The collection of papers edited by Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton differs meaningfully from the books on the Golden Rule written by Jefferey Wattles and Harry Gensler.
First, it is a collection of fourteen scholarly papers by authors with varied academic, religious and philosophical backgrounds. But the authors are academics and the papers are academic. I make that point to distinguish them from works written from the point of view of adherents to specific religious or moral perspectives. The authors are writing as scholars, not necessarily as believers.
Second, the papers were written for presentation and consideration in the environment of an academic conference. So, they were written at roughly the same time. However, in some cases an author specifically responds to or cites material in the paper of another of the authors. So, there was some sharing of texts during the period they were written.
Third, each author was given a set of questions to serve as a rough guide to the organization of their papers:
What does the Golden Rule say?
What does the Golden Rule mean?
How does the Golden Rule work?
How does the Golden Rule matter?
Fourth, (and, I think damagingly) the title of the conference and the title of the paper that proposes the four organizing questions above, both contain the word “reciprocity”.
As Wattles and Gensler have pointed out; as many others have concluded; and as I’ve covered in previous posts; the term reciprocity is a difficult one. It opens the analysis of the Rule to unnecessary (and ultimately irrelevant2 technical objections. But in many cases the authors of papers in this collection find it necessary to address the issue of reciprocity in their own specific topics, which often seems forced and unnecessary to me.
In fact, in the introductory paper that proposes the broad ground rules for the other authors, William Scott Green of the University of Miami uses two phrases in describing the Rule that echo the work of Wattles and Gensler and, in effect, distance his guidelines from the strict reciprocity notion.
1. He says the Golden Rule “prescribes reciprocity as the foundational conceptual framework and context of consistency for shaping and evaluating our actions toward others”, and
2. “…we can take the term ‘the Golden Rule’ to refer to at least a general statement that instructs us to treat others as we want, and would want, others to treat us.”
(emphasis added)
In the first statement, the use of “consistency” rather than “reciprocity” seems to acknowledge the problems that the latter term causes.
In the second statement, the use of “treat” rather than “do” preemptively combines the positive and negative (or Gold and Silver) statements and, in doing so, whether purposely or not, might seem to avoid the need to address the issue of differences between the two.
Green describes the project of Neusner and Chilton as “the first collective study of the Golden Rule in the context of comparative religion”. And he suggests that “treating each religion similarly (that is, asking each one the same set of questions) will yield useful comparative results”.
As might be expected from a group of scholars, not all actually follow the outline Green proposes and it’s interesting to observe the differences between those whose subjects are living religions or philosophies such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam etc. and those that are no longer in widespread or active practice, such as those of ancient Greece and Rome.
Some of the papers have only minimal value to the current conversation and seem to have been included so that scholars could produce papers and participate in a career-enhancing conference (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Others, however, are fascinating and I’ll write subsequent posts about several of them.
©Charles R. Lightner