A prophet like Moses

The promise made to Moses

In Deuteronomy, at the foot of Horeb, the people had asked no longer to hear the voice of God directly (Deuteronomy 18:16), and God answers Moses:

I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

Deuteronomy 18:18-19

The Qur’an itself draws the parallel:

A Christian of Mecca made the same connection at the very first revelation. Waraqa ibn Nawfal, the cousin of Khadija, who used to copy passages of the Gospel in Hebrew, recognized, when the Prophet ﷺ told him what he had seen, “the Namus that God sent down upon Moses”, and told him that his people would drive him ﷺ out (Bukhari 3; research file v1, part 2). Ali Ataie hears in this connection an echo of the “like unto thee” of Deuteronomy (Ataie, p. 84, note 105; lecture).

The traits of the prophet foretold

Munqidh al-Saqqar finds eight traits in this passage (al-Saqqar, p. 72-77). Here are the main ones, from the most decisive to the most debated.

“Like unto thee”

This is the trait that settles the matter. Deuteronomy closes, after the account of the death of Moses, on this observation: “there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). No prophet of Israel equalled him (al-Saqqar, p. 73).

Now Moses is a shepherd, a husband and a father, the leader of a people and of an army; he emigrates with his own and receives a law. Ali Ataie notes that Muhammad ﷺ shares all these traits (Ataie, p. 84), beginning with the chief one: a complete code of law, the Torah for the one, the Qur’an and the Sunna for the other (Ataie, lecture).

By Christian belief itself, Jesus had neither an ordinary birth, nor a wife, nor a new law, nor a sword, nor a kingdom: this is why al-Saqqar excludes him from this trait (al-Saqqar, p. 73). This takes nothing away from Jesus, whom the Qur’an calls the Messiah (3:45): this text, quite simply, does not describe him.

“My words in his mouth”

The prophet foretold does not compose what he says: he passes on what he receives. Al-Saqqar sees in this an oral revelation, given to a man who does not read (al-Saqqar, p. 74). Ataie brings the verse together with what the Qur’an says of the Prophet ﷺ (Ataie, lecture):

In the Gospel of John, the Paraclete foretold by Jesus will bear the same trait: “he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak” (John 16:13). Al-Saqqar himself links the two texts (al-Saqqar, p. 157); see page 4.

The test of the word fulfilled

In Deuteronomy, God says of whoever does not hearken to this prophet: “I will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:19); and the Prophet ﷺ overcame those who fought him (al-Saqqar, p. 74-75). The passage also gives the criterion of the true prophet: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22). Al-Saqqar applies this test to a prophecy of the Qur’an, revealed in Mecca when Byzantium seemed lost (al-Saqqar, p. 75-77):

The Persians took Jerusalem in 614; Heraclius launched his counter-offensive in 622 and won at Nineveh in 627. Abu Bakr had wagered on this prophecy against Quraysh (Tirmidhi 3193; research file v1, part 4). Part 4 gathers these predictions.

“From among their brethren”

The prophet comes from the “brethren” of Israel. For al-Saqqar, these are its cousins, Edomites or Ishmaelites, and no Edomite has ever claimed this role (al-Saqqar, p. 72-73). The word is debated: see the objections below.

“Art thou that prophet?”

In the time of Jesus, the promise was not held to be fulfilled. Priests and Levites come from Jerusalem to question John the Baptist:

And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No.

John 1:21

Then: “Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?” (John 1:25). Three figures are awaited, and the third is not just any prophet but that prophet: one known, and expected (Ameri, p. 33). Reference Bibles link this question to Deuteronomy 18:18 (Ataie, lecture).

The crowd makes the same distinction. Before Jesus, some say “Of a truth this is the Prophet”, others “This is the Christ” (John 7:40-41). After the feeding of the multitude, they say: “This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world”, and they want to make him king; Jesus withdraws into the mountain (John 6:14-15). A prophet was awaited who would also be a leader (Ameri, p. 33).

The expectation is older than Jesus. At Qumran, the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:18 was awaited, distinct from the Messiah (Ameri, p. 34). And it continued after him: some Jews await him still, and Sabbatai Zevi claimed to be he (al-Saqqar, p. 77-78).

Who, then, is this prophet? Ali Ataie answers through the three figures. Jesus is the Messiah, and the Qur’an calls him so. John the Baptist comes in the spirit of Elijah: “I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come” (Mark 9:13). There remains “that prophet”, whom the Gospel of John distinguishes from the Messiah (Ataie, p. 82-84). The site follows this reading, which accuses the text of nothing.

The book given to one who cannot read

Isaiah compares the vision, for his people, to the words of “a book that is sealed” (Isaiah 29:11). Then he shows another man:

And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.

Isaiah 29:12

In the account of the first revelation, the angel commands the Prophet ﷺ: “Read”, and he answers that he cannot read; the scene is repeated three times (Bukhari 3). Then comes the first verse revealed:

Ali Ataie notes that the Hebrew verb in Isaiah, qera, is the exact kin of the Arabic iqra’, “read”; that the answer in Isaiah matches the answer at Hira; and that the form of the verb rendered “is delivered” points to the future (Ataie, lecture). Al-Saqqar sees the same scene in it: Jesus, who read in the synagogue, is not this man (Luke 4:16; al-Saqqar, p. 98-100). In the King James the man answers “I am not learned”; in the French of Louis Segond he says that he cannot read, and in the Arabic Van Dyck that he does not know writing.

Ataie honestly acknowledges that this verse has an immediate meaning, docility before the word of God (Ataie, lecture). The reading that sees Hira in it does not cancel that meaning; it joins Deuteronomy 18. The Qur’an calls the Prophet ﷺ “the unlettered Prophet” (7:157): Deuteronomy promised words put in the mouth, Isaiah shows a book handed to one who cannot read. Two texts with no link of authorship describe the same revelation, received and not composed.

What others saw before us

• The caliph al-Mahdi is said to have cited this passage before the patriarch Timothy around 781, according to a doubtful account; Amr ibn al-Layth uses it around 900 (research file v1, part 1).
• Al-Biqa’i (d. 1480) cites it in his commentary on Qur’an 7:157 (Ataie, lecture).

Objections and their answers

“In Deuteronomy, the ‘brethren’ of Israel are the Israelites.” The objection is serious. For the king, the Law says: “one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother” (Deuteronomy 17:15); here, the brethren are Israelites (research file v1, part 1). Ataie grants this for that verse (Ataie, lecture). But:

• the word is wider. The Bible calls the sons of Esau “brethren”: “your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir” (Deuteronomy 2:4); “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother” (Deuteronomy 23:7); in the book of Numbers, Moses has the king of Edom told: “Thus saith thy brother Israel” (Numbers 20:14) (al-Saqqar, p. 72-73; Ataie, p. 84). The sons of Ishmael, the other cousins of Israel, are brethren on the same footing (al-Saqqar, p. 72-73);
• it is the trait “like unto thee” that gives the direction (Ataie, lecture): the word brethren may point to Israelites or to Arabs, but Deuteronomy observes that no prophet of Israel equalled Moses (Deuteronomy 34:10);
• in Deuteronomy, when God himself speaks, he says “from among their brethren” (Deuteronomy 18:18), and in the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter and Stephen quote the promise, “of your brethren” (Acts 3:22; 7:37). The phrase “from the midst of thee” is found only in verse 15; al-Saqqar holds it to be an addition (al-Saqqar, p. 78-79).

The answer, then, does not deny Deuteronomy 17:15: it shows that the word alone does not decide, and that the trait “like unto thee” does.

“This prophet is Jesus: Peter says so.” Peter does apply the promise to Jesus (Acts 3:22). But the Gospel of John distinguishes the Messiah from “that prophet”, among the envoys from Jerusalem as in the crowd (Ataie, p. 83-84). Nothing imposes the reading of Peter, and the traits, a law, a people led and governed, point to another (al-Saqqar, p. 71-73).

How this page connects to the others

• The Paraclete, who will speak what he hears, like the prophet of Deuteronomy: page 4.
• The unlettered one, and the blind led by the Servant: page 3, the Servant of Kedar.
• The last blessing of Moses, which names Paran: page 5, Paran and Baca.
• The one who comes after John the Baptist: page 7, the kingdom taken away and given.
• Waraqa ibn Nawfal: the witnesses of the expectation.
• The predictions fulfilled: part 4.
• The objection “it is Joshua, or Jesus”: Objections answered.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
• Bible: King James Version.
• The first revelation and Waraqa ibn Nawfal: Bukhari 3.
• The wager of Abu Bakr on the Romans: Tirmidhi 3193.
• Sami Ameri, al-Bishara bi-nabi al-islam fi kutub al-yahud wa-l-nasara, Takween, 2nd ed., 2021, p. 33-34.
• Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, p. 71-79, 98-100, 157.
• Ali J. Ataie, Finding Muhammad in the New Testament, master’s thesis, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, 2011, p. 82-85; and his lecture at Zaytuna College on Qur’an 7:157-158.
• Research file Annonces du Prophète ﷺ, v1.0, 14 October 2026, parts 1, 2 and 4.