“A prophet from among you, from your brothers, like me, the Lord, your God will set up for you; you shall hearken to him.”
Claim: “The” prophet of Deuteronomy 18 is Jesus who is likened, in the verse, to the level of Moses himself. No other prophet is said to have been on the same level of Moses who God spoke to “face to face” (Exodus 33:11, Numbers 12:8). It therefore must have been Jesus.
Response: The verse isn’t exclusively referencing a singular prophet to appear, but of many prophets. You see, even Christians admit to the truths of the books of the many Prophets such as Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Also the very context suggests that it is referring to more than just one prophet: “Those nations that you are about to dispossess do indeed resort to soothsayers and augurs [sorcerers who predict the future]; to you, however, the Lord your God has not assigned the like. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your own people, like myself [Moses]; him you shall heed.” (Verses 14-15) If the Prophets are substitutes for these sorcerers, then obviously the verse isn’t intending a singular prophet. This that the verse uses a singular term for prophet and not plural, is a question of no substance because the Torah is accustomed to using such terminology, on occasions, when referring to an entirety consisting of many prominent entities.[1]
This that the term “a prophet like me (Moses)” is used, are held by many missionaries to prove it’s talking about a specific exclusive prophet who has prophecy at the same level as did Moses. Moses had prophecy directly from God and not in visions, as do other prophets, as Numbers 12:6-8 states. Their claim continues, who could this have been if not for Jesus?
Well, I beg to differ. “A prophet like me (Moses)” doesn’t have to mean that he will receive prophecy in the same manner that Moses did but rather that he will be a prophet just like Moses was.
But more importantly, even if granted that Deuteronomy 18 is referring to an exclusive singular prophet that is to rise and be on the same prophecy level as Moses, who is to say that it is Jesus? It could have been any of the hundreds of prophets in history (note that although only a handful of prophets wrote down their prophecy, many more prophets existed) or a potential future prophet. Statistically, there’s only a small chance of it being Jesus over any other of the hundreds of prophets. Besides, Jesus’ rejection to the Oral Law labels him a heretic and thus incompatible with being the prophet of Deuteronomy 18, as was discussed in “Jesus as a False Messiah.”
[1] I.e. when each one is prominent enough to be addressed separately, such as in our case of which the passages are referring to each prophet individually. This contrasts with a plural that is only understood as it is a combined entity, such as “and God created animals” (Genesis 1:25), where saying this singular would not make sense to what happened in reality.
