Charles R. Lightner

Professor Csikszentmihalyi, now of UC Berkley, contributed the paper on Confucianism to the Neusner-Chilton volume. He makes it clear at the outset that the questions asked of the writers for this volume have no clear-cut answers in Confucian thought, history or interpretation. “The most commonly cited examples of the Golden Rule in China are from the Analects…of Confucius…Jesuit m...

Richard H. Davis, prolific author and professor of religion at Bard College wrote the contribution to the Neusner-Chilton volume that addresses the Golden Rule in Hinduism. He is careful in titling his paper to signal that a single sentence that appears in a much larger and complex literary work must be viewed in the context in which it is found. Davis identifies a passage from the...

The Neusner-Chilton volume contains two papers on the Golden Rule in Buddhism. The second is by Professor Charles Hallisey, then of the University of Wisconsin, who, like Scheible, concentrates on the south-Asia Theravada tradition. Hallisey prefaces his analysis with the acknowledgement that the historical and cultural diversity of the Buddhist tradition makes: “...a single genera...

Professor Kristin Scheible, then of Bard College, is a scholar of Theravadan Buddhism and wrote on the Golden Rule in that tradition for the Neusner-Chilton conference. She raises two points in her first few sentences that are both crucial to the Buddhist view of life and differentiate it from traditional western religious thinking. 1. The idea of reincarnation as a continuous and ...

Th. Emil Homerin, Professor of religion at the University of Rochester, wrote the paper on the Golden Rule in Islam for the Neusner-Chilton conference and volume. Professor Homerin opens his paper noting that “pre-Islamic Arabs regarded the survival of the tribe, not the individual, as most essential”. The influence of that tribal primacy is echoed in the discussion of the Islamic app...

The sub-title of this paper by Professor Olivier Du Roy is “from Origen to Martin Luther”. Origen’s teachings on the subject date to 230 CE and Martin Luther’s to his first public sermon in 1510. So Du Roy essentially picks up in time were Chilton ends and extends the subject through the Christian line from the period of the early Church Fathers to the Reformation. Du Roy holds doc...

Professor Chilton is a scholar of both early Christianity and Judaism. He has published widely, served on the faculties of a number of prestigious institutions, and was the co-convener of the conference that resulted in the Neusner-Chilton edited volume. Chilton’s contribution to that volume is a paper titled: “Jesus, the Golden Rule and Its Application”. He opens his paper with th...

Professor Mahnaz Moazami, then of Columbia University, contributed the paper on the Golden Rule in Zoroastrianism to the Neusner-Chilton volume. She opens her paper with a statement that the Golden Rule “is a well-entrenched concept in Zoroastrian ethics”. Zoroastrianism is the religion of the ancient Iranians, which flourished in the third through the seventh centuries CE. The Ave...

Jacob Neusner; one of the conveners of the 2008 conference on the Golden Rule and co-editor of the resulting volume of papers; wrote his paper on the Golden Rule in Classical Judaism. Neusner was a rabbi ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary and held a doctorate in religion from Columbia University. He was a prolific author, editor and translator with nearly 1,000 titles in his ...

Professor Robert M. Berchman of Dowling College wrote on this subject for the Neusner-Chilton conference and volume of papers. He identifies two immediate issues facing the classicist: “There are no words in Greek or Latin that translate into English as reciprocity”, and “The general definition of the Golden Rule …treat others as we want, and would want, others ...