D. THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGBOUR AS THYSELF
Leviticus XIX, 18
The ‘Golden Rule’ in Judaism.
The world at large is unaware of the fact that this comprehensive maxim of morality –the golden rule of human conduct—was first taught by Judaism.
No less a thinker than John Stuart Mill expressed his surprise that it came from the Pentateuch.
Not only is it Jewish in origin, but, long before the rise of Christianity, Israel’s religious teachers quoted Leviticus XIX, 18, either verbally or in paraphrase, as expressing the essence of the moral life. Thus, Ben Sira says, ‘Honour thy neighbour as thyself.’
In the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs we read:
‘A man should not do to his neighbour what a man does not desire for himself.’
Tobit admonishes his son in the words, ‘What is displeasing to thyself, that do not unto any other.’
Philo and Josephus have sayings similar to the above.
As to the Rabbis, there is the well-known story of Hillel and the heathen scoffer who asked Hillel to condense for him the whole Law in briefest possible form. Hillel’s answer is, ‘Whatever is hateful unto thee, do it not unto thy fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is explanation.’
Targum Jonathan adds to its translation of Lev. XIX, 18 a paraphrase in words almost identical with those of Hillel.
In the generation after the Destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Akiba declares ‘“Thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself” is a fundamental rule in the Torah,’
His contemporary Ben Azzai agrees that this law of love is such a fundamental rule, provided it is read in conjunction with Gen. V, 1 (‘This is the book of the generations of man. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him’);
- for this latter verse teaches reverence for the Divine image in man,
- and proclaims the vital truth of the unity of mankind,
- and the consequent doctrine of the brotherhood of man.
- All men are created in the Divine image, says Ben Azzai; and, therefore, all are our fellow-men and entitled to human love.
And the command of Lev. XIX, 18 applies to—
- classes
- and nations
- as well as to individuals.
The Prophets in their day, on the one hand, arraigned the rich for their oppression of the poor; and, on the other hand, pilloried the nations that were guilty of inhumanity and breach of faith towards one another. Their sublime conception of international morality has found wonderful expression in the words of Judah the Pious, a medieval Jewish mystic, who said: ‘On the Judgment Day, the Holy One, blessed be He, will call the nations to account for every violation of the command “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” of which they have been guilty in their dealings with one another.’
Modernist Depreciation of Lev. XIX, 18, 34.
Though the Founder of Christianity quotes ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ as the old Biblical command of recognized central importance, many Christian theologians maintain that the Heb. Word for ‘neighbour’ (rea) in this verse refers only to the fellow-Israelite. Its morality therefore is only tribal.
But the translation of the Heb. Word rea by ‘fellow-Israelite’ is incorrect. One need not be a Hebrew scholar to convince oneself of the fact that rea means neighbour of whatever race or creed.
Thus in Exodus XI, 2—‘Let them ask every man of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, etc.’—the Heb. Word for neighbour cannot possibly mean ‘fellow-Israelite’, but distinctly refers to the Egyptians.
As in all the moral precepts of Scripture, the word neighbour in Lev. XIX, 18, is equivalent to ‘fellow-man’, and it includes in its range every human being by virtue of his humanity.
In order to prevent any possible misunderstanding, the command of love of neighbour is in v. 34 of this same nineteenth chapter of Leviticus extended to include the homeless alien.
‘The stranger (ger) that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers (gerim) in the land of Egypt.’
But even this marvelous law, that is absolutely without parallel in any ancient or modern code of civil law, is cavilled at by modernist theologians and decried as ‘narrow’. The Heb. word ger, they hold, denotes only an alien who had become a fellow-worshipper of the God of Israel. This is contrary to fact. The Israelites in Egypt are in this very verse spoken of as gerim: but they did not as a body adopt the worship of Isis or Apis; they were hated, suspected and enslaved ‘strangers’.
It is evident, therefore, that Lev. XIX, 34 likewise refers to the friendless and homeless foreigner. He was throughout antiquity the victim of injustice and oppression, as were the Israelites in Egypt; in Israel alone he was not obliged to struggle for recognition as a human being. (See further on love of alien and of enemy, pp. 313 and 316.)
The ‘Negative’ Golden Rule.
There is one other argument that is resorted to in order to prove that the true Golden Rule was first promulgated by Christianity. The greatest stress is laid on the fact that both Tobit and Hillel paraphrase Lev. XIX, 18 in a negative way—‘Whatever is hateful unto thee, do it not unto thy fellow.’
This is contrasted, and unfavourably so, with the positive paraphrase in the New Testament, ‘All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye unto them.’ It is claimed that the former is only negative morality; and that in its positive restatement alone, as formulated in the Gospels, is the Rule a great imperative of moral enthusiasm.
This argument is now seen to be illusory. ‘The delicate difference which has been thought to exist between the negative and positive form is due to modern reflection on the subject, and was quite unapparent to the men of antiquity’ (G. Kittel).
In the oldest Christian literature the two forms are recorded indiscriminately; and the negative Golden Rule occurs in the Western texts of Acts XV, 20, Romans XIII, 10, the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, and the Apostolical Constitutions. And positive forms of the Rule have had a place in Judaism. Thus Hillel says, ‘Love thy fellow-creatures’; and Eleazar ben Arach, ‘Let the honour of thy neighbour be as dear to thee as thine own.’ But the mere fact that Lev. XIX, 18 is positive, itself renders all talk of a negative Jewish morality in connection with the Golden Rule fatuous.
It is time that the attempt to rob Judaism of its title to having given the Golden Rule to humanity, as well as the dispute as to the superiority of the positive over the negative form, came to an end.
As thyself. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’
Regard for self has its legitimate place in the life of man. Unlimited self-surrender is impossible; and a sound morality takes account of our own interests equally with those of others. In the luminous words of Hillel: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?’
The Sifra, the oldest Rabbinic commentary on Leviticus, records the following: ‘Two men are in the desert with a little water in possession of one of them. If the one drinks it, he will reach civilization; but if the two of them share it, both will die. Ben Petura said, Let the two of them drink, though both will die.
Rabbi Akiba held that, in such a case, your own life has precedence over the life of your fellow-man.’ Rabbi Akiba could not agree that two should perish where death demands but one as its toll. And, indeed, if the Torah had meant that a man must love his neighbour to the extent of sacrificing his life for him in all circumstances, it would have said: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour more than thyself.’
There are those, both in ancient and in modern times, who do not agree with Rabbi Akiba, and who deem the view of Ben Petura the more altruistic, the more heroic. Such would have preferred that the words as thyself had not occurred in the Golden Rule. Others again preach the annihilation of self, or at any rate its total submergence, as the basic principle of human conduct.
New formulations of the whole duty of man have in consequence been proposed by various thinkers. We need examine but one of these formulations—Live for others. Were such a rule seriously translated into practice, it would lead to absurdity. For Live for others necessarily entails that others live for you. You are to attend to everybody else’s concerns, and everybody else is to attend to your concerns—except yourself. A moment’s examination of this or any other proposed substitute for ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself only brings out the more clearly the fundamental sanity of Judaism.