“The prophet like Moses is Joshua, or Jesus”

The objection

“The prophet like Moses is Joshua, or Jesus.”

In Deuteronomy, Moses passes on to Israel a promise of God:

The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.

Deuteronomy 18:15

In its strongest terms, the objection reads this verse as follows. The “brethren” of Israel are Israelites: the same book commands that the king be taken “from among thy brethren”, and not a stranger (Deuteronomy 17:15). The promised prophet is therefore an Israelite. He may be Joshua, the successor on whom Moses had laid his hands (Deuteronomy 34:9). For Christians, he is Jesus: Peter applies the verse to him before the people (Acts 3:22). Ali Ataie and Munqidh al-Saqqar discuss this Christian reading (Ataie, p. 83-84; al-Saqqar, p. 71).

The answer

“Like unto Moses”: Israel never had one

The deciding words are “like unto me”, in verse 18 “like unto thee”, kamokha in Hebrew (Ataie, lecture). Yet Deuteronomy closes on this observation:

And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.

Deuteronomy 34:10

Munqidh al-Saqqar builds on this verse: no prophet of Israel equalled Moses, and the promised prophet comes from elsewhere (al-Saqqar, p. 72-73). Joshua is the first whom the text rules out: the verse just before has named him, full of the spirit of wisdom (Deuteronomy 34:9), and the observation follows at once.

Jesus: the Gospel of John distinguishes the Prophet from the Messiah

In the time of Jesus, this prophet was still awaited, and he was not confused with the Messiah. The envoys from Jerusalem ask John the Baptist: “Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?” (John 1:25). The crowd makes the same distinction about Jesus: “Of a truth this is the Prophet. Others said, This is the Christ” (John 7:40-41).

Ali Ataie concludes that the evangelist keeps the expectations apart: if Jesus is the Messiah, and if John the Baptist comes in the spirit of Elijah, the Prophet is still to come (Ataie, p. 82-84). Before Jesus, Qumran was already awaiting this prophet of Deuteronomy 18:18, distinct from the Messiah (Ameri, p. 34). Peter applies the verse to Jesus (Acts 3:22), but nothing in Deuteronomy requires it, and its features point to another (al-Saqqar, p. 71).

The features of Moses, united in Muhammad ﷺ

Ataie compares the two men. Like Moses, the Prophet ﷺ was at once a religious and a political leader, a shepherd, a husband and father, a commander of armies, and he emigrated with his people (Ataie, p. 84); above all, both received a complete code of law (Ataie, lecture). Al-Saqqar points out what Christian faith itself denies to Jesus: a natural birth, marriage, a law, the sword, kingship (al-Saqqar, p. 73).

The Qur’an itself draws the parallel (research file v1, part 1):

And the first witness recognised him ﷺ in just this way: Waraqa ibn Nawfal identifies the angel of Hira with the Namus whom God had sent to Moses (Bukhari 3). Ataie, who cites a version in which the angel comes to him “as” he came to Moses, hears in it an echo of the kamokha of Deuteronomy (Ataie, p. 84, note 105).

“My words in his mouth”

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.

Deuteronomy 18:18

The promised prophet does not compose: he conveys what he receives. This is what the Qur’an says of the Prophet ﷺ (Ataie, lecture; al-Saqqar, p. 74):

Al-Saqqar also sees here an unlettered prophet, who receives by word of mouth; Jesus, for his part, could read, according to the Gospel of Luke: at Nazareth he “stood up for to read” (Luke 4:16; al-Saqqar, p. 74, 100).

Deuteronomy, finally, gives the test of the true prophet: his word comes to pass (Deuteronomy 18:22). The Qur’an foretells the victory of the Romans when Byzantium seemed lost, and Heraclius wins it (30:2-5; al-Saqqar, p. 75-77).

What the objection gets right

In Deuteronomy 17:15 the “brethren” are indeed Israelites, and Ali Ataie grants it (Ataie, lecture). But the word reaches further: the Bible says of the Edomite, “he is thy brother” (Deuteronomy 23:7; see also Numbers 20:14), and no Edomite ever laid claim to this role (al-Saqqar, p. 72-73). The word alone therefore settles nothing; it is “like unto me” that gives the direction (Ataie, lecture), and Deuteronomy 34:10 closes the door of Israel.

Al-Saqqar also notes that the words from the midst of thee in verse 15 are missing from verse 18, where God himself speaks, and from the quotations of Peter and Stephen (Acts 3:22; 7:37); he takes them for an addition (al-Saqqar, p. 78-79).

The lineage, finally, does not rest on this one word: other prophecies, unconnected with this one, carry it too, as The convergence shows.

Further reading

• The prophecy in full: A prophet like Moses.
• Waraqa ibn Nawfal and the others: The witnesses of the expectation.
• The test of Deuteronomy 18:22 put to the proof: The Qur’an’s predictions.
• The same question in John: “The Paraclete is the Holy Spirit”.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
• Bible: King James Version.
• Waraqa ibn Nawfal: Bukhari 3.
• Sami Ameri, al-Bishara bi-nabi al-islam fi kutub al-yahud wa-l-nasara, Takween, 2nd ed., 2021, p. 34.
• Ali Ataie, Finding Muhammad in the New Testament, master’s thesis, Graduate Theological Union, 2011, p. 82-84; lecture at Zaytuna College on Qur’an 7:157-158.
• Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, p. 71-79, 100.
• Research file “Annonces du Prophète ﷺ”, v1.0, 14 October 2026, part 1.