The Golden Rule Across Religions, in Each Tradition’s Own Words



  • The Golden Rule is Jesus’ teaching that we should do to others what we would want done to us, and he gives it in Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31.
  • The rule is found in one form or another in many traditions, and we set ten sayings beside his, from Hillel, Tobit, Confucius, the Mahabharata, the Dhammapada, a Jain scripture, a Zoroastrian book, a hadith, Isocrates and the Didache.
  • Eight of those ten tell us what not to do, and two tell us what to do, as Jesus does.
  • Hillel said his line was the entire Torah and Jesus said his was the law and the prophets, and Christian and Jewish writers have given opposite answers on which form is the higher.
  • Nobody can say for certain who first called it the Golden Rule, and the earliest use in English that one legal scholar knows of is from 1679.
  • Kant objected in a footnote that the negative form cannot be a universal law, and Neil Duxbury answers that the rule touches our own character and the many people a decision reaches.
  • Paul tells the Galatians that all the law is fulfilled in one word, and his word is the command from Leviticus to love our neighbour as ourselves.

The Golden Rule is Jesus’ teaching that we should treat other people as we would want them to treat us. His words are “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). The rule is found in one form or another in many traditions, and eight of the ten sayings from outside the Gospels set out below say “do not”, where Jesus…

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