Did Jesus claim that he was God?

Yes, he did. Almost constantly. He just didn’t do it in the exact words a lot of modern people think he should have. Muslim apologists in particular love to demand Jesus say the exact words “I am God, worship me”, or else he never claimed to be God. Obviously, this is nonsense – there’s more than one way to claim deity. This is simply an exact word fallacy. As with most things in the bible, it’s essential to understand the cultural context of the New Testament – that is, read it through the eyes of a first-century Israelite. When we do that, it becomes abundantly obvious that Jesus claims to be Yahweh the entire time. In order to explain how, exactly, Jesus claimed to be Yahweh, it’s important to understand first century Jewish theology. Muslims and other unitarians will often criticize Christianity due to how opposed it is to modern-day Judaism. Christianity claims to be the completion of Judaism, yet Judaism and Christianity appear to be diametrically opposed – Judaism is strictly against any notion of a multipersonal godhead or a divine Messiah. This is true, of course, in a modern context. But that wasn’t always the case. It is fairly well established among Jewish historians that second temple Jewish beliefs were significantly closer to modern Christian ideas than most Muslims and other unitarians assume.