I initially intended to make this a footnote to my question on mainmy question on main, but I would like some feedback from the community so I figured this is a better place to do that. I'm trying to figure out what rules of [pseudo-neutrality] in questions may or may not be operative around here. (Moderator or not, I'm relatively new to BH.SE, so I appreciate you bearing with me.)
The (potential) trouble with this question is that my own bias has framed the question with the assumption that John's gospel records (albeit in translation) words actually spoken by Jesus.* The "easiest" answer may be that this passage instead reflects the christology of the author of John's gospel projected back onto the lips of Jesus, without the need for a Semitic correlate.
In reflecting on how to structure the question to deal with this, I considered adding to my list of options, "Jesus didn't say this at all..." However, this seems to open a totally different line of argumentation — one that would require analysis far beyond this passage, and probably one that isn't scoped appropriately for a BH.SE question.
Is the question acceptable, or is there a way to change it so that it is?
*While we have many questions that assume the historicity of various aspects of the biblical text, it seems like the words of Jesus as recorded in John's gospel may be a special case, as there is a substantial contingent who takes the text seriously yet understands these words as something other than direct quotations....a view I won't attempt to characterize further as I'd probably do it incorrectly. [pseudo-neutrality]: https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/775/3555
