愛は寛容であり 愛は情け深い ai wa kan'yō de ari, ai wa nasakebukai 1 Corinthians 13:4 Love Is Patient, Love Is Kind

愛 (read ai) is love. A Japanese dictionary gives 寛容 (read kan'yō) as not harshly blaming the faults of others, and 情け深い (read nasakebukai) as considerate, deep in sympathy. The line's wa and de ari are its grammar.

The title's English is that of the New American Standard New Testament of 1963 and the New International Version New Testament of 1973. Patient is the Latin Bible's word, patiens, and kind renders Paul's Greek.

The Greek verb that 寛容 renders has two senses in Thayer's lexicon: to endure misfortune patiently, and to bear the offenses of others. Thayer files this verse under the second, which comes near 寛容. A Japanese Bible of 1987 writes 忍耐強い, nearer the bearing of misfortune.

The Meiji New Testament, in a printing of 1881, wrote 寬忍 where the line has 寛容, and read it shinobukoto, bearing. The Orthodox New Testament of 1901 wrote the same characters and read them kannin. Émile Raguet's Catholic New Testament of 1910 wrote 堪忍, and for the second word 情, the root of 情け深い.

寛容 is the word of the Protestant revision of the New Testament, completed in 1917. Our history read it in that revision's printings of 1919 and 1927.

In The Bible's View of Marriage, of 1925, the evangelist Fujii Takeshi regretted the Protestant revision's rendering. He thought deep in patience and deep in grace would come a little nearer the original.

Nitobe Inazō's Bushido, of 1900, applies the verse to politeness. Its Japanese translation of 1908 says it changes one character of the holy words, putting politeness for love.

A wedding handbook of 1961 prints the verse in a specimen order of service for a church wedding. A wedding book of 1997 calls the passage often read at weddings. Both are read in snippets of the National Diet Library's full-text index. In an Orthodox service book of 1895, the passage is the epistle of the anointing of the sick. In an Anglican prayer book of 1941, the chapter is the epistle of the Sunday before Lent.

Our history reads 寛容 as the nearer of the Japanese Bibles' words to Paul's verb at this verse. It reads neither 寛容 nor 忍耐 as wrong, since the Greek covers both.

The opening of 1 Corinthians 13:4, a letter of Paul's, in the words of the Japan Bible Society's colloquial translation, whose New Testament appeared in 1954, with that Bible's 情深い written 情け深い, as a book of 1954 wrote it, the earliest known in the National Diet Library's full-text index to quote the verse so, and as the 1987 新共同訳 printed its own second clause.