These words did not originate in the Old Testament, as most people believe.
They come from the legal code of Hammurabi, the sixth king of the first Babylonian Amorite dynasty, which was found carved upon an eight-foot diorite column dating back to about 1750 BCE.
The exact words on the column are, " If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye."
This later became the biblical . . .
" An eye for an eye."
Another so-called Golden Rule -- "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You."
Often cited as the sum of Jesus' ethics, but that saying also occurs in ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish writings.
For example, Rabbi Hillel (first century BCE) answered a question about the Law's central teaching with the statement:
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow creature. That is the whole law; the rest is commentary."
Golden rule has also come to mean any guiding principle.
The ethical golden rule has many negative variations, from William Blake's epigram:
"He has observed the golden rule, / Till he's become the golden fool,"
To Edward Noyes Wescott's:
"Do unto the other feller/ the way he'd like to do/ unto you an' do it first"
(David Harum,1898).
Wrote George Bernard Shaw in Maxims for Revolutionists (1903):
"Do not do unto others would they should do unto you. Their tastes may be different"; and "The golden rule is that there is no golden rule."
An anonymous contemporary golden rule advices:
"He who has the golden rules."
