More Evidence For The Historicity Of The "I Am" Statements Of Jesus

I wrote a post a couple of years ago about some evidence for the historicity of the "I am" statements of Jesus in the fourth gospel. Something I didn't mention there is that some of the "I am" passages or contexts connected to them, depending on how you define the terms, include characteristics of Jesus that are widely attested elsewhere. See the discussions of John 8:59 and 9:6 here. Those verses come just after the "I am" statements in 8:58 and 9:5. The verisimilitude of Jesus' behavior in these passages adds to the cumulative argument for the historicity of the "I am" statements.

While there's a danger of assigning too much significance to something like verisimilitude, there's also a danger of assigning too little significance to it. One way to approach the subject I'm addressing in this post is to ask if there would be any diminishment of the credibility of the John 8 and John 9 passages if they didn't refer to the behaviors of Jesus in question, but instead only referred to behaviors not corroborated by other sources. There would be a diminishment, even though it wouldn't be a large one. It doesn't have to be large to have some significance.