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"No!" is the short answer to the question, "Is there any biblical support for dating?" In fact, nowhere in the Bible is there any mention of a man and woman even getting to know one another before they married. To the ancient denizens of the biblical era, dating would have been as much of a cultural anathema as was having a child out of wedlock just 40 to 60 years ago.

As hard as it may be for out 21st century minds to accept, during ancient biblical times women were considered property - a man's property. Until she was of marriageable age, a daughter was her father's property. Once married, she became her husband's property.

As her father's property, a woman could be "given" in marriage to anyone her father chose. If of wealthy upper classes or nobility, a woman could anticipate being given in marriage as a means to bolster political or familial alliances.

Rather than speaking out against the practice of treating women as chattel, Biblical evidence points to the practice of a man giving a woman in marriage. The New International Version (NIV), one of the most popular biblical translations, contains over 30 references to a woman's being "given" in marriage. In Genesis, for instance, Laban tells his future son-in-law, Jacob, "It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one." Jeremiah tells the exiles in Babylon: to "find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage" (Jeremiah 29:6). Luke's Jesus says, "The people of this age marry and are given in marriage (Luke 20:34).

The woman had no say in whom she would marry.

The biblical record thus reflects the social mores of the time in which it was written. Indeed, any citizen of the 5000 or so years covered by biblical history would have been shocked by the idea of a man and a woman spending time alone in one another's company before marriage.
Over the last couple thousand years, social customs have changed. It's only been in the fairly recent past that arranged marriages have given way to "love" marriages.

Today, it would be rare to find an advocate of arranged marriages. Church and society alike have come to recognize that treating women as property is an abhorrence to be relegated to the pages of history.

Must we then conclude that because the Bible makes no mention of dating, God would not approve of 21st century courtship traditions?

To answer the question in the affirmative would be to suggest we need to return to a world in which arranged marriages are the cultural rule of thumb. The only conclusion we can draw from the fact that there is no specific mention of or allusion to "dating" in scripture is that the scriptural record is consistent with the cultural beliefs of the periods in which the Bible was written.

That dating is not mentioned in the Bible means only that dating is not mentioned in the Bible.

Let's, then, simply acknowledge that scriptures do not mention dating and let it go at that.

God would surely approve.

Learn more about this author, Eileen Noyes-Verchereau.
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