Did Jesus really claim to be God?

Yes, though not usually in one flat sentence. Jesus is rarely recorded saying the exact words "I am God." What he's recorded saying and doing is more indirect, but still remarkable. He forgave sins directly—something Jewish tradition reserved for God alone. He applied Old Testament language about God to himself.

The clearest direct claim comes in John's Gospel. Jesus says, "before Abraham was, I am"—deliberately echoing God's own name from the Old Testament. Historians debate how much of John preserves Jesus' exact words, and how much is the author's own explanation of who Jesus was.

Even scholars who doubt Jesus ever said "I am God" outright mostly agree on something else: he was understood as sharing uniquely in God's identity remarkably early. That happened within the lifetime of people who knew him, not centuries later. Whether that understanding was correct is the deeper question Christianity asks you to weigh.