The Search for Love

My adult life would have been very different if search engines had been around when I was a kid. I am not sure how it would have been different, but different it would have been.

With the approach of Valentine's Day, I decided to pop 'love' into a Bible search tool just to see what I would find. Today's blog is all about the results of my search for love.

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In the Authorized King James Version, the word love was matched 334 times. Then I wondered if love grows over time, so I tried the New King James Version. I expected a higher number because I knew that in Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, the new version used love, whereas the original used charity. That would account for about 9 more loves right there, but NO! Even with those extra nine, the New King James has a love loss of 13! The word love was found only 321 in the updated version. Where did the love go?

I don't know who made this "law," and I do not suppose that there is any agency around to enforce it, but I have been told that one of the laws of Bible interpretation is called the "Law of First Mention." According to the Law of First Mention, the first time a concept appears in scripture it is used in its foundational meaning. If there is any ambiguity in later scripture passages, the foundation laid at First Mention is supposedly the most reliable meaning for the interpretation.

This presents a bit of a problem.

First Mention of love in the New King James is in Genesis 22:2.

Then He said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."

First Mention is literally sacrificial.

First Mention of love in the Authorized King James is in Genesis 27:4.

And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.

First Mention is about sating the appetite.

I do not see any way to reconcile these—short of cannibalism, which I will rule out on both the basis of sketchy theology and for its Eww factor.

The translation that I usually prefer for study is the English Standard, so my next search for love was in that version. It produced a whopping tally of 503 mentions of love. I am not sure what that means, but it seems rather unloving to go around bragging that my preferred translation touts love 150% more often than yours! Besides, at the end of the day, love is work, commitment, self-surrender, and sacrifice.

Of course, Valentine's Day is not about love so much as it is about romance! So my next search was for the word "romance."

It would seem that the only times romance is found in the English translations are when it is embedded in the word necromancer. So there we have it: romance is a dead end.