# "Charity" in the KJV



## matthew11v25 (Apr 10, 2008)

Curious, about the reason for using "Charity" in the KJV? From what I have heard the word "charity" was not even in use as a synonym for love when the KJV was first translated...is this true? and is it a better word than "love" as seen in most modern translations?


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## Reformed Covenanter (Apr 10, 2008)

I think Tyndale uses love in 1 Cor. 13.


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## etexas (Apr 10, 2008)

I read somewhere that this was chosen based on one translators use of a French edition. Or maybe I just dreamed that!


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## Galatians220 (Apr 10, 2008)

Yep, the 1599 Geneva uses "love" in 1 Cor. 13. (Several months ago, I bought the hard-copy, Tolle Lege Press edition that's pictured on another thread here. To my surprise, I've found it to be _more than a_ _little addicting_ - .)


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## larryjf (Apr 10, 2008)

From Wikipedia



> The use of the English word "charity" in this passage in the Authorized Version reflects the royal injunction to continue with the old "ecclesiastical" terminology; and derives from a change introduced in the 1572 edition of the Bishops' Bible. The first verse is nearly identical in all the versions, although the Authorized Version text is closest here to the Rheims New Testament; while the third verse preserves the wording of the Bishops' Bible almost unchanged. The second verse has been more thoroughly recomposed by the 1611 translators, but the vocabulary and the verbal tenses owe more to Rheims than either of the other two versions. Note too the deliberate stylistic alternation, where the same Greek expression is rendered "no charitie" in the second verse; compared to "not charitie" in the first and third verses.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Apr 10, 2008)

Is the word "Charity" an error in the King James Bible?



> Not only does the King James Bible use the word Charity, but so also do the following Bible versions:
> 
> The Wycliffe Bible translation of 1395. In fact Wycliffe used the word "charite" in place of "love" some 93 times throughout both Testaments.
> 
> ...



http://www.puritanboard.com/f63/KJV-translation-rules-20107/


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## KMK (Apr 10, 2008)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> Is the word "Charity" an error in the King James Bible?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Since Andrew did not post this quote from the KJV Translation Rules, I will:



> Seventeen of the translators were to work at Westminster, fifteen at Cambridge, and as many at Oxford. Those who met at each place were divided into two companies; so that there were, in all, six distinct companies of translators. They received a set of rules for their direction.
> 
> The first instructed them to make the "Bishop's Bible," so called, the basis of their work, altering it no further than fidelity to the originals required…



Thanks, Andrew!


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## matthew11v25 (Apr 10, 2008)

Thanks...this is helpful.


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## KMK (Apr 10, 2008)

From the OED:



> The 16th century English versions from Tyndale to 1611, while rendering _agape_ sometimes 'love', sometimes 'charity', did not follow the _dilectio_ and _caritas_ of the Vulgate, but used 'love' more often (about 86 times), confining 'charity' to 26 passages in the Pauline and certain Catholic epistles (not in 1 John), and the Apocalypse, where the sense is specifically...the Christian love of our fellow men; Christian benignity of disposition expressing itself in Christ-like conduct...In the Revised Version of 1881, 'love' has been substituted in all of these instances, so that it now stands as the uniform rendering of _agape_, to the eliminatioin of the distinction of _dilectio_ and _caritas_ introduced by the Vulgate, and of 'love' and 'charity' of the 16th c. versions.



It seems the AV translators had a method to their madness.


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## Pilgrim (Apr 11, 2008)

KMK said:


> From the OED:
> 
> 
> 
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Indeed. But it is too often dismissed out of hand by those who claim the KJV is unusable today and those who want to counter the influence of misleading and irresponsible defenders of the KJV like Riplinger and Ruckman.


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