Truth
Is Jesus’ or Jesus’s the Possessive Jesus?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Jesus’s?
Biblical “scholars” have more or less uniformly decided that whatever Jesus possesses is written as Jesus’, as in “Jesus’ miracles”. Most people would quite naturally say “Jesus’s miracles”, as is the general practice in these AskWhy! pages. It is difficult to see why these “scholars” persist in an old fashioned and not at all sensible fad of writing, contrary to all the best authorities.
As one authority, John o’London, says, the rule of good writing is its correspondence in fitness and convenience with actual speech and writing. After the dark age millennium in Europe, no one could read or write because only Latin was written, and the local tongues even of the old Roman Empire had changed so much that they were now different languages, the literature of which had to be invented anew. If we let written language remain fossilized in comparison with the spoken form, we end up with a dead written language like Latin, and no symbolic way of writing down the spoken word. Maybe that is why biblical “scholars” like their “Jesus’” habit so much! It reminds them of when they had the power to keep the world truly ignorant.
Of the authorities, Eric Partridge (Usage and Abusage, 1947, 1973, sub voce Genitive) accepts that the practice continues but suggests it is not a sensible idea:
In the past it was a very general, as it is now a not infrequent, practice to form the genitive singular of all nouns ending in s and especially those ending in ss (“hostess”) by adding an apostrophe to both the nominative singular (“a hostess’ duties”, “your Highness’ pleasure”) and of course in the plural (“The three hostesses’ houses were in Park Lane.”). But now it is usual to form the singular genitive by adding ’s (“a hostess’s duties”, “your Highness’s pleasure”) which seems to be a sensible idea, for if you can say “three hostesses’ houses”, you can easily say “a hostess’s duties”. There is, however, a strong tendency to retain Jesus’ and Demosthenes’, Socrates’, and other such genitives of Greek proper names.
Equally you can easily say “Jesuses”, and therefore “Jesus’s”, so why not write it. Instead, one hears in the broadcast media, ministers and theologians making the effort to unnaturally omit the possessive s, saying “Jesus miracles” and such like. The “strong tendency” mentioned by Partridge is what H W Fowler (Modern English Usage, 1926, 1930, 1937, sub voce, Possessive Puzzles) considered a possessive puzzle, citing “Septimus’s” in contrast with “Achilles’”:
It was formerly customary, when a word ended in -s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s, eg “Mars’ hill”, “Venus’ Bath”, “Achilles’ thews”. In verse, and in poetic or reverential contexts, this custom is retained, and the number of syllables is the same as in the subjective case, eg “Achilles’” has three, not four, “Jesus’” or “of Jesus”, not “Jesus’s”. But elsewhere we now add the s and the syllable, “Charles’s Wain”, “St James’s” not “St James’”, “Jones’s children”, “the Rev Septimus’s surplice”, “Pythagoras’s doctrines”.
Maybe the biblical “scholars” think they are writing poetry, and so may write “Jesus’” instead of “Jesus’s”. What then of Judas? Should we have “Judas’ kiss” to match, or does the reverence and poetry stop with the evil Judas, so we have “Judas’s kiss” in this case? If no one has any trouble saying “the Rev Septimus’s surplice”, then, as we already noted, they can have no trouble in saying “Jesus’s apostles”. John o’London is least compromising, writing (Is it Good English?, undated, c 1923):
One of the most needless yet recurrent of doubts among literary beginners and letter writers concerns the use of ’s after words or names ending in s. Acting on a misconception of the rule, many people give us those possessive abominations, “Wells’ novels” (for Wells’s), “Keats’ poems” (for Keats’s), “Hicks’ Hall” (for Hicks’s), “Prince of Wales’” (for Prince of Wales’s), and the like. The rules jointly laid down by authorities so high as Mr Horace Hart and Sir James A H Murray and Mr Henry Bradley in their Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford should end the matter… But the real authority for these rules is not their distinguished authorship, but their ascertained correspondence with fitness and convenience in actual speech and writing.
Their first rule is:
Use ’s for the possessive case in English names and surnames wherever possible. Write “Augustus’s”, “Hicks’s”, “St James’s Square”, “Jones’s”, “Thomas’s”, and so on. Even in longer names the same possessive form is to be preferred—thus “Theophilus’s” is better than “Theophilus’”, though the second form is “admissible”.
They pronounce in favour of “Mars’s”, “Zeus’s”, “Venus’s”, and so forth. There are exceptions:
Ancient names in es are usually written es’ in the possessive, eg “Ceres’ rites”, “Xerxes’ fleet” and this form should certainly be used in words longer than two syllables, eg “Arbaces’”, “Miltiades’”, “Themistocles’”. But this applies only to ancient words.
Finally, when the s sound is silent, always use ’s:
French names ending in s or x should always be followed by ’s when used possessively in English, thus “Rabelais’s” (pronounced Rabelay’s), “Hanotaux’s” (pronounced Hanoto’s). Poets may legitimately vary the form s’s to s’, when they are writing poetry.
For those impressed by all those Christian pastors, ministers and “scholars” that use Jesus’ in speech as well as in writing, as in Jesus’ miracles, Michael Swan (Practical English Usage, Second Edition, 1995) tells us:
With singular classical (ancient Greek and Roman) names ending in s’. we sometimes pronounce a possessive ’s even when it is not written.
So in “Oedipus’ little problem”, the Oedipus’ is pronounced as “Oedipuses”. Jesus is a Greek name, so that would also be the case, and if Jesus’ is written, it is pronounced as Jesus’s. So, write it too—Jesus’s!
Let us try to keep written and spoken English in synchronization. Today, newspapers and magazines are increasingly using the abbreviated word forms like “isn’t” for “is not” and “you’re” for “you are”, writing what people actually say. Let us stick to the same principle when writing down Jesus’s possessions!
