I have to agree with you though, Amtiskaw, that if Jesus denies that he is God, he is denying his own goodness here. I think that all the passages read that way. And I must also agree that none of them are, by themselves, all-out claims of Deity.

Notice though that he does proceed to tell the rich young ruler what he must do. He, thereby, implicitly asserts that he does have the authority to speak about what is good. Perhaps he is leaving it to his listeners to draw their own conclusions about that.

I must say that I am not quite sure why you singled out Mark.

In the Byzantine Text, the Greek in Jesus’ question in Matthew, Mark and Luke are all identical. Of course, the majority of scholars view the Byzantine Text-type as secondary to the Nestle-Aland. No doubt, one of their many reasons for doing so is that the Greek in Jesus’ question in Matthew, Mark and Luke are all identical.

But let us assume that the majority of scholars today are correct. If so, we should prefer the Nestle-Aland which is used by most translations.

Even so, in Matthew, Jesus asks “Why do you ask me about the good? Only God is good.”. Jesus seems to be assuming here that only someone good is worth asking about the good. Only someone good can be an authority about the good. And only God is such an individual. So Jesus is saying, in essence, “Why do you assume that I am an authority about the good? Only God is good, so only God can be an authority about the good.”

As such the fact that Mark and Luke gloss “Why do you ask me about the good?” by saying “Why do you call me good?” is quite consistent with Jesus underlying assumption that only a good individual can speak with authority about the good.

But what were his words? Well, none of them. For starters, The whole conversation took place in another language. Furthermore, what we probably have here and many other places in the Gospels is an accurate summary, not a transcript of Jesus’ words.

The whole conversation, whether in Matthew, Mark or Luke, could have also been summarized accurately had Jesus’ question simply been “You do realize that you’ve just assumed that I am God, don’t you?”

Jesus later claim that no one is good except God makes sense in all three summaries and seems in all cases to be a claim of deity (or, at least, a stinging rebuke of those teachers who claim to be able to teach about the good apart from God’s Word).

However, some critics of the Bible think otherwise, so I include it here anyway. Does anyone think it has any merit?