There are no overt messianic prophecies within the Torah. The prophecy about "a prophet like Moses" was understood to be Joshua.
As it should have been, because it clearly refers to Joshua, who was like Moses. Jesus wasn't really like Moses at all. Jesus didn't write a whole new law. He referred to the Law of Moses and said that wouldn't change at all until the end of the world.
God made a contract with Israel - the whole tribe - in memory of Abraham, specifically. He also made a covenant with Hagar about Abraham's oldest son. He fulfilled, and continues to fulfill those covenants. Who peoples that land that God talked about? The descendants of Isaac, and also of Ishmael, dwelling among each other's tents...with difficulty. God promised that very thing, and God is true to his word. God promised good things, but he also promised some bad stuff, some complications, particularly if he was ignored, but not just. He promised Hagar that Ishmael would father many kings, and that his descendants would alongside of, and in the face of, the descendants of Isaac. And they are. That's not an altogether pleasant outcome for anybody, but it's utterly inevitable: God ordained it, it happened, none of us can change it, so we have to see what we can learn from it.
In Christ, the heirs of Isaac and of Ishmael can be reconciled as brothers and sisters with Christ, and with the Father, individually. The family/tribes are still gonna be alongside each other in that land, and they're still gonna remember. They will remember, and the only way past the perennial strife is the forgiveness that Christ preached.
What our Christian brothers and sisters are saying above is indeed Christian tradition - much more emphasized by the Greeks than by the Latins (probably because the "Greeks" ALSO lived, and live, in that land, thanks to invasions and settlement) - and it is quite old. But I don't think it's accurate. With the benefit of great distance and no territorial or cultural axe to grind with either Greeks or Jews or, mostly, Arabs (even the Vikings didn't invade the Far North - who wanted it? The only thing desirable there were the women, and they VOLUNTARILY would head off South to balmy Stockholm and a big hairy Viking husband)(The Arabs, under the flag of Islam, DID march through the Basque Pyrenees once, but it didn't work out well for them - see "Le Chanson de Roland" (didn't work out well for Roland either, but after the Arabs and Franks killed each other, we Basques were still there with our sheep, as ever)) - with the benefit of "recule" - those of us from very unimportant minor little tribes, no imperial ambitions or pride, and the stubborn round heads of animal herders (reindeer and sheep, respectively) - can read (finally), and can see that God made a deal with the Hebrews - just them - and the Ishmaelites - just them too - to give them pasture. With the Hebrews he gave them a whole list of additional things, promising them SECURITY in that herding grounds from the raging lions of empire all around them, IF they did what he said. They waxed and waned over the centuries based on whether or not they did what he said, and the Old Testament faithfully records that. It's not really about the Hebrews either, as such, but about the rewards and punishments of keeping contracts and promises with God. God delivers the goods, and it is also God - not random chance - who delivers the blows.
Of course God sends his Son through Israel. He's calling people everywhere to be his SHEEP. So he HAS TO come through a people who herd sheep. Egypt was great in its day, but people are not corn. They're not sessile, inanimate objects. "I am the farmer, you are the wheat" - sure, it works, but wheat doesn't think and it doesn't grow - and it doesn't wander off and get eaten - and it doesn't have babies that it has to protect, and it doesn't suffer. No, God had to come as an animal herder, not as a planter. Which means he had to come through a tribe of herders, one that he prepared.
And it had to be a LITERATE tribe of herders. Saami learned to write in Swedish first, or Russian I suppose, because there was no written language. Never developed. Saami aren't Swedes and they aren't Russians - they were taken into those empires, eventually, the same way that the Inuit sort of ended up in Alaska and the Yakuts ended up in Russian Siberia. Nobody ever "conquered", they just colored it in on the map, and the illiterate herders out there didn't care. Basques now write their language, but that came through Romans, and later Spanish and French. But the Hebrews - their covenant was written down centuries and centuries BC. They were LITERATE herders, raised to sophistication equalling the Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks that ranged all around them by the fact of trade and location. Jesus' message was first told orally, but in that same generation the written texts that would keep it clear and consistent from age to age, and this was because the Jews were literate people.
God chose a particular tribe of herders - it had to be herders - at the crossroads of the ancient world. Their location caused them to naturally (and needfully) gain sophistication in civilized arts from all of the people around them, but their covenant kept them apart, lest them melt into the mess of the rovers and farmers and cease to remember their origins.
It's BECAUSE the Hebrews were herders that the Good Shepherd resonates so very well with backwardsish people around the world. the references are clear and simple and direct. The Saami and Basque didn't spend time hatin' on Jesus. When the word came, it was a pretty direct "Yeah, ok, that makes sense. And it's good to know what happens when we die. We're in!" Much, much harder for sophisticates to do that.
If the Jews didn't have writing, and sophistication from dealing with all those challenges all around, the message would not have gone out clear to the ends of the world.
There are many, many reasons why God chose the Jews as the tribe whence to send out the New Covenant that God beyond his friendship with Abraham. After all, he did make a pact with Hagar too, for Ishmael, and that has ended up sending out a message also, also in writing...and not a very kind one. And God doesn't squash that because he made a promise to Hagar. He keeps his promises.
Not being Greek, with my ethnic pride being more a matter of humor than delusions of grandeur, or a matter of taking on the attributes of the larger empires (France, Spain, Sweden) into which my little tribes were absorbed, the legalistic transfer of...whatever...between Jews and Greeks is just not interesting to me. I don't see it in Scripture. When Scripture ends, I still see Jews as Jews, and I see the Kingdom of God not being Greeks and Romans, but individuals who happen to be Greek, or Roman, or Jewish, or Egyptian, or Ethiopian, or any of the panoply of people of ancient Rome. I see us followers as Christ of being a Kingdom of Sheep, following the Shepherd. He HAPPENS TO BE Jewish, for reasons of the cleverness of God, but it's not about turning Basques and Saami and Celts into Jews, that's not what I read in that book. It's about turning us into sheep (or reindeer - different flocks, different folds).
Baa!
