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I met some odd usage of preposition "for". I guess it's old style, or high style. I give examples for better understanding:

About this time legend among the Hobbits first becomes history with a reckoning of years. For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree.

J.R.R. Tolkien

But the Hobbits may have learned it direct from the Elves, the teachers of Men in their youth. For the Elves of the High Kindred had not yet forsaken Middle-earth...

J.R.R. Tolkien

In the study of logic, we do not so much look at these kinds of reasoning: instead, logic concerns itself with reasons for believing something instead of something else. For beliefs are special.

Routledge. Logic. An Introduction.

It would be great, if someone explain me how to understand the authors in these cases. Thank you.

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  • It's not the preposition for; it's what used to be called the coordinating conjunction for. It's not used any more but when it was, it was a portentous way of saying because.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Apr 28, 2021 at 19:54
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    To be fair, you are reading epic high fantasy. You should expect this sort of language.
    – FeliniusRex - gone
    Commented Apr 28, 2021 at 20:30
  • For pomp 'n circumstance, I'd compare it gingerly to KJV Bible. For it was such that it came to be. Consider that in Biblical Hebrew, there is a formal past tense that gets there by inserting prefix And to a future tense. Tricky, huh? And this verb gets translated as the past (good) with the And still there (when you already used it up for its verbal use). And so it came to pass = It came to pass. For such is all of life.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Apr 28, 2021 at 21:51

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It means "because." However, unlike "because," which is a subordinating conjunction, "for" in this sense of meaning "because," is a coordinating conjunction.

English has only seven coordinating conjunctions (i.e., and, for, but, yet, so, or, nor) but many, many subordinating conjunctions. While a subordinating conjunction (e.g., because) introduces a subordinate clause, a type of dependent clause, meaning it depends on an independent clause and cannot stand on its own as a sentence, when a coordinating conjunction (e.g., "for") introduces a clause, it is a coordinate clause, a type of independent clause that can be conjoined with another independent clause via that coordinating conjunction, but since it's a type of independent clause, it can also stand on its own as a sentence.

Therefore, though "for" in definition means "because" at the start of the Tolkien quotes you cited above, since "for" in function is a coordinating conjunction, the use of "for" to start the Tolkien quotes you cited means that each is able to grammatically stand on its own as a sentence, unlike if Tolkien had started them with "because" instead.

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