Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
244Even more t han t he Bible, t he vast c orpus of rabbinic writ ings is basic ally
c onc erned with one issue: how we ought to live our lives so as to fulfil the
c ommand t o make ourselves holy by walking in God’s ways. T he rabbinic response
to this was the delineation of a body of detailed law designed to govern every
aspec t of our behaviour. T hat body of law is c alled ‘Halakhah’ (homilet ic ally if not
etymologically derived from the Hebrew word for ‘the way’ — compare the Chinese
c oncept dao...— and thus taken as the spec ific ation of how one walks in God’s
ways) and inc ludes, but by no means is limited to, moral c onc erns.
Fully aware, however, t hat no spec ific at ion of legal obligat ions c an c over every
moral dilemma, t he rabbis of t he Mishnah and Talmud rely on a number of broad
spec trum biblic al c ommands suc h as ‘Righteousness, righteousness, shalt thou
pursue’ (Deut. 17: 20) and ‘Thou shalt do what is right and good in the sight of the
Lord’ (Deut. 6: 18) — and on one of their own devising, the obligat ion to go beyond
t he let t er of t he law in t he fulfilment of God’s will — to demand supererogatory
behaviour from the Jews. Suc h a demand may be justified on the grounds that one
never fully sat isfies t he obligat ion t o imit at e God.
The c entrality of the doc trine that human beings are c reated in the image of
God (the basis, as noted above, for the commandment to imitate God) is
emphasized in the well-known debate between two mishnaic rabbis: Akiba and Ben
Azzai. Their debate centred on the question, ‘What is the great[est] maxim of the
Torah?’ Rabbi Akiba’s nominee was ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Lev.
19: 18) while Ben Azzai insisted on ‘This is the book of the generations of man, in
the image of God created He him’ (Gen. 5: 1). (Sifra, VII.4. On this debate, see the
art ic le by Chaim Reines in Kellner, 1982.) T he import ant point for our purposes
here is that there is no actual debate. Both Rabbi Akiba and Ben Azzai agree that
the doc trine of humanity’s having been c reated in the image of God is t he c ent ral
t eac hing of t he T orah. Ben Azzai c it es t he doc t rine it self, Akiba, it s c learest moral
implic at ion. Given t he Jewish t radit ion’s preferenc e for prac t ic e over preac hing, it is
no surprise that in the popular Jewish mind, at least, Rabbi Akiba is thought to have
won the argument.
This emphasis on the respec t for others based on their having been c reated in
the image of God also finds expression in what may be the best-known rabbinic
moral t eac hing, Hillel’s so-c alled ‘Golden Rule’. When a non-Jew asked Hillel t o
teac h him the entire Torah while he (the non-Jew) st ood on one foot , Hillel replied,
‘What you dislike don’t do to others; that is the whole Torah. The rest is
commentary. Go and learn.’ (B.T. Shabbat 31a). It is perhaps only a personal
idiosync rasy (I don’t like t o be nagged) but I like t o t hink t hat Hillel’s formulat ion of
t his princ iple is superior t o t hat of a well-known c ontemporary of his who phrased
the same idea in positive terms (‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you’) sinc e I think that one c an show no higher respec t to one’s fellows than to
leave them alone if their behaviour harms no-one.
In sum, despite the importanc e of moral teac hings in the Bible and Talmud,
these texts know of no self-c onsc iously worked-out moral system: they are not
even aware of et hic s as a dist inc t religious, int ellec t ual, or human c at egory. It is
only in the Middle Ages, under the apparent impress of Greek categories of thought
as mediat ed t hrough Islam, t hat we first find a dist inc t c orpus of Jewish lit erat ure