Did Jesus say 'I am God' or 'worship me'?

The claim: that Jesus declared himself God. Because the claim rests on the gospels, it is assessed from the gospels — and from his own recorded words. No verse in any of the four gospels, in any manuscript tradition, has Jesus say 'I am God' or 'worship me.' His recorded words run the other way. Asked for the first of all commandments, he recites Israel's creed: 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one' (Mark 12:29). He answers the tempter: 'Worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve' (Matthew 4:10). He deflects even 'good teacher' — 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone' (Mark 10:18) — does not know the hour the Father knows (Mark 13:32), and calls his teaching 'not mine, but his who sent me' (John 7:16); 'the Father is greater than I' (John 14:28). In prayer he addresses the Father as 'the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent' (John 17:3) — the sentence itself placing him outside 'the only true God' — and after the resurrection: 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God' (John 20:17). The case for a divine claim rests on voices other than his and on inference: the narrator's charge (John 5:18), a crowd's accusation (John 10:33), Thomas's exclamation (John 20:28), the absolute 'I am' scenes (John 8:58) — readable as the Messiah's pre-existence or as a divine formula, and so probative for neither side — and worship he accepts without commanding (Matthew 28:9, 17). On file for fairness: Christian scholarship argues divine self-understanding is implicit in his prerogatives, chiefly forgiving sins (Mark 2:5–7) — though Matthew's own account has the crowd glorify God 'who had given such authority to men' (Matthew 9:8). Implication is, by concession, the entire case; explicit declaration exists nowhere. That the Qur'an records Jesus saying the same — 'worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord' (5:72, 5:117; 19:36) — is noted on file; the verdict did not need it. REFUTED.