Translation commentary on Mark 10:18

Exegesis:

agathos ‘good’: as the word is used by Jesus it refers to moral attributes, and here, with reference to God, is the equivalent of ‘perfect.’

heis ho theos (cf. 2.7) ‘one, (that is) God’: cf. in 2.7 the suggestion that the phrase means ‘the One God.’ If, in a given language, the translation of oudeis agathos ei mē heis ho theos ‘no one (person) is good except God alone,’ implies that God is thereby classified as a human being, the error may be avoided by translating ‘no man is good: only God is good,’ or simply, ‘God alone is good.’

Translation:

Said may need to be changed to ‘asked’ because of the following question.

Even apart from the problem of confusing God with human beings, the construction no one … but … is rendered in some languages as a paratactically combined set of clauses, e.g. ‘no one can be good; only God is good,’ meaning precisely what the Greek says, but expressing the idea in a somewhat different form.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

SIL Translator's Notes on Mark 10:18

10:18a

Why do you call Me good?: This is a rhetorical question. It is a mild rebuke. It probably indicates that Jesus wanted the man to think about what it meant to say that Jesus was good. He wanted the man to think about who Jesus was.

There are at least two ways to translate this rebuke:

• As a rhetorical question. For example:

What do you mean when you say that I am good?
-or-
What is your reason for saying that I am good?

• As a statement. For example:

You should consider what you mean when you say that I am good.

Use whichever form is most natural to express this rebuke in your language.

Jesus replied: The Berean Standard Bible places the words Jesus replied in the middle of Jesus’ response. In Greek, Jesus replied comes before the rhetorical question. Put the words Jesus replied in a place that is natural in your language.

10:18b

No one is good except God alone: The expression No one is good except God alone means “God is the only one who is truly good.” Jesus was not saying here that he himself was sinful. He was encouraging the rich man to think about what he meant when he called Jesus “good.”

Here are some other ways to translate this expression:

Absolutely no one is good but God only.
-or-
Only God is truly good. (New Living Translation)

General Comment on 10:18a–b

In some languages it may be more natural to change the order of 10:18a and 10:18b. For example:

Jesus answered, 18b“No one is good except God alone. 18aSo why do you call me good?”

© 2008 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.