“... It is probably through the popular Stoic philosophy of the Hellenistic period that the Golden Rule entered Jewish thought in both the Diaspora and Palestine. The perfect testimony for this embrace at home and abroad is the presence of the rule both in the Letter of Aristeas (written in Greek, most likely in Alexandria) and in the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books of Tobit and Ben Sira (both written in Palestine in Hebrew, or more likely in Aramaic in the case of Tobit). The form of the Golden Rule found in Ep. Aris. §207, which we encountered when considering the background for love of enemies, is still somewhat inchoate and rambling, a mixture of positive and negative ideas: “Insofar as you [i.e., the king] do not wish evils to come upon you, but to partake of every blessing, [it would be wisdom] if you put this [principle] into practice with your subjects, including the wrongdoers.” It is curious that this Greek-Diaspora formulation in Aristeas lacks the sharp pithiness that we find in Tobit, at home in Palestine (4:15): “What you hate, do to no one [ho miseis mēdeni poiēsḗs].” ...”