you make good points but that part about the "son of man" you might want to rethink it because in Daniel 7 was see "the Son of Man" coming to the "Ancient of Days" - with the "Clouds of heaven". So Jesus' use of that term might have been a higher claim than just "another guy" :)
ya, i'm fam with that arg, imo it mostly manifests from our overwhelming desire to make Jesus into God, to legitimize our beliefs; but of course Jesus was One with God, Christ
is One with God, so the limitations of language starts intruding imo. Regardless of the interpretation we take away from this, even reflecting upon the Daniel passage--the common interp of which becomes circular and self-reinforcing, imo--the phrase "Son of Man" seems self-defining to me? This assertion that "Daniel was referring to Jesus when he wrote Son of Man, and Jesus referred to Himself as Son of Man bc Daniel wrote that, ergo Son of Man must mean Jesus and only Jesus" strikes me as kind of like a refusal to even confront the phrase on its own merits? "Son of Man?"
so i'm not disagreeing that Jesus
had a higher claim, but that He would ever actually claim that is subtly different imo. "
If you have seen Me you have seen the Father" notwithstanding imo, as He is indicating "perceptions" there, and also in "
so you say." Iow a way to indicate that what they were saying--be it "are you the king of the Jews" or whatever--was a
perception. One that He could not disagree with per se either, bc it contains a shade of truth; yet "
why do you call Me good? No one is good except the Father" is kind of being obscured?
fwiw you might search "Jesus of Nazareth effectively means John Doe out of Nowhere" and
"in a world where academic credentials were everything, the
Messiah turned out to be John Doe."
also "Someone from Nazareth was no one, and could not possibly have any insight in Scriptures worth of note."
which might be the best primer for that, the last one