Expert: Maria - 4/4/2011

Question
Hi there, I am wondering how to translate the sentence "without love, he is nothing" into Latin, or if there is a Latin sentence that translates somewhat to that.  I am basically trying to sum up 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 into a single sentence.  It reads as follows:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Answer
Hello,

If you want to  draw your  inspiration from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 where the term “love” refers to the Christian idea of “love” related to God, the  single sentence "Without love, he is nothing”- just as a synthesis of the passage you mention- should be translated as follows:

-“Sine caritate, nihil est ille” .

If on the contrary you want to refer to “love”  as “desire”, “lust”, “passion”,”strong affection”,  the correct translation would be the following:

-“Sine amore, nihil est ille”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-Without = SINE (preposition which requires the ablative case)

-love = CARITATE (ablative singular  of CARITAS, feminine noun, 3rd.declension) or AMORE (ablative singular  of AMOR, masculine noun, 3rd.declension)

-he = ILLE (subject in the nominative  masculine)

-is = EST (from SUM, I am)

-nothing = NIHIL (predicate, neuter pronoun).

As you can see, Latin word order is different from English for Latin is an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings of each term, not by the order of the words.