Charity in the Bible

Does charity directly equate to love?

If you look at the revised 1831 edition of the Bible you will see Corinthian 13:1 - 13:

1: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2: And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3: If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4: Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful;
5: it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6: it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
7: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8: Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
9: For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect;
10: but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
11: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
12: For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
13: So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.



But then take the older King James version and it reads entirely differently. The word "love" does not exist in the passage. Instead it is the word "charity".

www.dictionary.com has a definition as:
The theological virtue defined as love directed first toward God but also toward oneself and one's neighbors as objects of God's love.

My question is, why change the word? Has the general use of the word charity come to take on a different meaning or was it merely an attempt to simplify the passage?
I have heard this passage read at weddings and to me it has always seemed strange that the people listening to it do not realise that it has been tampered with.

Charity is more than love, it can mean alot of things.


It can mean being merciful to those who ask forgiveness, helping the poor, being kind and generous with money, being
gentile in conversation.



Its love, but its having grae in every situation we encounter each day is how i see charity.



Peace.

Try using a Strongs or Vines dictionary to research the words used in passages. That should help take out much of the mystery of wording and changes.

Originally posted by Leveller
Does charity directly equate to love?

If you look at the revised 1831 edition of the Bible you will see Corinthian 13:1 - 13:

1: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

But then take the older King James version and it reads entirely differently. The word "love" does not exist in the passage. Instead it is the word "charity".

www.dictionary.com has a definition as:
The theological virtue defined as love directed first toward God but also toward oneself and one's neighbors as objects of God's love.

My question is, why change the word? Has the general use of the word charity come to take on a different meaning or was it merely an attempt to simplify the passage?
I have heard this passage read at weddings and to me it has always seemed strange that the people listening to it do not realise that it has been tampered with.

I've always heard it read with the word "love", myself, but it is very interesting that the accepted version uses "charity" instead. I looked up the definition of charity in the Strong's Concordance-Greek Definitions. This is what I found:

1 Corinthians 13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Strong's Greek Definition for # 26: charity

Greek // agaph // agape // ag-ah'-pay //

from 25; TDNT - 1:21,5; n f

AV - love 86, charity 27, dear 1, charitably+ 2596 1,
feast of charity 1; 116

1) brotherly love, affection, good will, love, benevolence
2) love feasts
www.apostolic-churches.net...

Charity used to be performed as an act of love and compassion for one's fellow man. I imagine that it stopped being identified as a pure and loving benefaction, when it became tax deductible, and people started donating to charity for their own personal gain, rather than a brotherly/sisterly concern for others.