Andrew Chapman wrote:My 'discovery', if such it was, was from Smythe:
A corollary to "The more I practice, the luckier I become." might be "The better I index, the more I discover".
Andrew Chapman wrote:I had seen this as possessive: do the thing of yourself - ie that which pertains to yourself. It sounds like you may be reading may more like 'You yourself do the thing', although I may well not have grasped fully what you are saying.
I'm just saying that there is an implied relationship in every genitive that it would be better to no gloss over too quickly by translating as a possessive. Possessive is, quite rightly, one of the uses of a genitive yes, and may people take it as the primary (and "fallback") meaning, but you don't need to go to "possessive" as a matter of course. I think that your translation, "You yourself do (the thing)" would just be σὺ ποίει... with the pronoun, how about you?
Of all the cases, genitives require the most imagination to get to a meaning. There is often an unstated but understood verbal relationship between the part of the sentence in the genitive and the rest of the sentence. Let me give a few random examples by looking at how something might be expressed if there was no genitive case. [In each case a verb will have to be introduced to explain the meaning]
Acts 3:2 (partial) wrote:πρὸς τὴν θύραν τοῦ ἱεροῦ τὴν λεγομένην Ὡραίαν
"The gate of the temple called "Beautiful".
The "τοῦ ἱεροῦ" here could be expressed with participles as:
τὴν ἀπάγουσαν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν "which leads to the temple" (if we wanted to talk about that the way which people used to get to the temple - like in this case where the worshipers passed the beggar) or
τὴν ᾠκοδομημένην ἐν τῷ τοίχῳ (τείχει??) τῷ περιέχοντι τὸ ἱερὸν. "which was buit in the wall which surounds the temple" (if we imagine that Luke is talking about the structure or construction of the temple)
[I've used ᾠκοδομημένην because I imagine that Luke is talking about the doorway - the hole in the wall, but if I were to imagine the (swinging) door then I would paraphrase as ἑσταμένην "set", "which had been set"]
Matthew 13:14 (partial) wrote:ἡ προφητεία Ἠσαΐου
"the prophesy of Isaiah"
Here we have to imagine what the relationship between Isaiah and the prophesy is (let's use relatives):
ἣν ἐπροφήτευσεν ὁ Ἠσαΐας (if we want to look at that he spoke the word of God in plain sight of the people) or
ἣν ἐγένετο πρὸς Ἠσαΐαν (if we were imagining the moment of revelation)
ἣν εἶπεν {ἐλάλησεν} πρὸς Ἠσαΐαν {τῷ Ἠσαΐᾳ} ὁ Κύριος (if we want to see God as the giver)
(writing out thoughts that usually occur in an instant is tedious, so lets just say) and so on for any other genitives like this... In each case still, there is a need to supply a verb. That implied verb varies according to each situation that we imagine for this type of direct genitive.
People tend to like to equate possessive and genitives unless there is a reason to do otherwise, but what is a possessive anyway? It is an
implied verb "to have" ἔχειν or "to possess" κτᾶσθαι or (in the classical idiom which the later Fathers tried to follow it is more properly) κεκτῆσθαι or any other verb that means you become the owner of by your own work or in another way. In Modern Greek the basic rule for understanding the genitive is η γενική είναι η κτητική (the genitive is the possessive). But to look again at your original question...
If the genitive implies a verb and in our example the genitive is a reflexive pronoun, then what could the relationship between the implied verb and the reflexive? And what verb could fit here and have a reflexive pronoun? Let's begin by exclusion of the immediate context; the ἀνάγκην ἔχεις is not a good candidate as the implied verb because the compulsion comes from perhaps social order and expectations, perhaps the need to fit a cosmology, the need to be the strong crutch (primary support person) that someone might need to get out of trouble, a bad habit (or a sin).
Taking a number of examples from the New Testament, I want to show that the reflexive pronoun is usually for something that you would want to happen to yourself - that is something good or beneficial. Some examples are Ἀγαπήσεις ... σεαυτόν (Matthew 19:19, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14, James 2:8) σῶσον σεαυτόν "Save yourself"(Matthew 27:40) Ἰατρέ, θεράπευσον σεαυτόν "Doctor cure yourself" (Luke 4:23), σκοπῶν σεαυτὸν "looking out for yourself" (Galatians 6:1), γύμναζε δὲ σεαυτὸν "put yourself on an exercise routine" (1 Timothy 4:7), Ἔπεχε σεαυτῷ "devote yourself to.." (1 Timothy 4:16), σεαυτὸν ἁγνὸν τήρει "keep yourslef pure" (1 Timothy 5:22), σεαυτὸν δόκιμον παραστῆσαι τῷ θεῷ "to present yourself approved to God" (2 Timothy 2:15) These are all things that a reasonable person would consider desirable to happen. There are also a few warnings about detrimental things that play on this theme of self-benefit that runs through the useage of the reflexive pronoun like this.
I don't feel comfortable with the "do thy own part" translation that you cite as from "Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers" (it is not obvious to me who you are quoting), because it implies compulsion not self-benefit. I take it as "do yourself a favour", "do this (it) and help yourself". Or to put that together with a summary of the whole passage, "Help your wife to deal with
her "issues" and you will have a better life yourself" (love each other, don't judge or stand aloof).