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Sirach uses the golden rule in a positive form, teaching to treat others with the same care they want for themselves. Rabbinic tradition in tractate Shabbat uses a negative form, that you should do no harm, showing how both are used in Jewish traditions.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 31:15
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
12 Do you sit at a great table? Don’t be greedy there. Don’t say, “There is a lot of food on it!” 13 Remember that a greedy eye is a wicked thing. What has been created more greedy than an eye? Therefore it sheds tears from every face. 14 Don’t stretch your hand wherever it looks. Don’t thrust yourself with it into the dish. 15 Consider your neighbor’s feelings by your own. Be discreet in every point. 16 Eat like a human being those things which are set before you. Don’t eat greedily, lest you be hated. 17 Be first to stop for manners’ sake. Don’t be insatiable, lest you offend. 18 And if you sit among many, Don’t reach out your hand before them. 19 How sufficient to a well-mannered man is a very little. He doesn’t breathe heavily in his bed.
Shabbat 31a
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
There was another incident involving one gentile who came before Shammai and said to Shammai: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand. This was a common measuring stick and Shammai was a builder by trade. The same gentile came before Hillel. He converted him and said to him: That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study. There was another incident involving one gentile who was passing behind the study hall and heard the voice of a teacher who was teaching Torah to his students and saying the verse: “And these are the garments which they shall make: A breastplate, and an efod, and a robe, and a tunic of checkered work, a mitre, and a girdle” (Exodus 28:4). The gentile said: These garments, for whom are they designated? The students said to him: For the High Priest. The gentile said to himself: I will go and convert so that they will install me as High Priest. He came before Shammai and said to him: Convert me on condition that you install me as High Priest. Shammai pushed him with the builder’s cubit in his hand. He came before Hillel; he converted him.
Date: 450–550 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... That one should not do to others what one would not wish done to oneself was a common teaching; it occurred in the Jewish book of Tobit, reportedly in the teaching of the early Jewish teacher Hillel and in Greek sources as well (compare, e.g., the negative form in Tobit 4:15; Philo, Hypothetica 7.6; Babylonian Shabbat 31a; positively, Letter of Aristeas 207; compare also Sirach 31:15; Greek sources and even Confucian teaching). The version attributed in a later source to Hillel adds, “This is the whole law” (compare Matthew 22:40) ..."
Keener, Craig S.
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
(p. 63) InterVarsity Press, 2014
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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