That’s a great question! It really gets to the heart of whether the author of John was deliberately grafting Jesus onto pre-existing Logos traditions or whether Jesus actually said and believed these things.

From my POV, looking at the earliest sources, it seems pretty clear that Jesus didn’t make the kinds of divine claims about himself that we see in John. The Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) portray Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet—someone announcing the coming Kingdom of God, not proclaiming himself as the pre-existent Logos or divine Son of God. The Gospel of Thomas (if we take it as an early tradition) also presents Jesus more as a wisdom teacher, emphasizing enlightenment rather than divine self-identification.

So, if we don’t see these claims in the earliest sources, but we do in John—written much later (90–100 CE)—that suggests the author was taking some poetic license in shaping Jesus’ identity. Was John pandering to different traditions, or did the author(s) sincerely believe Jesus was the divine Logos? That’s the million dollar question. Either way, what’s clear is that the historical Jesus probably didn’t go around saying, “I and the Father are one” or “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Those are the words of John’s Jesus, a figure shaped by decades of theological development, not necessarily the words of the historical man from Nazareth.