Phlox Pyros

Thanks. Yes,sort of... Tobit 4:14:

"Do not keep with you overnight the wages of any man who works for you, but pay him immediately. If you thus behave as God's servant, you will receive your reward. Keep a close watch on yourself, my son, in everything you do, and discipline yourself in all your conduct.

In context, this part of Tobit is going over all the laws, not summing up the laws into two, as Hillel and Jesus did. This second thing is really more what I'm looking for.

johno

When I was being indoctrinated at school my scripture master made a great fuss about the golden rule and what he called the silver rule. The golden rule, he claimed, was the Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, the silver rule was Do not do unto others what you not have them do unto you. He claimed that the golden rule was superior to the silver rule, and, being an ignorant man, or a proselytizer, that the golden rule was unique to christianity.

johno

Diogenes the Cynic

Hillel pre-dates Jesus and his school was already established before Jesus was allegedly born. Chances are that a Hillel saying was simply re-attributed to Jesus.

Rick Sumner

The first attribution of this saying to HIllel doesn't occur until centuries later. Unless it can be established that this attribution is accurate, then whether Hillel lived before Jesus is a moot point. The attribution to Jesus in fact predates the earliest attribution to Hillel by several centuries. The textual evidence indicates that the "chances" aren't quite so favourable to Hillel as you suggest.

I'd venture that the saying represents something of an aphorism--a way of explaining the Law succinctly without getting into its intricacies, a question one would expect Jews to have had to answer many times. An attribution was given much later--much the same way we have apocryphal quotes of Einstein, W C Fields, or Thomas Jefferson.

Since the OP precludes this assessment, and instead requests that we choose one or the other, the tangible evidence needs to win the day. Since the textual evidence is the only evidence on hand, it seems the weight of the evidence is squarely behind Jesus/Matthew/Q, depending on what model one prefers.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Anat

johno, OTOH Ahad Ha'am argues for the superiority of the silver rule over the golden one in that it is actually possible to practice it and it doesn't lead one into abandonment of self-preservation in the name of 'doing unto others'. Also, the silver rule can be generalised to relationships between groups and countries.

Then there is George Bernard Shaw's objection to the golden rule - that people have different tastes, thus the way you would be done by differs from how another would. This is answered by the platinum rule - do unto others as they would be done by.

Apikorus

The quote attributed to Hillel identifies the Golden Rule as the only law. The quote attributed to Jesus presents it as one of two.

The historicity of Hillel is far from settled. He isn't mentioned at all in Josephus, for example.

According to this essay, different versions of the Golden Rule were relatively common in the ancient world, as it is attested in Akkadian, Chinese, Vedic, Indo-Iranian, Buddhist, Greek, Jewish, and Christian literature. Hillel and Jesus seem to be rather late proponents of this maxim.

Phlox Pyros

Go ahead, if you want to add more. This could be interesting. I think you are likely on the mark.

Phlox Pyros

Another interesting assessment. I wonder what the significance of this is. The first by Jesus was to love the Lord your God with all your heart. Why would Hillel have omitted this most important law, or did he possibly view it as somehow contained in the other?

What do you make of Jesus adding "and the prophets"? Any significance against the Hillel version?

Out of curiousity, what about Shammai?

Apikorus

Shammai was a putz.

Oh, you mean was he historical? Same problem as Hillel -- earliest mention is in the rabbinic literature.

Regarding Hillel's distillation of the torah into the single Golden Rule (or Silver Rule, if we're into details), one law is much more pithy than two. Maybe Hillel (or "Hillel") thought that the main point of serving God was to make us better at treating each other -- who knows? Whatever it is, I prefer Hillel's pithyness and his form of the rule to those of Jesus (or "Jesus").

Phlox Pyros

LOL, well, it does read a bit like he went around yelling at everyone and hitting them with a stick.

"Shamai rebuked him and drove him away."
"Shamai pushed him away with the builders' measure he held in his hand."