Concerning the thought that Rabbi Jacob Emden may have looked at the messianism of Yehoshua and his immediate followers as a movement to bring the Noahide laws to the goyim – a clear reading of the sources will show that, with respect to the goyim and the galut it was this and more... The concern at the core with this movement, (not with replacement theology), was and is about how the nations are to be held to account, even now in the present world, for keeping or not keeping the universal laws. This can be seen by the study of many different texts, but perhaps most clearly from a clear understanding of Revelation 9:20-21:
And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their magic arts, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
In this context, "magic arts", may be an allusion to the arts of the magicians in Egypt at the time of the Exodus. The structure of the list suggests that both blasphemy and animal cruelty can be understood as sins included in sorcery, especially where it is used directly to oppose the redemption of Israel.
This charge of hardness against repentance – again, in this context – being hardness against repentance for the sin of not allowing Israel to be free of her captivity, comes in the story at a point that is designed to be parallel to the point between the plague of hail and the plague of locusts, when the hardness of Pharaoh's heart was sealed as enmity toward G-d. And here the form that the hardness of enmity toward G-d takes is a refusal to repent of disobedience to the seven universal laws. The message can be heard in this that were the nations to repent and obey these laws they would, thereby, be letting Israel go...
There is much more to this, but as this reference to the Noahide laws is not a passage often referred to or one that has been clearly understood in general discourse.
