Leonard Love in the Northern California Mission in 1963 undertook a project to make things easier for readers who tripped on those strange words conjured from memory or concocted fresh by Elder Talmage. Recognizing this, and in response to Jesus the Christ’s having been chosen as the course of study for Melchizedek Priesthood quorums for 19, several missionaries serving under President J. Not everyone who wanted to benefit from the books Talmage wrote was blessed with his huge vocabulary, however. If he didn’t know the meaning of a word, he didn’t use it.” He replied, “Father didn’t use a dictionary.

I asked John if his father brought a dictionary to the Salt Lake Temple when he was writing Jesus the Christ. Talmage, who was then, at age 85, the last living child of James and May Talmage. In 1996, I had the opportunity to interview John R. A great many of the difficult words Talmage uses, especially in The Articles of Faith and Jesus the Christ, have a Latin or German root base. Most likely he also learned German from his mentor Karl G. Words such as these flowed naturally from Talmage, as he was schooled in Latin and German while a student at Brigham Young Academy. Some of my favorites include: casuist-someone skilled in judging right from wrong palliate-to cover with excuses stultify-to cause another to look foolish. Words like “tesseradecads,” which refers to the arrangement into “groups of fourteen individuals each.” The word occurs in Talmage’s Jesus the Christ in the discussion of the genealogies of Jesus (see Matthew 1:17 Jesus the Christ, 89). Talmage is grappling with the difficult vocabulary. One of the challenges in reading any book written by James E. The column title is adopted from the statement inscribed on Elder Talmage’s tombstone: “Within the Gospel of Jesus Christ there is room and place for every truth thus far learned by man or yet to be made known.” Harris, who is currently working on a full-length biography of this fascinating Mormon apostle. This regular Cornucopia column features incidents from and glimpses into the life and ministry of Elder James E.

James talmage jesus the christ