has God answered and what has the Lord spoken.”