I’m reading through portions of the Latin Vulgate, and came to this sentence in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 10:25:
Teneamus spei nostrae confessionem indeclinabliem, fidelis enim est qui repromisit, et consideremus invicem in provocationem caritatis et bonorum operum, non deserentes collectionem nostram, sicut est consuetudinis quibusdam.
Everything seems pretty straightforward, until the last clause. I wasn’t sure why consuetudinis was in the genitive (it’s not a literal translation of the underlying Greek, for instance). Checking some grammars, is it possible that this would be classed as a “Genitive of Characteristic?”
I have a question about this; I repeat the OP’s quotation:
“Teneamus spei nostrae confessionem indeclinabliem, fidelis enim est qui repromisit, et consideremus invicem in provocationem caritatis et bonorum operum, non deserentes collectionem nostram, sicut est consuetudinis quibusdam.”
I don’t get the logic of the possessive genitive “consuetudinis”.
What does “consuetudinis” possess? Is it “deserentes”? Should we understand that absenteeism from the assembly belongs to the habits of certain ones?
Genitive of possession is a catch-all for a wide range of genitive usages–it’s the basic meaning of the genitive. To get a sense of how it’s used in this passage, you might translate the expression est X + dative here as something like "belongs to X for . . . ", as you suggest, or "is characteristic of X for . . . ": “without deserting our gathering[s], as belongs to the habit[s] for/of certain people,” “as is characteristic of the habit[s] of some people.” This may not sound quite right in English, and an artful translation would find a better, if less literal, way to convey the meaning of the Latin idiom.
Categories such as “genitive of possession” are helpful and to some extent necessary, especially in the earlier stages of language learning, but you need to remember that they’re just more or less convenient labels imposed by grammarians to categorize a wide range of usages, and at the margins these descriptive labels don’t always fit perfectly. At some point’s it’s better to simply note various usages as you encounter them in reading without trying to shoehorn them into narrow categories. Thinking of this particular use of the genitive as indicative of “possession” seems more of an obstacle here than helpful, but this does fit loosely into the broad category of genitives that are conventionally labeled “genitive of possession,” for want of a better descriptive term.
Thanks Qimmik. I get the principle that sometimes usage is better learned by studying instances than by trying to apply rules. I’ll probably have to be reminded of this, because I often can’t see just when this principle applies.
Does the following gentive “expetendorum” bear a family resemblance to the one that the OP displayed? The Lady Philosophy is speaking, restating the point of an argument she has just made. Consolation of Philosophy, Book 3, Chapter 9.
In his igitur quae singula quaedam expetendorum praestare creduntur beatitudo nullo modo uestiganda est.
Here is James O’Donnell’s gloss:
singula quaedam expetendorum: "certain single things [e.g., sufficientia or claritudo] of the [whole group of] things to be sought
It seems that a future passive participle, a single word, is used by Boethius to express what in English might need a phrase, like “of that class of things worth seeking”
Thanks Qimmik, I think I see what you mean. “expetetendorum” denotes a class of things worth seeking, of which class “quaedam singula” comprised a portion.
