Is it true or false Jesus claimed to be one with the Father?

Answer 1

A:This is both true and false, depending on which gospel we rely on.

• In Mark 10:18 (Why call me good. There is none good but God.), Jesus clearly does deny being God, and is certainly not one with the father.
• John's Gospel opens by saying that in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word (Logos) was a Greek concept that appears to have entered Christianity through Philo of Alexandria. In this gospel, Jesus says "I am" several times, in a play on words that has Jesus claim to be God:
  • When the Jewish authorities came asking for Jesus, he answered 'I am', using the absolute form of ego eimi, which is the Greek translation in the Septuagint for Yahweh, based on a possible meaning of the tetragrammaton (YHWH). The reaction of the authorities demonstrates John's intent: Jesus asked, 'Whom seek ye?' They answered him, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' He said to them, 'I AM' [the KJV makes this 'I AM he', with 'he' in italics to show that it is not a literal translation; other Bibles, more correctly, do not]. When he said to them, 'I AM', they turned away and fell to the ground.

    Provided that he was speaking in fluent Greek, the language of the Gospel, Jesus was claiming to be God by saying 'I am' in the absolute form, and the Jews clearly understood his intent.

  • In another version of the same word game earlier in this Gospel, the Jews did not at first understand the hidden meaning, that Jesus spoke to them of the Father. At John 8:23-24, with translations from both the King James Version and the New American Bible:

    (KJV) And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above; ye are from this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins; for if ye believe not that I AM he, ye shall die in your sins.

    (NAB) He said to them, 'You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.'

    In the above passage, KJV again has 'he' in italics to show that it is not a literal translation, and in any case there is no one previously mentioned, that the pronoun 'he' can refer back to. NAB acknowledges that the reference is to Yahweh. John was causing Jesus to make a claim to divinity in a very careful way.

  • At John 10:30, Jesus says, "I and my Father are one."However, in this case it may be a less absolute claim than it seems. Apparently, this was not written in the sense that would identify Jesus as the Father, because the Greek word used for 'one' is neuter, whereas a claim to be one with the Father in the sense of identity would require the masculine gender. The use of the neuter form indicates that 'one' means 'united' rather than 'identical' or 'the same person'. A modern example in English could be, "We were as one in deciding to go ahead."