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

On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 11:01  AM, John Cowan wrote:

> Christian Thalmann scripsit:
>
>> My ear tells me that it should be "Jesu Christi" in the genitive.
>> Google seems to concur.  I don't know whether that's grammatical,
>> though.
>
> 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?
If 'latter' is simply an archaic form of 'later', that would still
square with the eschatological interpretation of the name. I seem to
remember a principle of English usage which states that the superlative
is never used if only two things are being compared. So one would speak
of the larger of two cars/houses/kangaroos, etc. In the name of the
Church, only the early church and the modern one are being compared,
hence "... of Latter-day Saints"; i.e., saints of the later (= last)
days. Other languages may have different usages for superlatives; the
German "... der Letzten Tage" and Dutch "... der Laatste Dagen" would
seem to bear this out. So the name of the church does reflect the
doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie

Replies