What evidence is there in the Gospel Accounts that Jesus should be known as ‘God’?

One of the most fundamental beliefs within the Christian faith, and where the religion gets its name from, is that Jesus is the Christ or Messiah (anointed one). Not only this, but Jesus became recognised not only as an anointed figure, but as God. However, there is a strong criticism levelled at Christianity which states that this notion of Jesus being God is a later addition to Christianity. The argument for this stems from the fact that no gospel accounts make record of Jesus saying “I am God”. So where is the justification for this in the accounts of Jesus’ life, if any?Whilst I am happy to argue there are many places the authors demonstrate their understanding that Jesus is God, I find that it is worth going to what is recognised as the earliest gospel account, that of Mark. I want to argue that the issue we have is that whilst it may not seem obvious to us that Jesus is seen to be God, it would have been immediately blatant to a 1^st century Jewish reader. Let’s examine Mark 2, for instance. When we read this story today, the most obvious thing for us is that it is a miracle. Clearly, a paralysed man walking is incredible. However, that in itself was not evidence for someone being God – people performed miracles plenty of times in the Old Testament, but no one was calling them God. So why did people see this story as proving Jesus is divine?The clue pops up within verses 5-7: more specifically – “who is this man who can forgive sins?” This passage uses the healing to prove a deeper point about the forgiveness of sins. Miracles and healing are fantastic pointers to the divine, but the forgiveness of sins is something only God can do within the Jewish tradition. Therefore, if someone is claiming to be able to forgive sins, they are very clearly blaspheming, or they must actually be God. The author of Mark is very aware of this, yet the writer uses this story not to discredit Jesus, but to show to his audience that truly this must be God, the same God whom the Jewish people have worshipped for generations, and not simply just any man.From this, therefore we can conclude that, whilst to modern eyes and ears these stories may simply show some supernatural powers, when we read with an understanding of context, we see a much richer and deliberate story, one which constantly shows that Jesus must be, as far as these writers are concerned, God.