John is the "in your face" gospel -- it leads with the conclusions. The other three are more like "come along for the journey" -- they walk you through the process of the disciples coming to understand Jesus. There are divinity claims all over those gospels, but they're more subtle.
For example, early in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus quotes the Old Testament saying "You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only him." At the very end of Matthew, Jesus meets the disciples, who worship him, and he does not criticize them or stop them (contrast with Peter in Acts 10.) Once that connection is made, it's an obvious divinity claim -- but it's one that might take time to realize is there.
A few other examples: Psalm 103 says the Lord "is the one who forgives all your sins"; Jesus does it in Mark 2. Both Isaiah 43 and Hosea 13 specify that God alone is Savior, and Luke 1:47 repeats it just prior to calling Jesus the Savior in Luke 2:11. Deuteronomy 10 establishes heaven as entirely God's property, but Jesus claims to be the one controlling entry to heaven in Matthew 7.
Given Jesus' obviously strong knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures, it's hard to get away from the conclusion that he was making intentional claims of being God.
Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach. Which is totally fair as a kind of religious meditation over the biblical texts, but it not likely to convince anybody not yet convinced. For example Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God. And in the Lords Prayer, Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which according to your logic turns them all into God.
> "Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach"
That is not a very charitable interpretation of my comment.
I don't draw the conclusion because I want to. I draw the conclusion because I've studied the texts in great detail.
> "Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God."
Only if you haven't studied the texts in great detail. If you have, you'll recognize the parallel to Isaiah 22 -- Eliakim taking over Shebna's role, not as king, but as palace administrator. That's very different from the role Jesus claims in Matthew 7.
> "Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which according to your logic turns them all into God."
Again, you're missing some nuance. The Lord's Prayer mentions forgiving sins "against us". I can forgive sins against me and you can forgive sins against you. In Mark 2, Jesus claims to forgive sins against God, which is why the crowd considers it blasphemous.
Again, these sorts of claims permeate all four gospels. They're things that, if you have a thorough grasp of the Old Testament, jump out of the text. But if you're not that interested in the details, you might totally miss it (and, to reverse your uncharitable take on my position: if you have already decided Jesus makes no divinity claims, you can surely rationalize it all away.)
I'm not convinced that Jesus didn't make any divinity claims. We have unreliable and contradictory accounts of what Jesus said, so I consider it an unsolved mystery if Jesus actually believed or claimed he was the Messiah and/or the Son of Man as prophesied in Daniel.
The ambiguity might very well be intentional on the part of Jesus, since outright claiming to be the Messiah would be extremely dangerous - this would be equivalent to announcing a rebellion against the Romans.
But I'm totally convinced that he didn't claim he was Yahweh himself, that would have been ridiculous!
The passages you refer to are also pretty ambiguous, for example saying "Son, your sins are forgiven" does not necessarily mean that Jesus is the one forgiving the sins, it could also mean he informs the person that his sins have been forgiven by God.
But he wasn't writing the gospels. So we don't know what he intended, only what the reporter wrote down. And they were in the storey. So the possibility of slant is clear.
sure -- but we know the reporter wrote down divinity claims, even in the earliest gospels.
Keep in mind the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is aimed at those who claim "Jesus is a great moral teacher" based on the things Jesus is quoted as saying. Jesus is quoted as making divinity claims, many of which are obvious if you have good knowledge of Hebrew scriptures and religious practices. The "Legend" option (Jesus didn't really say those things) is still open, but that makes it harder to claim anything about the value of Jesus' moral teachings.
Well the 'obvious' thing is what's at issue. Because he (apparently) didn't refute other's claim of his divinity isn't a sure bet that he was devine - that's a very indirect thing and nothing obvious about it.
