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

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?

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)?

--
Ambassador Trentino: I've said enough. I'm a man of few words.
Rufus T. Firefly: I'm a man of one word: scram!
        --_Duck Soup_                   John Cowan <jcowan@...>

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