Jesus Isn't Good?

The title of this post came straight from Jesus' mouth: "As he (Jesus) was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher (Gk. didaskale agathe), what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." Mark 10.17-18

To understand what Jesus was saying here we must dive into the world in which he lived: the First-Century Mediterranean world.

The First-Century Mediterranean world, and especially Palestine, where Jesus lived, was a limited-good society. This means that food, wealth, power, and even honor were limited. For a person to rise above his inherited status meant he would have been guilty of taking from others.

If one was rich it was assumed, and most often rightly so, that that person had stepped on other people to achieve such status. This is the basis for the critique from the Old Testament book of Amos, where the people have acquired both "winter and summer houses" (Amos 3.15). If a family had two homes another family was homeless.

The person asking Jesus this question was rich (see v. 22) and thus was guilty of either acquiring or maintaining his status, by marginalizing others. When he compliments Jesus, a cultural taboo that accused a person of gaining notoriety at the expense of others, he was looking for Jesus to accept the compliment and thus affirm his view of life.

Jesus diffuses the situation by rejecting the compliment and referring the matter to God, thereby denying that his notoriety has come from marginalizing others.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post that deals with the rest of the passage. A fascinating study can be had by noting which commandments Jesus did not mention in this passage (Mark 10.17-22), and how their absence relates to the insights given here. 

For more on the First-Century Mediterranean world see The New Testament World by Malina and or Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels by Malina and Rohrbaugh.