Pronouns

[jack]

"When John was a woman, [he/she/they] said '...' " Which pronoun do you prefer? (That is, "he" is appropriate for John now, "she" would be appropriate for what John was then, and "they" would specify the ambiguity.)

"The things God or Jesus [was/were] recorded as saying are ..." Which pronoun do you prefer? (That is, do you treat them as two separate people (were)? Or one person (was)? :))

Obviously both are arbitrary, and I think both sufficiently specialised that most people wouldn't mind which you used, I just wondered if anyone had a strong opinion :)

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

the special case of them allegedly being the same entity would not deter me from treating them grammatically as separate people.

That's no doubt actually the correct solution. Imagine if I referred to "Sensible-Jack and impulsive-Jack both want to..." even those actually are the same person, the different presentations thereof are grammatically separate. I don't know what the nearest example that does take a singular verb would be, if any.