587
The Golden Rule has been ascribed to Christ. Was he its author?
Five hundred years before the time of Christ Confucius taught: “What you do not like when done to yourself do not to others.” Centuries before the Christian era Pittacus, Thales, Sextus, Isocrates and Aristotle taught the same.
588
What maxim does Paul attribute to Jesus?
“Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” ([Acts xx, 35]).
These are not “the words of the Lord Jesus,” but of the Pagan Epicurus, a man whose character Christians have for centuries defamed.
Concerning the teachings of Jesus, Col. Thomas W. Higginson says: “When they tell me that Jesus taught a gospel of love, I say I believe it. Plato taught a gospel of love before him, and you deny it. If they say, Jesus taught that it is better to bear an injury than to retaliate, I say, yes, but so did Aristotle before Jesus was born. I will accept it as the statement of Jesus if you will admit that Aristotle said it too. I am willing that any man should come before us and say, Jesus taught that you must love your enemies, it is written in the Bible; but, if he will open the old manuscript of Diogenes Laertus, he may there read in texts that have never been disputed, that the Greek philosophers, half a dozen of them, said the same before Jesus was born.”
Buckle says: “That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar.... To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues on the part of the asserter either gross ignorance or wilful fraud” (History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 129).