Last night I was honored to be invited to join Jewish friends in celebrating the the Pesach Seder, the Passover feast. The Seder is the basis of the Christian idea of communion -- it is this meal that Christians refer to as "the last supper".

The feast is ordered in Exodus 12, where God commands Jews to slaughter a young lamb, without defect, in the prime of it's life, by the light of the setting sun. The blood of the lamb is to be painted on a the dwelling of the house, a sign that the inhabitants belong to God and a promise the destroying angel will pass over that house. On that day, under that sign, God took Israel out of slavery in Egypt. The celebration lasts for seven days, during which leavened bread is to be avoided.

Christians believe this was also a "type" (physical representation) of things to come: When Jesus celebrated the first night of the feast, he stated that the meaning of the wine (which symbolically represents the blood of the lamb) foretold the blood he would shed to atone for the sins of humanity, and that the unleavened bread represented his body, without leaven (sin), broken for sin. In Christian thinking, Jesus is the lamb who was slain for the forgiveness of sin by the light of the setting sun; he is the spotless (sinless) lamb whose blood marks those who claim it, assuring the destroying angel will pass over them. Thus, among those who accept Jesus as the messiah, this act is a proclaimation of the forgiveness available through his death.

My friends are, shall we say, rather toward the liberal end of the Jewsh belief spectrum. At one point a young participant asserted the bit about expecting Elijah's return was wrong, and nonsense. There was hearty agreement around the table, but it was observed that what we were doing was a tradition, and we should continue anyway.

That created an interesting kind of mental dissonance for me: Here I am, the only non-Jew at the seder, and I might also be the only one around this table who actually believes most of this stuff.

When it came time to make the "Hillel sandwich" with the Matzah, the host made an interesting observation: He claimed it was Hillel who was the pattern for Jesus, and who first invented the "Golden Rule" attributed to Jesus.

It was too interesting a contention to pass up, and I looked into it last night before going to sleep. To be honest, I didn't see this as a major problem either way: Many Christians mistakenly think Jesus first elucidated "love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength", which actually comes from the shema, which Jesus was quoting. Jesus had no problem in pointing out that truths stated before, or by others, were true. Could this be another such case?

As best as I can tell, the case falls apart upon close inspection. I see three main problems: (1) Jesus doesn't seem at all to be theologically patterned after Hillel, (2) their statements are widely different in syntax and application, and Jesus's can be neatly explained without reference to Hillel, and (3) the historical evidence linking the idea to Jesus is much stronger than the corresponding case for Hillel.

Theology

Regarding the broader charge, that Jesus in general took Hillel as a pattern, consider the following description of Hillel's biblical exegesis:

Schwartz suggests that Hillel was above all a sage of oral tradition, not an interpreter of texts. Hillel's ethical and legal teachings are grounded most clearly on his own authority and that of his teachers in the Pharisaic tradition, not on that of Scripture. Thus, for Hillel, the Oral Law has primacy despite evidence that later sages were more interested in Hillel as an interpreter of Scripture.

Contrast this with the following statements from Jesus about the "Oral Torah" or "tradition":

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"

Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' he is not to 'honor his father' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

Clearly, Jesus placed more authority on the writings attributed to God than oral tradition. If Hillel did indeed give oral tradition primacy in intrepeting Torah, it would have meant that Hillel and Jesus would have been theologically at odds with each other. So it seems Jesus would probaby have opposed the kind of thinking Hillel was using, rather than Hillel being an alleged "pattern" for him.

Text of the Statements

But what of the "golden rule" or "greatest commandment?" The are three parts to this. The first is to love God more than everything else. Second is the command that you should love others in the same way you should love yourself. Third is the contention that these two together "sum up", or are the pivot point for understanding the whole body of Jewish law and prophetic writings.

Concerning the first part -- to love God in all ways possible, above all else -- everyone can agree that this is located in Torah and Jesus is quoting it. The Christian would agree, and go one further, stating his belief that the consciousness which animated the body of Jesus was, in fact, the same personality who gave the Torah to Moses in the first place. (Yes, this is a shocking contention, as it was when Jesus himself made it.)

Next, we have the idea about treating others as we are wish to be treated. As with the first idea, it's worth noting that the idea itself appears in Torah, which Jesus is quoting:

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:18, NIV)

Compare this with the statement attributed to Hillel:

What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.

versus that attributed to Jesus:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:36-40)

If we had to guess, textually, whether Jesus was quoting Hillel or Torah, on this point alone, which would we deduce? Torah of course.

Let's also note that the statements aren't only syntactically different, but their application is widely divergent. The one attributed to Hillel is passive -- one has no particular obligation to do something for another, other than refrain from things one would personally dislike. Whereas the statement attributed to Jesus is active, demanding one both love one's self, and one also love others in the same fashion.

Jesus illustrates this further by giving the parable of the "good Samaritan", in which a man goes out of his way to take care of an enemy who has been mugged. The statement attributed to Hillel -- a restraint on negative actions -- does not demand such a response; the one attributed to Jesus clearly does.

So textually, on this second point, we would have trouble seeing how Jesus derived his understanding from the statement attributed to Hillel, especially when it is so different in both syntax and application. It makes more sense to argue Jesus was quoting Torah, not Hillel.

Let's move on to the third part, in which the whole of revealed Jewish wisdom is allegedly summed up in a simple statement.

Here's what Hillel is purported to have said:

What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and learn!

Compare with that attributed to Jesus:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Note that Hillel's statement does not say that loving God first and most is crucial -- it is omitted completely, whereas Jesus gives it primacy. Second, it only mentions Law (Torah), whereas Jesus' statement covers both Law and the Prophets.

(Hillel gets the punchier ending, though.)

This final point may be a matter of personal taste, but I'd have trouble seeing how the whole of the Torah could be summed up without reference to the shema and loving the Lord -- it would seem the argument attributed to Jesus is certainly more complete. If we still wish to allege Jesus was indeed cribbing from Hillel, then we'd also have admit he upped the ante quite a bit.

Historical Evidence

If all that wasn't enough, the case for attributing this more to Hillel than Jesus completely falls apart when we start to look at the historical evidence.

Consider this:

[T]here are differences between generations of scholars regarding the relative reliability of the Hillel traditions, to say nothing about the Jesus traditions. How reliable are those traditions? Written Jesus traditions can confidently be dated within 50 years of his death; written Hillel traditions postdate his death by 200 or even 500 years.

Even worse, Hillel's statement is traceable to only a single source, a book which has been shown to have been altered 500 years after Hillel's death:

There is only one text in the whole of classic rabbinic literature which attributes the saying to him, namely, Bavli Shabbat 31a. This simple fact should give us pause for thought. The Babylonian Talmud was redacted at least five hundred years after the time of Hillel, and we should be extremely wary of basing deductions regarding the historical Hillel on so late a source.

Bavli Shabbat 31a is mostly written in Hebrew, but it has a few phrases here and there which are written, instead, in Aramaic, which implies they may have been added or redacted after the document was originally written.

Interestingly, Hillel's alleged statement of the Golden Rule is one such instance, and thus presumably redacted. (Read here to see the whole context; there are only two major instances of such in the context, and this is one of them.) Moreoever, the apparently-redacted sections appear to be topically different than the surrounding context. All this suggests a later source for the quote.

In contrast, it's worth noting that this idea of fulfilling law through love shows up in all four gospels, and is echoed in the writings of James, John and Paul. So there's quite a bit of evidence to show that many earlier Christians were under the impression that Jesus had linked law with love.

Is there similar evidence showing Hillel's first devotees understood and echoed his teachings along these lines? I was not able to find such. Please correct me if you know otherwise.

Otherwise, in terms of historical evidence, we have what Phillip Alexander calls an "asymmetry of evidence" -- there's much stronger and more plentiful historical evidence that the golden rule was taught by Jesus than Hillel.

Conclusion

I found little evidence -- and much to the contrary -- that Jesus in some way patterned his teachings after those of Hillel. Instead, Jesus would undoubtedly have taken issue with Hillel's evelation of oral tradition over Torah.

It also makes more sense to credit Jesus's quotes of the Golden Rule to Torah instead of Hillel. Jesus's statement is also more demanding and complete and, in my opinion (which counts for absolutely nothing) a better sumation of Torah, as it includes the shema and centers on loving God, whereas the one attributed to Hillel is a passive injunction centered around humans.

Finally, the only evidence I found connecting Hillel and the Golden Rule dates, at earliest, to several centuries after Hillel's death, and, even more troubling, the crucial phrase appears to have been altered or added some time around the sixth century AD!

So this idea, of Jesus learning from and copying Hillel, is certainly an interesting one, and I can see why it might have a strong appeal to a certain audience, but on the whole, there seems to be little evidence to support it. If we'd have to put the Golden Rule first into one mouth or the other, there's far stronger evidence it came from Jesus than Hillel.

So if you still wish to believe Hillel shaped Jesus's understanding of the Golden Rule, and thus consider a quote found in a redaction produced in the six century to be authoritative, that's your option. But then you have no consistent grounds for disputing the New Testament documents, widely recognized to be written within a single generation of the events they describe.