Re: Inflecting Jesus Christ (was: Never violate a universal ...)

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 13:01:29 -0400,
John Cowan <cowan@...> writes:

> de.wikipedia.org concurs also; the first Google example to come up is
> "Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage", the official name of
> the Mormons.  That translation of "latter-day" seems to miss a trick,
> however, since it suggests to me "of the last days", i.e. those just
> before the Second Coming, rather than simply an archaic form meaning "of
> (these later days".)  Comment from germanophones (allemannophones?) or
> LDS members?
I can comment as a native speaker of German, though not as a Mormon,
and I have always interpreted "der Letzten Tage" in the eschatological
way, i.e. the days before the Second Coming of Christ.  But as a
non-Mormon I cannot say whether this is a good translation of
"Latter Days" or not.

> In any case, "Christus" is a plain 2nd declension noun, but "Jesus"
> is odd; it obviously isn't 2nd declension (o-stem) but doesn't look
> like 4th declension (u-stem) either, as the dat. is definitely "Jesu"
> and not "Jesui".  Maybe the Greek inflections were imported into Latin
> (just guessing here)?
It seems to have been common practise to borrow Greek case forms
into Latin together with the words.  In Dalgarno's _Ars signorum_
(1661), p. 118, the translation of Genesis 1 is titled "Primum Caput
Genesios", wherein _Genesios_ is the Greek genitive of _Genesis_.

How would "Jesus" be declined in Greek?

Regarding Latin case forms in German, it seems to have been customary
in learned circles to decline Latin loan-words the Latin way,
so the case forms of _Jesus Christus_ were not exceptional.
Today, however, this is no longer customary, and only isolated
examples like _Jesu Christi_ survive.

Jörg.

Replies