DEUTERONOMY (18:15) PROPHESIES MUHAMMAD(SAW) The advent of our Prophet Muhammad is prophesied in the Book of Deuteronomy : “ 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” (18:15). Christian scholars deny that the promised prophet mentioned above is Muhammad ( ). They hold that this prophecy is with reference to their prophet Jesus Christ but according to S. R .Driver Jesus is not the promised prophet of Deuteronomy. In his commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, at page 228, he writes, “The exclusively Messianic references of vv.15-18, adopted by many of the older expositors (cf.Acts.3:22, 7: 37), is inconsistent with the context; and has been deservedly abandoned by the great majority of modern commentators and theologians”. However many scholars try to prove the prophecy in favour of Jesus and they quote a conversation between Philip and Nathanael from the Gospel of John (1: 45) as an evidence. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one whom Moses wrote about in the book of Law and whom the prophets also wrote about. He is Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” In this passage Philip, the disciple of Jesus admits the fulfilment in Jesus of the prophecy which had been foretold in Deuteronomy. Another evidence that is given in support of the fulfilment of the Deuteronomical prophecy in the person of Jesus Christ is Peter’s speech (Acts. 3: 22) in which the great disciple of Jesus reproduced the prophetic passage from Deuteronomy while addressing a Jewish gathering to mean that Jesus was the prophet foretold by Moses long ago. As regards the identity of Nathanael nothing is known about him. This disciple who is mentioned in the Fourth Gospel only has not been referred to in the other three gospels. It has been suggested that Nathanael is not a real figure at all. He is rather an ideal figure standing for all the real and the true Israelites. As Nathanael did not exist at all, it leads to the conclusion that the dialogue between Philip and Nathanael was a figment of the imagination of the evangelist. Secondly, when Philip told Nathanael that he had found Jesus in accordance with the prophecy of Moses, Nathanael expressed his doubt asking whether anything could come from Nazareth. Nathanael knew that there was nothing in the Old Testament which could foretell the emergence of Jesus from so less conspicuous a town as Nazareth, and that’s why he was incredulous. Peter’s quotation of the prophetic passage of Deuteronomy presents us with a problem. Did Peter find Jesus identical with Moses? This question is raised because the most remarkable feature of the Deuteronomical passage is that the promised prophet will be like Moses. The critics of the Book of Deuteronomy interpret the phrase ‘like unto thee’ as a succession of prophets, a permanent prophetic institution; they think that the reference here is not to a particular individual prophet. If this is the true interpretation, then why does the writer of the Book of Deuteronomy remark at the conclusion of the book that ‘there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face’? (34:10). It is known to us that the Book of Deuteronomy was composed in the 7th c. BC and during this period many prophets like Elisha, Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah had appeared among the Israelites in Israel subsequent to the death of Moses. Hence it is evident that by the phrase ‘like unto thee’ the writer of Deuteronomy did not mean prophets generally, but an individual prophet. It is also evident that there came no prophet in the seventh century BC who was like Moses. Again from this period onward when we move to the Maccabean period, we see that the Jews who had recovered long cherished independence from the foreign yoke (Syrian rule) under Simon Maccabeus and whose successors expanded the kingdom of Israel on all sides had been expectant of the rise of the Prophet figuring in Deuteronomy but that Prophet was not raised then . Again when we move further to the time of Jesus we discover from the interview between John the Baptist and the Jewish emissaries (John. 1:19-24) that the Jews had still been waiting for the coming of that Prophet besides Messiah and Elijah. But this Prophet was not Jesus who had already appeared in the land of the Jews. Who was this Prophet then? The answer is simple that he was Muhammad ( ) because the world knows that Muhammad ( ) was the only and only prophet who appeared six hundred years after Jesus in the desert of Arabia and who came of Bani-Ismail, the brethren of Bani –Israel. The children of Ismail are the brethren of the Jews as the children of Esau (i.e., the Edomites) are the brethren of the Israelites (Deuteronomy. 2: 4). It is often argued that the presence of the phrase ‘from the midst of thee’ in verse 18:15 is a clear proof that the promised prophet will be raised among the descendants of Abraham through Isaac, and not through Ismail. To put it otherwise, the prophecy is not with reference to prophet Muhammad ( ). But we can offer an argument against this argument that the italicized words seem to be superfluous in the verse because such important words which seem to turn the prophecy to the Jewish side must have been present in the words spoken by God to 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”(18:18), and in Peter’s speech : “For Moses truly said unto the fathers ‘A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you” (Acts. 3: 22), and also in Stephen’s speech: “This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, a Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren , like unto me; him shall ye hear” (Acts.7 :37) but these words do not altogether occur in any of them. The parallel passage in the Septuagint, i.e. the Greek Bible does not contain the phrase from the midst of thee. Here is the text—“The Lord thy God shall raise up to thee a prophet of thy brethren, like me; him shall ye hear.” As we have referred to the conversation between John the Baptist and the Jewish emissaries (John.1:19-24) to prove that Jesus was not the Prophet whom Moses had foretold, so Christians may also refer to a passage from the Gospel of John (6:14) to prove that the promised prophet of Deuteronomy was not Muhammad ( ) but Jesus. When Jesus fed five thousand people in Galilee with five loaves of bread and two fish, they so much marveled at the miracle that they exclaimed: “Surely this is the Prophet who was to come into the world.” But it should be noted that the prophetic passage of Deuteronomy nowhere mentions that the Promised Prophet was to be recognized by this very miracle. Almost all the prophets have worked out miracles. A miracle bears witness to the fact that its performer is a prophet. But no specific miracle is mentioned in the passage of Deuteronomy (18:15-18) to distinguish the coming prophet from the others. The only sign by which the Prophet prefiguring in Deuteronomy was to be recognized was his resemblance with Moses. Our prophet Muhammad ( ) was undoubtedly like Moses in all respect. Above all, there was not consensus among the Jewish people that Jesus was the Prophet. Here is the supporting passage from the Gospel of John (7: 40-41): Some of the people in the crowd heard him say this and said, ‘This man is really the Prophet!” but others said, “He is the Messiah!”
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 16:16:18 +0000