Read it Again
By E M Blaiklock MA DLItt
XLV.
LOVE.
Re-read 1Corinthians 13.
Is the word "charity" in 1 Cor. 13 a correct translation?
No.
The Greek word means simply love in a full and intimate sense. The word has wider application than its synonyms, in that it covers the sexless regard of man for his fellows and the love of God to man. It had no physical connotations until after New Testament times. Charity therefore, which has come to be applied, a trifle pejoratively, to an aspect of philanthropy, is an entirely adequate translation. It arose from the efforts of Latin translators of the Bible to find a term in their own language which they felt was free from sexual significance. The word "amor," of
course, was available, and could have been sublimated by its context. Saint Jerome, however, lived on the far edge of the Middle Ages. Those distortions of the human personality associated with asceticism and monasticism were beginning to operate. Christians were developing those complexes which resulted in the exaltation of male and female celibacy. Words were tainted with their prejudices, and misunderstandings of Scripture.
And so Jerome, when producing the Vulgate, felt that all the available Latin for the idea of Love was polluted by sin. He therefore took a Latin word "caritas" which meant, rather coldly, "esteem" or "regard." In the Latin it is much closer to the Greek than "charity." "Charity," of course, derives from it, and as is often the case with derivatives, the change from another language has narrowed the meaning. Why the translators were influenced by the Latin in this way remains a
Mystery .