Did Jesus claim to be God? What John records

In another discussion he placed himself before Abraham: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58, ESV). He also declared "I and the Father are one," and the response was to pick up stones; they explained the reason: "for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God" (John 10:33, ESV).

He forgave sins, and the scribes drew the logical conclusion: "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7, ESV). Thomas, upon seeing him resurrected, exclaimed: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28, ESV). At the trial, the high priest tore his garment and spoke of blasphemy (Mark 14:64). No one waited for Constantine to be scandalized.

What was sung before the fourth century

Around AD 107-108, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was on his way to martyrdom in Rome. In a letter to the Ephesians he calls Jesus "our God, Jesus Christ" (Sígueme translation). The dates are gathered by Britannica from Eusebius.

Shortly after, the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, described to Trajan a similar scene: a group that met on a fixed day before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as if to a god. He added that to be freed from the charge one had to curse Christ, and that the custom was no longer confined to the cities.

In Rome another piece of evidence remained, this time of mockery. A graffito from the Palatine, from the last years of the second century or the first of the third, shows a man worshiping a crucified figure with a donkey's head, with the caption "Alexamenos worships (his) God." The Parco archeologico del Colosseo counts it among the oldest surviving images of a crucifixion.

The oldest parts of the New Testament are Paul's letters, from the 50s, and they already call Jesus "Lord" (1 Corinthians 8:6). Philippians 2:5-11 applies to him a text from Isaiah where it is God who receives every knee (Isaiah 45:23). Ligonier (Greg Lanier, in Tabletalk magazine) recalls that the first believers used for Jesus the word kyrios, the term with which the Greek Septuagint named God in the Old Testament.

The book most cited today to support the myth is How Jesus Became God, by Bart D. Ehrman, published by HarperOne in 2014. Its publisher presents it as the story of a belief that was transformed over the centuries and that in the fourth looked very different from the first.

Why it matters today

An honest clarification is in order: the church did refine its language centuries later. Formulating more precisely is not inventing. The myth lives by mixing the two.

In Sígueme we have already addressed pieces of this topic: "¿Los evangelios del siglo I o 300 años después?", "¿Constantino inventó la Biblia? No fue en el 325" and "Cristo no era su apellido: era su título".

For the young person defending their faith in a university conversation, the practical step is simple. Open John 5, 8 and 10 with a pencil and note in the margin what Jesus says and how those who hear him respond; the pattern repeats and is seen on its own. Then ask yourself what phrases about Jesus you have heard that the Bible does not say, and tell me in the comments.