I wouldn't say plagiarized so much as 'so fucking obvious it was no wonder that it had been done before'
There are about a dozen pre-Christian iterations of the Golden Rule, many of them not part of any religion but tribal law, the Sumerians come to mind as one example of a non-religious legal system, and that was 5000BC, they had a really comprehensive and secular legal system as early as 2500 with the Cuneiform Law which even had womens rights as 'near' equal, it was still male dominated largely due to the dependency on hunter/gatherer and war situations, but compared to Christianity and the Pastoral Epistles who even with 2500 years of culture in advantage still couldn't manage to realize that the values for men and women are on an equal footing in terms of authority.
The Code of Hammurabi from Babylonian culture is another example of ethics that both predates and is superior to Christian or Jewish tenets.
There are about a dozen pre-Christian iterations of the Golden Rule, many of them not part of any religion but tribal law, the Sumerians come to mind as one example of a non-religious legal system, and that was 5000BC, they had a really comprehensive and secular legal system as early as 2500 with the Cuneiform Law which even had womens rights as 'near' equal, it was still male dominated largely due to the dependency on hunter/gatherer and war situations, but compared to Christianity and the Pastoral Epistles who even with 2500 years of culture in advantage still couldn't manage to realize that the values for men and women are on an equal footing in terms of authority.
The Code of Hammurabi from Babylonian culture is another example of ethics that both predates and is superior to Christian or Jewish tenets.
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