The Golden Rule

For several thousands of years, humans.. Lina, are you really going to take one of Leon’s sweets? Would you like it if Leon, or someone else took your sweets? No, exactly. Do to others what you would want them to do to you.

That’s something called the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is prominent in most religions. For instance, look. There is Jesus. What is he saying?

In the Christian holy text, The New Testament, Jesus says: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This quote is important in Christianity, and has been widely spread. That’s why it’s often said that it was Jesus and Christianity that first created the Golden Rule. But Christianity wasn’t the first. Hinduism and Jainism are among the oldest religions still in existence today.

In the Hindu text, Mahabharata, it says: All that must be done is summed up in this: Do not do to others what would hurt if done to you. And the Jains say: One should go about the world treating all creatures as one wishes to be treated. In Buddhism, Buddha is supposed to have said: Do not harm another with that which would harm yourself. Taoism - or Daoism - is a Chinese religion about as old as Buddhism. One of the rules in Taoism sounds like this: Count your neighbor's gain as your gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss.

And here, this is Confucius who lived in China about five hundred years BCE. Confucius founded the religion and life-philosophy Confucianism and supposedly he said: Do not do to others what you do not want done to you. Christianity, like its sibling religions Judaism and Islam, is one of the Abrahamic religions. Does the Golden Rule exist within the other two as well? Yes.

Judaism is the oldest of these Abrahamic religions and uses two important collections of texts. The oldest one is the Jewish sacred book - the Tanakh - or The old Testament as the Christians call it. And the other is the Talmud, a collection of writings that explain the Tanakh, particularly the section of the Tanakh called the law - the Torah. In the Tanakh there is no one single quote that exactly states the Golden Rule, but an important idea in the Torah is to “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The Talmud explains the Torah text like this: That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. According to the Talmud, this was said by the religious leader Hillel during the last century BCE.

But it was not written down in the Talmud until several centuries later. So it’s hard to know which came first, the Christian version of the rule or this Jewish one. What about Islam? Well, in one of the books about how Muhammad lived, the Hadiths, it says this: Not one of you is a believer until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. And in… … ah well, there are many more examples, but now you probably realise that this is a common rule, that people in all times have used to behave in a good way toward one another.

Whether you belong to a religion or not, this is a pretty good rule. Or what would you say, Lina? Hey, where are you going? Aha! You’re giving Leon liquorice so that he will do the same thing to you.

Smart move Lina. I hate liquorice.