Bruce Chilton writes in his paper, “Jesus, the Golden Rule and Its Application”:
“Love of God and love of neighbor were basic principles embedded in the Torah. Jesus’ innovation lay in his claim that the two were indivisible. Love of God was love of neighbor, and vice versa”
“He (Jesus) linked the Rule to the transformed society the prophets had predicted.”
“Because the neighbor reflects the divine presence among us, loving that neighbor was tantamount to loving God in Jesus’ teaching.”
(Chilton: “Jesus, the Golden Rule and Its Application” in “The Golden Rule: The Ethics of Reciprocity in World Religions”, Neusner-Chilton editors.).
Chilton points to Jesus’ words in Chapter 12 of Mark’s gospel:
²⁸ One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (Page 1815). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
Chilton’s comments seem clearly to suggest that, in his analysis, the Golden Rule is the statement found in Mark regarding love of one’s neighbor.
In the same paper, Chilton, in his discussion of Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount, identifies Matthew 7.12 as the Golden Rule. There Matthew reports Jesus’ saying:
¹² “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (Page 1756). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
Chilton cites that verse in the context of a larger discussion of the clear anti-Judaic prejudice found in Matthew’s gospel. He writes, citing Matthew 5.43-48, that:
“By the time Jesus pronounces the Golden Rule in Matthew, he has already characterized Judaism as teaching its opposite, hatred.”
Let me say before proceeding that I agree with and respect the statement with which Chilton concludes his paper i.e.:
“…In the case of the Golden Rule, the belief that a spiritual chasm separates Christianity from all other religions is as deceptive as the medieval belief that a physical abyss prevented Europe from exploration westward. Where the study of religion is concerned, the only abyss to fear is the one in which practitioners isolate themselves in a refusal to consider the faith and the ethical motivations of others.”
That said, I think it’s fair to point out that Chilton’s reference to the Golden Rule text is ambiguous.
From his discussion of the Mark text, quoted above, and its theme of love, Chilton appears to take the “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” text as being the Golden Rule text.
However, in his discussion of the problematic nature of Matthew’s relationship with the Jews, he identifies the “do unto others” statement as being the Golden Rule.
In his reference to Matthew 7:12, the location of the “do unto others” verse, Chilton does not actually quote the verse. He cites it and he writes that “…he (Jesus) pronounces (it as) the Golden Rule…”
It seems odd that Chilton would say that Jesus “pronounced” a given statement as being “the Golden Rule” without actually giving the reader the words that constitute the pronouncement.
It might be that Chilton considers “do unto others” as being the active expression of “…love your neighbor…” which his paper suggests he sees as “the” statement of the Rule.
It might be that he sees Matthew’s “fraught relationship with Judaism, and therefore with Jews, who are all but formally excluded from the horizon of the love expressed in the Golden Rule” as requiring Matthew’s account to be minimized.
But if any of these possibilities are true, we don’t hear that from Chilton, which is puzzling.
Perhaps Mark’s text is a less problematic one because of the difficulties posed by Matthew. But Mark’s text is the “love your neighbor” text.
There are two issues that Mark’s text brings up that I think are important to our analysis.
The Issue of Universality
We’ve seen that in many instances of Golden Rule interpretation across religions and locations, the application of the injunction is clearly limited: usually to family or other affinity groups. It’s instructive to look at the language from Leviticus that Jesus quotes in answer to Mark in somewhat broader context.
The Leviticus verse is found in this passage in Chapter 19:
¹⁷ You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. ¹⁸ You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (Page 171). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
a) The Hebrew word translated in verse 17, above as “your kin”, is achicha, literally meaning “your brother”.
b) The Hebrew word translated as “your neighbor”, is amitecha, literally meaning “your friend”.
c) The Hebrew phrase translated in verse 18 as “your countrymen”, is “b’nai amcha”, literally meaning “brothers of your people”.
d) The Hebrew word translated as “your neighbor” is “re’acha”, which does literally mean “your neighbor”.
All of these terms, though: your brother, your friend, your people, your neighbor; suggest application in a restricted relationship group.
Jesus, in quoting that passage from the Torah would certainly be aware of that context, as is Chilton, of course.
Chilton writes that:
“Matthew brings to clearest expression a conviction that emerges both in the New Testament and in Patristic literature: that the distinction of Christianity from Judaism reveals that only Christian faith, and not its Judaic prototype, conforms to the divine imperative to love.” (emphasis added)
That position is problematic for Chilton but he finds in Luke 6.27-36 “all the essentials” of the assertion in Matthew.
²⁷ “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹ If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰ Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you. ³² “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³ If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴ If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵ But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶ Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Perkins, Pheme. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version (Page 1841). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
So Chilton can “neutralize” Matthew’s clear anti-Judaic bias and rely on Luke’s message to make his case. But we are still left with the question of universality.
Where do we find that in the texts that Chilton cites?
Luke’s words speak of those who curse you, strike you, beg of you, steal from you, borrow from you, etc. All of these relationships, even those as general as “your enemies” are specific enough to be understood as in some fairly close relation.
They are most readily and simply understood as relationships with those actually or potentially in physical contact: with those near us.
That is consistent with the sense of the passage in Leviticus, especially when read in the original Hebrew.
I don’t find in the words of gospels cited by Chilton any explicit or persuasive language that expands the sense of the Leviticus text.
However, I do think that both Christians and Jews can find an aspirational expansion by reading the Hebrew a different sense.
The Issue of Commandedness
Jews have struggled throughout their history with the words that Mark attributes to Jesus in 12:29: “You shall love the Lord your God…” This problem of commanded love is one I’ve addressed in a previous post. The fact that it was problematic is clear from the story of the martyrdom of Rabbi Akiva who is said to have acknowledged to his students as he was dying that he only then had come to understand what it meant.
The two “commandments” i.e, to love God and to love one’s neighbor, employ the same initial term i.e. “v’ahavta”, which is usually translated as an imperative or command form. But that is not the only possible sense of the word.
Biblical Hebrew verbs have no present tense. Verbs are in the perfect tense if they refer to completed action. They are in imperfect tense if they refer to incomplete action.
Verbs in the imperfect form can have the sense of commands as in English i.e. you shall love or you must love. But they can also have a conditional sense i.e. you could love or you should love. But they can equally — and most often do — have a meaning of future tense English verbs i.e. you will love.
If we want to find a way to read a universalism into the Hebrew “v’ahavta l’rea’cha ca’mocha” we can do that by:
a) expanding the idea of “neighbor” to include a larger universe of beings, and
b) reading v’ahavta as having a future tense meaning rather than an imperative one.
If we do this the sense of Leviticus 19:18 becomes aspirational. It becomes the hoped-for future result of actions taken over time, in the same way that love of God is seen as cultivated rather than commanded.
Just as Rabbi Akiva came to understand what it meant to love God with one’s whole heart, soul and might at the very end of his life, I believe that there have been and are those very special humans who have reached the state of consciousness in which they are capable of loving all beings as they love themselves.
My sense is that Jesus was one such human. I suspect the Buddha was another, for example, and that in most times including our own, there are some who have attained that level.
I think it is an aspirational state of consciousness, however, and not one that can be commanded. It might become universal in a messianic age but until then I suspect there will be few who truly attain it.
To make a final point relating to Chilton’s comment quoted above that in Matthew’s view Jews are “all but formally excluded from the horizon of the love expressed in the Golden Rule”…
It is difficult to read a commanded universalism into a love that so clearly excludes a substantial population within which the gospel writers lived and from which their religious movement emerged.
If Matthew could not include the Jews in his “do unto others” universe, how universal could he have seen that injunction?
©Charles R. Lightner