Despite the increasing appearance of proto-trinitarian sayings, particularly as we get further from eyewitnesses (note your primary reliance on John,) you've broken new ground by being
right about something; namely, that trinitarian sayings are attributed to Jesus as early as the later synoptics (Matthew,) in the sense of Jesus making claims of divinity. Of course, that's where we founder on the rocks of likely reliability.
You've quoted as support (ironically) of your argument -- or more accurately, copied and pasted a quote -- from Luke. In the Luke passage, the crowd reprises Pilate's challenge -- the crowd does so theologically, Pilate in terms of state power:
Are you not the son of God?
You have said that I am
Are you the king of the Jews?
You have said so
In both cases, the scene ends in such a way that any intelligent reader would say that Jesus is basically saying, "you've got no proof that I say that other than your own accusation." In the version with the crowd, they say "A ha, we have it from his own lips!" The meaning's clear: They say his claim usurps power, either from God or from Rome, and his reply is "You have said so."
Although you do have scraps to cling to in (surprisingly) Matthew, and others in John, this one is the most self-defeating you could choose.
Jesus is, in essence, denying that he has made either claim in both of these passages.
What's interesting about what you've chosen is that the writer of "Luke" chooses the accusation for which each "interest" would kill Jesus: For the Jews, it is a man claiming he is the son of God. For the Romans, it is the claim that he is the secular ruler of the Jews, who have a Roman governor and a "king," Herod (who I
think was Idumaean in the first place, but why dwell.)
Now then -- why is Jesus essentially denying that he ever proclaimed such a thing when the crowd so accuses him? The "clincher" passage in Luke says "You have heard it from his own lips," but that's certainly not meant to convey that the crowd was justified in their antipathy to him. It's a "clincher" that they're acting as a mob and judging unfairly.
Why unfairly, if, as you contend, Jesus
is a blasphemer, identifying himself as God?
If you insist on mis-reading this and other passages, and take Jesus to be proclaiming his divinity in the gospels, we have two other problems. One is only a problem for me, because I am looking through as objective a lens as possible. To wit: how reliable do we take the sayings to be in which he proclaims a "bridge" to a church doctrine?
To me, of course, the answer is that sayings authenticity is strongest when it's unlikely to pacify either Jewish or Roman authorities, and when the saying in question appears in more rather than fewer gospels. These are the sayings likely to have survived in popular memory.
One day, you'll be ready to have that discussion, but for the time being, you're of no mind to enter into historical critical study, as we've seen. You can't do that and defend at the same time.
The other problem is that without historical critical study, I'm stuck just saying "nuh-uh." I'm loathe to do so. So I'll
stipulate without agreeing... what if Jesus
does proclaim a pagan doctrine, with him at the center?
I don't actually think this is the case. But I do think that if you are moving Trinitarianism to Jesus from his later followers, you've simply moved the entry point for pagan influence on the doctrine of the Trinity.
Judaism doesn't have it. In fact, Luke's very portrayal of the Jewish crowd establishes that Christians portrayed Jews as availing themselves of the charge of blasphemy if a man proclaimed himself to be integral to the godhead.
So: Jesus, in your world, is a blasphemer by first century Jewish standards. Whence comes this blasphemy?
Ground rules: Natural explanations only, thank you. Jesus is only a man to me and to history. If you are looking at the historical origin of the doctrine of the trinity in Christianity, why are you insisting that it's an "original" Christian concept -- whether the borrowing was by an early Church father or by Jesus?
I don't view it as likely that trinitarian Christianity has its origin in the life of Jesus. However, you say that you do, and I'm stipulating to your point of view.
We have already shown that Jesus took from the story of the pagan Socrates "take this cup away from me." Obviously, the authors of the gospels saw the Socratic parallel, liked it, and used it -- whether or not they inserted it for their pagan audiences who would know the Socrates story.
They, or Jesus, could construct their trinity
ex nihilo, but they would have known of pagan trinities that by dividing the godhead and still insisting it to be "one," have accomplished essentially the same task of inserting a man into a role within the godhead (not in the sense that all men/women can be in communion with the godhead; rather, the elevation of one unique man to divine status). With the examples of prior trinities, and prior God-men (the Romans come to mind,) Christians (or Jesus if you like) were well-equipped to establish Christian Trinitarianism on the same well-trodden ground.
In fact, could it be said that people in contact with preexisting trinitarian doctrines even authored such a doctrine to begin with?
Can I write "Fourscore and seven years ago" without every reader knowing I am alluding to the Gettysburg address?
Perhaps in a better example, were I to proclaim that I am God's son and will die for your sins, would you not say that I am coopting Christian doctrine? Were a cult to spring up around such a saying, would you not accuse it of being borrowed from Christianity?
And, chillingly, given sufficient success, would not some future Church proclaim that I was only alluding to Christian doctrine, but that Christian doctrine was inherently flawed and that I came up with "my" real meaning all by myself... after, of course, it's gone through a twist or two or eight in the doctrine mill on the way to its ossification in a catechism?
So to sum up:
1) Why does Jesus appear to
deny speaking the words he's accused of saying in Luke, both before the crowd and before Pilate?
2) Even assuming Jesus spoke the words ascribed to him in the Gospels ("does he not say it? Your Gospel says he does..."), and even
if you can torture your few passages into a trinitarian "creed"....
in the presence of known antecedents dividing the godhead into triune form, with which Jesus would have been as familiar as he was with, say, the story of Socrates,
How can we say that Jesus himself did not borrow from preexisting triune concepts?
And I feel I should once again contest that Jesus was doing so, in historical terms. I am just following you down your rabbit hole. Why the inconsistency in (1)? How does Jesus claim his trinitarianism is a wholly Christian doctrine in (2)? It's fine when he cribs from Judaism, because he's supposed to be "fulfilling" the Torah. When he cribs from the pagans, you have more of a problem.
PFnV
