October 21, 2024 - 20 Tishrei 5785
At approximately minute 5:20 of a debate between Dr. Brown and Zakir Hussein, Brown says that the prophet who is like Moses means another who prophet who spoke with God face to face. However, because the text gives no indication what "like me" means, Dr. Brown inserts his own assumption as to what it means so that he can redirect it to Jesus. What is more likely is that "like me" is simply a reiteration of "from your brothers".
See the verse (Deuteronomy 18:15):
A prophet from among you, from your brothers, like me, the Lord, your God will set up for you; you shall hearken to him.
In addition, it's possible that like a responsible leader about to forfeit his position (in this case through his upcoming death), Moses said "like me" to assure the Jews that his position wouldn't be left vacant. This is in line with much of the book of Deuteronomy in which Moses prepares the Jews for their entrance into the Land of Israel without him. In Exodus their anxiety about his absence led them to an act of idolatry.
What Brown omits is the pronoun shift in verse 18, which is central to its meaning:
I will set up a prophet for them from among their brothers like you, and I will put My words into his mouth, and he will speak to them all that I command him.
While in verse 15 Moses speaks about what God will do, in verse 18 God Himself speaks about what He will do. If this prophet is the perfect and infallible Jesus, being God, the words "like you" are certainly inappropriate given that no man is like him. To my knowledge Christians don't count this verse among the plethora of Tanakh passages they consider as foreshadowing of Jesus' coming or of God's Trinitarian nature. Free of all Trinitarian presuppositions, this verse seems very clearly to be pointing to the natural human state of the person who will be sent, completely omitting any Divine or miraculous properties that he is to have. It is therefore reasonable to assume this verse to be a naturalistic one insofar as prophecy is natural, pointing to Moses' successor, who we know is Joshua.
Theologically speaking, for the First Person of the Trinity to put words into the mouth of the Second Person is difficult as well, but beyond the scope of this argument. One would assume "the Son's" words to emanate from within him.
Likewise, Peter's citation of this verse in Acts 3:22 is not only inappropriate, it is confusing. Against the backdrop of the assumption of Jesus' Divinity, a verse stating the establishment of a prophet is insufficient an appellation for such a figure. The Jews this message is directed to would be right in rejecting it based on the incongruity of expectations set forth between Deuteronomy 18:15 and Acts 3:22.
Further, "like you" read naturally in the verse intuitively implies a prophet who, like Moses, said and did everything that God told him. This would make sense as Moses was the Jews' first prophetic leader, and they were still becoming accustomed to what it meant to be led by such an individual. It seems sensible that God didn't want them to think that Moses was a one-off and that they would never have a leader like him again, so He assured them that the next leader in line, Yehoshua, would be "like Moses," i.e., a genuine prophet.
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