Is Jesus' claim to be the Good Shepherd a claim to be God?
Jesus claimed to be the Good Shepherd [á½ Ïοιμὴν ὠκαλÏÏ].
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:11, ESV2016)
The best description of the Good Shepherd in the Old Testament is Psalm 23, and there the Good Shepherd is God (×Ö°××Ö¸Ö¥× ×¨Ö¹Ö×¢Ö´Ö×). Does this mean that Jesus claimed to be God?
Let me attempt to make a short case for this.
Psalm 23:1
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
We then have 2 possible conclusions:
Conclusion: This is not an explicit claim to divinity. If Jesus is truly God, then by claiming to be the Good Shepherd, Jesus is implicitly asserting His divine nature because this would identify Himself with the God depicted in Psalm 23.
In isolation, John 10:11 is not a strong claim by Jesus to divinity. However, together with numerous other similar titles, it forms a consistent pattern such as:
Compared to:
This is sort of thing is seen numerous times in the NT, which apparently seeks to apply OT titles of YHWH/Jehovah to Jesus. See the appendix below.
Taken as a group, they provide valuable evidence that the inspired NT writers were saying about the divinity of Jesus.
APPENDIX - Jesus as Jehovah
Unique titles of Jehovah God from the Old Testament are often applied to Jesus in the New Testament.
OT Quotations
There are a number of places where OT passages about YHWH Jehovah are applied directly to Jesus in the NT such as:
There are many more.