Theophany, or Christophany?

This Sunday our Bible study read Genesis 48. I was struck by this passage, where Jacob is blessing Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh:

48:15 Then he [Jacob] blessed Joseph and said,
"May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day,
16 the Angel who has delivered me from all harm --
may he bless these boys. May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth."

I thought it interesting that Jacob calls God "the Angel." We know that Jacob saw angels several times - at Bethel (Jacob's ladder), at Mahanaim, and probably at Peniel (though the Bible says that he wrestled with a man). However, it doesn't seem that he is referring to any of these incidents when he says "the Angel who has delivered me from all harm."

I looked up the word translated "angel" above. It is mal'ak, and it is the common Hebrew word which is translated "angel" in the Old Testament. Here is how the Hebrew lexicon defines it:

messenger, representative

1. messenger
2. angel
3. the theophanic angel

Theophanic wasn't a word I was familiar with, though I should have been able to figure it out. It comes from the Greek theophaneia, which is from theos (god) + phainesthai (to appear). So the theophanic angel is an appearance of God as an angel. It is related to several other words you may know:

Christophany - an appearance of Christ
Epiphany - an "appearance" of the essential meaning of some thing.

In my searches on this subject, I ran across this page (warning: ugly page alert). It is a relevant page, because it gathers together many of the Scriptures dealing with the theophanic angel. I haven't completely read the page in depth, but it brings up an interesting argument that I have heard before:

1. In some appearances of angels (the theophanic angel), the angel is treated as God Himself - He is worshipped, sacrificed to, etc., all without apparent rebuke toward the person doing these things that are clearly reserved for God alone. In Exodus 3:6 (the burning bush), it appears that this angel even declares himself to be God, saying "I am the God of your father -- the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
2. God the Father has never been seen (see Exodus 33:20, John 5:37, John 6:46)
   
3. Ma'lak means, at its root, "one who is sent." It doesn't make sense that God the Father would be sent - who would send Him?
   
4. Jesus is both God (John 10:30) and He has been sent (John 20:21).
5. Therefore, the theophanic angel is really Jesus. The argument of the page linked above is that this is Jesus in some pre-incarnate form. I have also heard that it could be Jesus in His post-resurrection body, which is possible since God is outside of time. Instead of a theophany, these incidents in the Old Testament are really Christophanies.

(Let me just say as an aside: despite what Doug Addison said at our recent conference about not using language that alienates the unchurched, I love using these theological words. Makes me feel all smart and stuff.)

So let me just throw this out there. What do you think? Theophany, or Christophany? Or was it a case of mistaken identity?