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Chapter 4

A Jewish Rule of Wisdom

            In Jewish literature, the golden rule arose during the Hellenistic period, and it quickly advanced from a marginal position to one among the central religious teachings.  Indeed, its rise provides a case study showing the very sense of what a moral principle is traditionally understood to be.  This chapter explores a segment of the history of Jewish ethics culminating with Rabbi Hillel (fl. 30 BCE - 10 CE), who, upon being asked for a summary of the Torah, replied, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary [perusha, specification] thereon; go and learn it."[i] 

Golden-rule thinking in the Hebrew Scriptures

            To seek the origins of the golden rule in Judaism leads to the root of Judaism itself, the affirmation of God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, who proposed, "Let us make man in our image,"[ii] the God who made a covenant with Abraham, and who, through the leadership of Moses, brought the Hebrews out of bondage and gave them the Torah, including the Ten Commandments, for the guidance of his people.[iii]  The golden rule will emerge as a summary of the Torah only after centuries during which isolated examples of golden-rule thinking would arise, momentarily and unsystematically.  In the simplest sense, golden-rule thinking may here be characterized as recognizing moral implications of the fact that others are like oneself. 

            In the earliest Hebrew example, we see how golden-rule thinking, in the hands of a clever prophet, can successfully challenge a king on a most sensitive moral issue.  After the Hebrews had settled in Palestine, their united kingdom flourished briefly, and a story from this period relates an encounter between the prophet Nathan and king David (10th century).  David, desiring the beautiful Bathsheba for himself, had sent her husband to fight in the front lines; after the husband was killed, David brought her to his house (2 Samuel 11).  Nathan then went to David and told him a story to get him to imagine a situation similar to his own, in which analogous wrongdoing would elicit the king's righteous indignation. 

                        There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.  And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him.  Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him."  Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, "As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity."

                        Nathan said to David, "You are the man." (2 Samuel 12. 1-7)[iv]

After Nathan pronounced the retributive judgment of God on David, we read, "David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned against the Lord.'"  David thus acknowledged that the judgment he had made on the rich man applied by implication to a similar case, his own, as well.

            It is possible that the golden rule in its first clear, general formulation entered Palestine from Mesopotamia.[v]  The Babylonian legend of Ahikar is at least as old as the fifth century BCE, though the Armenian translation containing the golden rule is from 450 CE; thus the golden rule may be a late interpolation in this text.  The legend conjoins familiar motifs of advice to a son and advice to a king.  "Son, that which seems evil unto thee do not to thy companion."[vi]  The irony is that the king's minister--who gives this counsel to his nephew (adopted for lack of an heir), on the expectation that the nephew will succeed him and become king--finds himself terribly mistreated by that nephew when the roles are reversed and the nephew does come to power.  In the end, however, justice is done.  There is a generality in this formulation of the rule in that it covers all conduct toward someone, not just a particular act.  The scope of the application of the rule, however, remains restricted.  Only conduct to one's companion is mentioned here. 

The golden rule in Hellenistic Judaism

            What sort of "rule" is the golden rule?  Is it a piece of worldly wisdom or a command from a sovereign and mysterious God or what?  The early contexts of the rule give a clue to how it was perceived.  The early literary home of the golden rule in Palestine was Hellenistic Jewish wisdom literature, which shared perspectives with other traditions in the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world.  It is therefore plausible that the formula of the golden rule entered Jewish culture from Greek culture.  Hellenistic Judaism arose in response to the Greek influence in Palestine after the conquest by Alexander the Great in 333 BCE.

            Wisdom was a highly cherished virtue, closely associated with righteousness.  Proverbs 8.22-31 celebrates Woman Wisdom as the first creation of God and the partner in subsequent creation.  A common pose assumed in wisdom literature that of a wise man advising a king.  Though wisdom is to be prized by all, it is especially important that the king be wise to interpret the law domestically and to conduct international relations; King Solomon was esteemed as a paradigmatic wise man.  Common in wisdom literature was the literary form of the proverb, a brief, pithy saying useful for human living; a proverb (mashal) is "a word-group connoting 'rule' or 'power.'"[vii]  Proverbs harvest from human experience lessons for living prudently and "walking in the way of the Lord."[viii]  These are lessons which are generalizations about nature and human conduct, and combined with exhortations to righteousness, for example, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall"[ix]; "Better is a dinner where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it."[x]  Righteousness is not just conformity to an external demand; it is the way of life that proves itself in human experience.  Promises of rewards and punishments convey the message that there is identity between the long-term best interest of the individual and the command of God.  The man whose "delight is in the law of the Lord" is "like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season"; whereas "the way of the wicked will perish."[xi]

            Since wisdom and law are related, the question arises whether the golden rule could ever be regarded as having a place within Jewish law.  Its generality, like that of the "law of love," is exceptional for a Jewish legal text.  Joseph Blenkinsopp writes of the blending of the legal and wisdom ("sapiential") traditions in Israel, with the result that

            the law can no longer be considered as a purely objective and extrinsic reality . . . .  On the contrary, the 'sapientializing' of the law implies that it is to be internalized by an activity which unites learning and piety in the pursuit of a common purpose: "You will seek Yahweh your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deuteronomy 4.29).[xii]

Given this background, we are prepared to assemble the blocks of literary history that lead directly to Hillel's use of the rule.

            In each of the texts expressing golden-rule thinking adds a specific, new point.  The first theme, expressed in Ben Sira (190 BCE), is that golden-rule thinking in Judaism expresses a logic of fairness and consideration, predicated on the recognition that others are like oneself.[xiii]   This book, a discourse of forty-two chapters on wisdom, rises to a celebration of the works of God in nature and in history.  It culminates with a hymn of thanksgiving and a poem narrating the author's persistent pursuit of wisdom and his habits of wise conduct; finally it exhorts the reader to follow in the same way.  Ben Sira commends many virtues and specifies exemplary conduct for a variety of life situations.  One golden-rule passage begins with a teaching about the divine reward for human forgiveness:

            Forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you, and when you pray, your sins will be forgiven.  If a man nurses anger against another, can he then demand compassion from the Lord?  Showing no pity for a man like himself, can he then plead for his own sins?[xiv]

According to golden-rule logic, it is inconsistent to engage in selfish praying.[xv]  Ben Sira also uses golden-rule thinking as the key to being considerate.  Realizing that others' needs are like one's own has implications for table manners:

            Have you sat down at a lavish table?  Do not gape at it, do not say, "What a feast!"  Remember how bad it is to have a greedy eye; is anything in creation greedier than the eye?  That is why it waters on every occasion.  Do not reach out for anything your host has his eye on, do not jostle him at the dish.  Judge your fellow guest's needs by your own, be thoughtful in every way.[xvi]

            The specifically religious sense of the golden rule is evident in the Letter of Aristeas (between 127-118 BCE), which recommends a golden rule of consideration on account of the model of God's way with humankind.  The rule arises without fanfare in a context which portrays a king asking weighty questions of philosophers.  The king has just appreciately received brief and conventional answers from two philosophers, who are his guests at a banquet.

            He cordially approved this answer and looking upon another said, "What is the teaching of wisdom?"  And the other replied, "As you wish that evils should not befall you, but wish to partake of all that is good, you should act in this spirit to your subjects and to offenders.  For God too leads all men by gentleness.[xvii]  

That the The Letter of Aristeas puts the golden rule in the mouth of philosophers strengthens the hypothesis that the rule entered Jewish culture from Greece.  Note also that this text combines both negative and positive aspects of golden-rule thinking. 

            Tobit (near the end of the second century BCE) contains the golden rule in a clear, general formulation, in a context of worldly wisdom and divine reward for serving God.[xviii]  The book tells the story of Tobit, a blind man whose life stretches over much of Israelite history from before the division of the kingdom (931) until more than two centuries later.  This man of exemplary righteousness and his daughter (who had had seven bridegrooms killed) long for death, but God brings solutions to their problems.  Tobit mentions the rule as advice to his son alongside more or less specific maxims regarding family life, faithfulness to God, the rewards for righteous living, almsgiving, being a good employer, and the quest for wisdom.  Here is the rule in its immediate context.

            Do not keep back until next day the wages of those who work for you; pay them at once.  If you serve God you will be rewarded.  Be careful, my child, in all you do, well-disciplined in all your behavior.  Do to no one what you would not want done to you.  Do not drink wine to the point of drunkenness; do not let excess be your travelling companion. (4.15-16)[xix]

Various considerations mingle here: rigorous fairness, personal interest in divine reward, a prudent sense of proportion.  One may observe the moral ambiguity of this passage without suggesting any betrayal of moral integrity, any criticism of its particular moral rules, or a denial of the prospect divine reward.  Nevertheless, such a variety of commingling considerations raises a question whenever we observe it: What is the center of gravity of the golden rule in a given context?  Is it self-interest, or conformity to the demands of divine righteousness, or some other possible center of gravity?  The author of the text celebrates Tobit as a man of unquestioned righteousness, so it is all the more understandable that no need is felt for an explicit discourse to prioritize these considerations.

The golden rule as a summary principle

            Once the golden rule had entered Jewish literature, it became associated with the promulgation of the two great rules commanding the love of God and neighbor.  The first half of the Ten Commandments, concerned primarily with the worship of God, was sometimes regarded (at least by the second century BCE) as being summarized in the command, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength."[xx]  The second half of the Ten Commandments, concerned with moral prohibitions, was sometimes regarded as summarized in a teaching, from the "Holiness Code" of Leviticus 17-26 (named for its exhortation, "Be holy"[xxi]): "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19.18).[xxii]  Although the context in Leviticus envisions primarily obligations to fellow Israelites, every human being--including in particular the poor, the widow, and the stranger--is a potential beneficiary.  What reason is given for extending generosity in this way?  The people's memory of their suffering.  "The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."[xxiii] 

            To love God meant keeping the commandments.[xxiv]  Hellenistic Judaism regarded these two great commandments as the sum of the law, and both were expressed as virtues: piety (eusebeia) and righteousness (dikaiosune), with the commandment to love God taking precedence over the commandment to love the neighbor.  This priority differs from that, e.g., in Plato's Euthyphro, where piety is a specific type of justice.  To subordinate piety to justice (where justice is made the subject of a "purely rational" discourse) tends to make religion irrelevant to philosophical ethics.  To subordinate justice to piety makes justice a religious trait.  

            The two-fold summary of the Ten Commandments--as the love of God and the love of neighbor--occurred first in The Book of Jubilees (150 BCE).[xxv]  At other times the summary was even more compressed: the law of love for one's neighbor stood on its own as a summary of all the Ten Commandments.  How could this be?  For the pious Jew, to be engaged in loving the neighbor is simultaneously to be engaged in loving obedience to God.  Loving the neighbor is evidence of sincerity in loving God, so love of the neighbor serves as a test of one's love for God.  Therefore, both intentions of love could blend, and both commandments could be summarized in terms of love for the neighbor.

            The golden rule functioned as a partial summary of the decalogue in a manuscript found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Two Ways, which contrasted the way of light and life with the way of darkness and death.  After quoting the two Great Rules, the text juxtaposes the golden rule with the commandments to love and then uses the latter portion of the Decalogue to explicate the golden rule.

            The way of life is this: First, you shall love the Lord your maker, and secondly, your neighbor as yourself.  And whatever you do not want to be done to you, you shall not do to anyone else.  And the interpretation of these words is: Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not bear false witness, do not fornicate, do not steal, do not covet what belongs to your neighbor.[xxvi]

There are differences between the golden rule and the law of love; the second is not an imperative in Hebrew[xxvii]; it tells how things shall be (in the future that God is establishing).  In addition, the golden rule does not mention love.[xxviii]  These differences, however, did not prevent the golden rule from being used to explain the law of neighbor love.  In a first-century BCE commentary , the golden rule is interpolated to explain Leviticus 19.18:

            Be not revengeful, nor cherish hatred to the sons of your people; but you shall love your neighbor; what is hateful to yourself you shall not to do him; I am the Lord.[xxix] 

In another text, the golden rule is substituted for Leviticus 19.18: "I command you to fear only the Lord, to worship him and to cleave to him . . . and that no one shall do to his fellowman what he does not want done to himself."[xxx] 

            The golden rule, thus, became part of a venerable tradition of expressing the law in summary form.  One account of this tradition was given by Rabbi Simmler (third century CE):

            Six hundred and thirteen precepts were imparted to Moses, three hundred and sixty-five negative . . . and two hundred and forty-eight positive . . . .[xxxi]  David came and established them as eleven, as it is written (Ps. xv): Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tent, who shall dwell in thy holy mountain?  (i) He that walketh uprightly and (ii) worketh righteousness and (iii) speaketh the truth in his heart.  (iv) He that backbiteth not with his tongue, (v) nor does evil to his neighbour, (vi) nor taketh up a reproach against another; (vii) in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, (viii) but who honoureth them that fear the Lord.  (ix) He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not; (x) he that putteth not out his money to usury, (xi) nor taketh a bribe against the innocent. . . . .  Then Isaiah came and established them as six (Isaiah 33.15): (i) He that walketh in righteousness and (ii) speaketh uprightly; (iii) he that despiseth the gain of deceits, (iv) that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, (v) that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and (vi) shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil.  Then came Micah and established them as three (Micah 6.8): What doth the Lord require of thee but (i) to do justice, (ii) to love mercy, and (iii) to walk humbly with thy God?  Once more Isaiah established them as two (Is. 66.1) (i) Keep ye judgment, and (ii) do righteousness.  Then came Amos and established them as one (Amos 5.4): Thus saith the Lord, Seek ye me and ye shall live, or (as R. Nahman b. Isaac preferred): Habakkuk came and made the whole Law stand on one fundamental idea (Habakkuk 2.4): The righteous man liveth by his faith.[xxxii]

            Such principles, statements of the law, simplify tradition, giving the mind a more unified, manageable focus.  A summary rule is, in Hebrew, a kelal, a rule or principle[xxxiii].  A principle, whose sagely brevity goes to the heart of the matter, gives generality and also emphasizes spiritual teachings over ritual requirements. 

Hillel's innovation

            Having noted the experiential quality, simplicity, summarizing function, generality, and spiritual tendency of the golden rule as articulated in Jewish tradition thus far, we are in a position to appreciate Hillel's use of the rule.  This conservative rabbi, renowned for his patience, was once approached by an importunate prospective convert to Judaism who had been turned away by Shammai, the leader of the school competing with that of Hillel.

            On another occasion it happened that a certain heathen came before Shammai and said to him, "Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot."  Thereupon he [Shammai] repulsed him with the builder's square which was in his hand.  When he went before Hillel, he [Hillel] said to him, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary [perusha, specification] thereon; go and learn it.[xxxiv]

Here the golden rule summarizes not only the ten commandments but the whole Torah.  Hillel might have cited the love of God and neighbor, but he neither quotes from the Torah nor mentions God; in these two ways, he presents a non-theologic philosophy of living to the proselyte.  Renouncing the authority of scripture, Hillel responded to this questioner free of sanctimonious piety, legalistic defensiveness, and commentarial intricacies.  This particular liberty in the use of the golden rule was less available once the rule had become canonical.

            In his reply to the request for a summary, Hillel furthermore presents the golden rule as a principle standing on its own.  The Torah is proposed, at the end of the reply, as commentary, not source.  If we take perusha in the sense of specification, the golden rule seems nearly ready to function as the leading axiom in a system of ethics.  Hillel suggests that the rest of the Torah involves specifying or working out the particulars of the golden rule.  Similarly, when Matthew says that the rest of the law and the prophets depend on the golden rule, the language suggests the metaphor of parental relationship; the remainder of the Torah are regarded as descendants of the simplifying golden rule.[xxxv]  One Ebionite Jewish-Christian text began to work out the derivation of the second half of the Ten Commandments from "one unique saying as transmitted to the God-fearing Jews":

            What we do not want done to us, we will not cause to be done to others; if you do not want to be killed, do not kill anybody; if you do not want anybody to commit adultery with your wife, do not commit adultery with anyone else's wife; if you don't want anything of yours stolen, do not steal anything that belongs to someone else.[xxxvi] 

The specific commandments are carefully expressed here in hypothetical form, though there is a clear assumption that "you" do not want to be killed or have your spouse taken or your property stolen.

            Rabbinic tradition would follow the precedent of Hillel's summary of the Torah in one principle.[xxxvii]  In the following story Rabbi Akiba responds like Hillel.

            It happened that one came to R. Akiba and said to him, "Rabbi, teach me the whole Law all at once."  He answered, "My son, Moses, our teacher, tarried on the mountain forty days and forty nights before he learned it, and you say, Teach me the whole Law all at once!  Nevertheless, my son, this is the fundamental principle of the Law: That which you hate respecting yourself, do not to your neighbor.  If you desire that no one injure you in respect to what is yours, then do injure him.  If you desire that no one should carry off what is yours, then do not carry off what is your neighbor's."[xxxviii]

Humanitarian implications

            The term "neighbor," used by Hillel in stating the golden rule had evolved to include any human being whatsoever.  I let Edward Schillebeeckx explain.

            'The neighbour' in the Old Testament underwent all sorts of changes of meaning.  In the earliest texts it is the compatriot or social peer; later on, the poor or the lowly, less important and socially inferior fellow-countryman, needing protection; finally, all members of the nation are for every Israelite like the 'weak man', entitled to help: all are brothers.  According to the final redaction of Deuteronomy, the way one should behave in practice toward the poor is to be extended to all one's fellows within the nation; that is to say, above and beyond all law and justice, love of one's neighbour is a brotherly, protective, loving attitude towards each member of God's people.  Then at last what is called for is an inward disposition of love and kindness.  For the Wisdom writers and the prophets 'the neighbour' means first and foremost the poor of society.  So in Lev. 19:18 we read: you shall love your fellow as yourself; wish a man whatever he wishes for himself; only then can universal peace prevail in Israel. . . .  In the Septuagint the 'neighbour' concept . . . is subject to a number of refinements.  In secular Greek it means the 'person next door', the nearest people around, ultimately the other person you happen to meet.  Thus neighbourly love was extended by the Jews of the Diaspora to become universal: it included everybody.  'My neighbour' is each and every person I meet (a consequence of the Diaspora Jews becoming adapted to their Gentile surroundings, and partly of an intensified faith in the God who creates everything and everybody).  Affection for the members of a sociologically circumscribed community, on the other hand, comes to be called brotherly love . . . .  In the intertestamentary literature . . . the two 'great commandments' (Deut. 6.4-5 and Lev. 19.18) have already been brought together, not so much from Scripture itself but under the influence exerted by the twofold Greek notion: 'Love the Lord and your neighbour', or: 'Love the Lord and each person with your whole heart', where love of neighbour is understood in a universalistic sense: pas anthropos [all men] is the notion stressed here.[xxxix]

Conclusion

            The golden rule, aligning with Jewish philanthropy, manifests the simplicity, generality, and spiritual tendency of the principles developing in first century Judaism.  By the time of Hillel, the rule is God's teaching, the Torah, wisely summarized; indeed, it is even taken as the quintessence of the Torah, and it is beginning to functioning as an axiom in the derivation of specific rules.  However, even though the golden rule has a self-evident appeal of its own, its heritage as a summary principle conserves the moral and religious formation presupposed in its promulgation.

            The point of calling the golden rule a principle is not to claim that it is the only satisfactory formulation of personal morality (replacing others, e.g., "You shall love your neighbor as yourself").  Rather, the implication is, I believe, that there is a unity to the moral life, and that the golden rule is one way of stating that unity. 

            Wisdom and righteousness, piety and justice, are the virtues most prominently associated with the classical Jewish golden rule.  There is no confusion with principles of reciprocity or retaliation, no worry about extreme, perfectionist standards; even when God is proposed as the paradigm of golden-rule conduct, the rule does not become a heavy burden.  It has a close bond with the comparable maxim, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and it governs the way the righteous individual treats each and every other person. 

            Theologically speaking, the emphasis on God as Creator has especially favored the theme of universal humanity.  Moral rules are taken as commands proceeding from the Creator's love for all men and women as his creatures; God wants all to live, and he has shown us the way.  From this perspective, the division of humanity into two classes--the wise, who pursue goodness and walk in the way of life, and the foolish, who pursue evil, sin, and iniquity, the way of death--has a logically secondary, derivative status, contingent on human decision.  In first century Jewish thought, there were two ways of prioritizing to resolve the apparent tension between "philanthropy"--imitation of God's love for all human beings--and critique based on the separation between the two ways.[xl]  The alternative to philanthropy assigns primary emphasis to difference--the difference between the wise and the foolish.  This emphasis prevails in apocalyptic discourse, where themes of punishment and reward dominate the religious consciousness, reinforcing self-interested and exclusivist attitudes.  Where difference is understood as subordinate to love of humankind, warnings occur in a context of encouragement.  The choice that the individual faces at the parting of the ways is a choice illumined by invitation, patience, just chastising, mercy, and welcome. 

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