The

“Encyclopedia of Love.” The title alone sounds like an author’s hot ticket to “Oprah” or “The View.”

But the new, illustrated reference book, edited by Rollins College professor Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, is more ecumenical than racy.

The complete title, “The Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions,” makes it sound almost staid.

But with about 300 entries “from Adultery to Yoga,” Greenberg says there is plenty to engage the general reader.

The entries from 200 international scholars are roughly balanced between “the dichotomy of spiritual and physical love,” and range from 800 to 3,000 words each. Five deal with adultery in different traditions. An equal number explore beauty. There are sections on homosexuality and celibacy; ecstasy and purity; as well as charity, forgiveness and filial love.

Greenberg, 57, says the book ($265, ABC-CLIO Press) is for “anyone who is curious about how love is expressed in religion, from its most mundane and trivial to its most sublime.”

It is, she writes in the preface, “the first reference work to offer a comprehensive portrait of love in the context of the classic and contemporary literature of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as other cultures and philosophies.”

Her approach is multidisciplinary and cross-cultural, and she says the book’s timing is critical.

“It is such an important moment in our history,” she says. “In a time of violence and hatred and claims to exclusive truths, the metaphor and concept of love in world religions is an essential topic.”