Christian theists claim that the Bible is the source of their morals (i.e. the Ten Commandments and the pronouncements of Jesus). Quite often, they’ll put the Golden Rule into the mouth of the guy from Galilee as if he invented it for the Sermon on the Mount. He didn’t. In various forms, in various wordings, it had been around for thousands of years. In fact, the 'Golden Rule' can be found in some form in almost every known ethical tradition. The Golden Rule in a prohibitive form was a principle in ancient Greek philosophy about 500 years before the tales of Jesus.
Possibly the earliest version of the ‘Golden Rule’ appears in the story of ‘The Eloquent Peasant’, which dates to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2040–1650 BCE): ‘Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do.’
A Late Period (c. 664–323 BCE) Egyptian papyrus contains a negative version of the Golden Rule: ‘That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.’
But it wasn’t just an Egyptian thing either:
The Pahlavi Texts of Zoroastrianism (c. 300 BCE–1000 CE) were an early recording of the Golden Rule: ‘Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others.’
Thales of Miletus, a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher (c. 624–c. 546 BCE), said something like it: ‘Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.’
Isocrates, an ancient Greek rhetorician, (436–338 BCE) said it:
‘Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.’
Plato (c. 420–c. 347 BCE) said it: ‘…do to others as I would that they should do to me."
The books of Tobit and Sirach (neither of which were part of the canon of the Old Testament but both of which were used by Christians in the earliest form of the Christian Bible; the Codex Sinaiticus) offer versions of it: ‘Do to no one what you yourself dislike.’; Tobit 4:15
And ‘Recognize that your neighbor feels as you do, and keep in mind your own dislikes.’; Sirach 31:15
It's also in Leviticus 19:34: ‘The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself’.
Moreover, it was not just a good saying or tenet of behavior in the Mediterranean area. In the ancient epic of India, the Mahābhārata, (c. 400 BCE and 400 CE) there’s a lengthy version of the Golden Rule: ‘One should never do something to others that one would regard as an injury to one's own self.’
In the Tamil tradition, in the Book of Virtue (c. 1st century BCE to 5th century CE) the Golden Rule pops up twice: ‘Do not do to others what you know has hurt yourself’ and ‘Why does one hurt others knowing what it is to be hurt?’
Finally, Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) had a version: ‘Treat your inferior as you would wish your superior to treat you.’
While it could be argued by a Christian apologist that Seneca, who lived as a contemporary to Jesus, had got his thought from the Sermon on the Mount, it seems highly unlikely, given that the concept of reciprocal altruism was already well-established throughout the region as evidenced by the preceding quotations.
Jesus purportedly delivered the Sermon on the Mount between 28 C.E. and 30 C.E. Whether he had learned it from the Torah or not, the sentiment was not peculiar to the Hebrews; it was known from Rome to the Indian sub-continent and beyond in some form. It must be considered that the common knowledge and the practical application and exercise of the ‘Golden Rule’ long predated the recording of this dictum by the anonymous authors of the New Testament. It must also, once more, be asserted that reciprocal altruism, as expressed in Golden Rule and its variants, was and is genetically motivated.
It should be obvious that human moral codes not only predate the Bible but are not derived solely from Hebrew tradition. It can once more be contended that the sense of morality predates all of those aforementioned civilizations (e.g. Babylonian, Assyrian, Sumerian, Egyptian, etc) which were established and dominant before the Mosaic codes were produced. It can be contended again that a sense of morality – as it is essential to the establishment and sustaining of the most rudimentary social system - must predate humans and human civilization. That all having been said, let’s dive further even further into the morass of the source of morality.
Since larger organizations than ‘tribes’ or clans have yet to be observed in other great apes, the 3% genomic difference between chimps and modern humans, then, must be, again, considered very significant. One substantial, definitive difference between humans and the other great apes resulted from the expansion of the neo-cortex and the development of the pre-frontal lobe.
Between 2 million and 700, 000 years ago, the size of the brain of Homo erectus actually doubled. This remarkable growth was in the neo-cortex of the brain, primarily. The other major increase in brain volume occurred between 500, 000 and 100, 000 years ago, in homo sapiens. Additionally, the brain size of hominid brains has tripled since the Pliocene age (from an average of 450 cm3 in Australopithecus to 1,345 cm3 in H. sapiens. The human brain today has a volume of 1,350 cubic centimeters. Our closest living relatives have much smaller brains: modern chimpanzees and orangutans have brains averaging about 400 cc, with gorillas averaging about 500 cc.
With the larger brain came an evidential increase in the brain-state called ‘empathy’. It has been inferred that empathy is biologically intrinsic to the brains of hominids. Homo erectus, as an ancestor of our species, exhibited empathy. Our own species (homo sapiens) exhibits empathy as well; as a Biblical reference, the story of the ‘Good Samaritan’ is good example of empathy and reciprocal altruism.
Let us turn to science; the science of anthropology. When Dr. Margaret Meade was asked her opinion, based on her knowledge and understanding of her field of anthropology, what was an early sign of empathy, she replied by sharing a story of a discovery of a femur which had fully healed after being broken. The fact that the individual survived long enough for the bone to mend indicated that the individual was cared for and tended to during his invalidity.
That indicated to Dr Meade that the individual had lived in a society which was caring and attentive – empathetic – enough to provide food, drink and shelter for the individual. It may also indicate that any group responsibilities the individual had (e.g. hunting, gathering food, providing shelter, etc.) were undertaken by those who had cared of the individual during their infirmity, as indicated by Dr. Meade’s observation of a healed femur. It, therefore, could be inferred that the brain-state we call ‘empathy’ was inherited genetically from earlier man such as Homo Erectus.
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said."
We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.
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