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 bibliography.
Neusner’s approach to the analysis of Judaic texts was controversial and would not be considered normative by many Jewish scholars. His analysis is more academic than religious, which is consistent with the approach of other authors represented in the series of papers in the Neusner-Chilton volume.
Neusner opens his paper with a position statement on the study of comparative religion that is unexpected. He writes:
“I propose that a proposition common to a number of religions bears no consequence for the description, analysis and interpretation of any of those religions in particular: what is common produces the commonplace.”
And further:
“My thesis here is as follows: A proposition that is shared among several religious systems will not play a major role in the construction of any particular religious system.”
Neusner’s topic here is “classical Judaism”. His analysis seems to limit that to the literature of the Hebrew Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud and other lesser works of the same period(s).
The Mishnaic literature dates to roughly 200 CE and the Talmudic to roughly 500 CE. So, Jewish thought and teaching after that time is not a part of Neusner’s analysis.
In the context of the literature of that period Neusner says:
“What I shall show is that the Golden Rule is parachuted down into classical Judaism and plays no systemic role in the construction of that system.”
Neusner addresses an important question. He does not raise it as a question but addresses it as a given proposition. That is: do we consider the Golden Rule to be or to include or to arise from the injunction in Leviticus 19:18 i.e. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
We have seen that others see the “Do unto others…” command as being logically rooted in the “Love your neighbor…” specification.
Neusner presents an alternative approach. He writes:
“The canon of that (i.e. classical) Judaism contains an explicit expression of the Golden Rule. It is framed in both moral and ethical terms, the moral referring to good or bad, the ethical to right or wrong. Scripture’s formulation in terms of morality occurs in the commandment of love: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’…At issue is attitude, with action implicit. The first-century sage, Hillel, is cited as stating the Golden Rule in ethical terms, “What is hateful to you to your fellow don’t do…Hillel reformulated Lev 19:18, the rule of reciprocal love, in terms of action (don’t do) rather than attitude (love your neighbor).”
So, Neusner explicitly adopts the position that Lev 19:18; love of one’s neighbor; is a statement of the Golden Rule.
He implicitly equates the “attitude” idea (as he puts it) with the “action” idea. In doing so he magnifies the scope of the Rule even as he argues to minimize its importance in classical Judaism.
He then extends its reach further by interpreting a passage of Midrash in very expansive fashion. He cites the exchange between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai in a midrashic work called the Sifra (Kedoshim 4:12).
He writes: “The dispute between Aquiba and Ben Azzai makes clear that in Aquiba’s judgment by “my neighbor” not everyone is meant.”
This would accord with other positions we’ve already seen. But Ben Azzai brings the verse from Genesis 5:1 “This is the book of the generations of Adam” and identifies it as a “still more encompassing principle.”
Neusner sees in this exchange Ben Azzai’s invoking of “the universal definition of one’s neighbor. One’s fellow is any other person…Ben Azzai sees humanity as united in its common genealogy beginning with Adam and Eve, and it is in that context that Ben Azzai’s reading of ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ rejects the Golden Rule as too limited in its application.”
It is fascinating that Neusner would conclude that the commandment to love one’s fellow extends to all of humanity on the basis of the briefest of exchanges between rabbis in a midrash such as Sifra.
Not that Sifra is marginal but it is not a work on the order of the Mishnah or Talmud and he does not suggest that his conclusion is supported in any other source.
But, having presented two major conclusions:
1. That the “love your fellow…” command is essentially identical to the “do not do to another…” command; one constituting a moral principal and the other an ethical one; and
2. That the command to love extends to all mankind, as opposed to a kinship or other affinity group,
Neusner acknowledges that “in the classical canon of Judaism no attempt to amplify the proposition” is found.
He says:
“If I had to specify how the Golden Rule permeates the Judaic law and theology, I would point to the rabbinic doctrine of justice: … It is only fair that what one does not want done to himself one should not do to his fellow.”
So, we come back to an idea that sounds very much like the doctrine of consistency that Gensler and Wattles espouse.
To the question of whether the Golden Rule “matters” in the context of classical Judaism Neusner says:
“The answer is simple. We do not find the Golden Rule invoked where we should anticipate locating it…We cannot identify specific teachings or actions as particular applications of the Golden Rule”
And his conclusion is that:
“Classical Judaism is defined by generative propositions and invites judgment concerning systemic traits. But the Golden Rule in its articulated form is not one of these.”
Neusner’s paper is fascinating.
In his conclusion that Lev 19:18 extends to all mankind he seems to preempt the claim made in Bruce Chilton’s paper that asserts that it was Jesus who made this revolutionary leap in the idea of neighborly obligation.
He does so on the basis of a single non-canonical text relating a very brief exchange between two rabbis.
If we can say, as Neusner does, that the failure of the Biblical text to expand on Lev 19:18 means that it “yields nothing beyond itself and does not invite new questions or stimulate speculation about new problems” how can we be asked to invest such far reaching meaning in a brief exchange in Sifra?
His characterization of Lev 19:18 as the moral statement and Hillel’s as the ethical statement of the principle is interesting. In making that distinction he does not address the idea of a positive versus negative ethical principle.
Neusner and Chilton, in their construction of the conference, presumably could have invited someone to write about the Golden Rule in Judaism in the period following the redaction of the Talmud. Limiting the discussion to Levine’s paper on Ancient Israelite Scripture and Neusner’s on Classical Judaism leaves a significant gap in both the conversation and the scholarly record.
©Charles R. Lightner