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Love has not always meant what it means today.

Romantic love gradually took on the role once played by religion.

Understanding love's history illuminates the true meaning of love.

Many of us expect love to do far more than make us happy. We expect it to make us whole, to tell us who we are, and even to give our lives meaning. This understanding of love is surprisingly recent.

Love is a word with a meaning that has changed over the centuries. Today, we tend to think about love primarily in terms of romantic love. But, if you consider it, the concept of romantic love barely features among the 66 books of the Bible. The two greatest “love” stories in the Bible are not of husband and wife, nor even of man and woman, but of man and man, and woman and woman: David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Naomi.

When Love Belonged to God

Instead, all love in the Bible is directed at God, and the love for the spouse, and more generally for the other, is subsumed under the love of God, of which it is an expression. Thus, in the Sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham’s love for God trumps his love for his own longed-for son Isaac, whom he is willing to sacrifice for no other reason than that God commanded it.

In ancient times, people did sometimes fall in love, but they did........

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