Is Jesus found anywhere in the Old Testament? No. Jesus is not mentioned directly one time in the first thirty-nine books of the Bible. Evangelicals will point to Old Testament prophecies that allegedly reference Jesus. However, when these prophecies are read contextually without appealing to univocality, you will find that Jesus is not talked about in the Old Testament.
Bible scholar Dr. Dan McClellan has this to say about the subject:
If you were raised in an Evangelical church, you likely heard that Jesus is found in the pages of every book of the Bible; that Jesus’ blood is a scarlet thread that runs from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21. This sounds right to people who have never read the Bible, but if you carefully read the Old Testament prophecies attributed to Jesus, you will find out Jesus is nowhere to be found — and that includes Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 14, when read in context.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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That depends what you mean by “found”.
Were the Old Testament prophets prophesying of Jesus of Nazareth? No. Their words, in context, have nothing to do with the New Testament story. See https://mindsetfree.blog/dare-to-question/is-the-bible-inspired/ .
But did the New Testament writers “find” Jesus in the Old Testament. Yes, they largely made up the story of Jesus based on scriptures that they pieced together. The details of the crucifixion story, for instance, is widely seen to be pure fiction, made by piecing together unrelated scriptures like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.
But is the name, “Jesus” found in the Old Testament? Surprisingly, yes. For the name “Jesus” is basically the Greek for the name “Joshua”. And there is evidence that early Christians used Zechariah 3 as a claimed prophecy of Jesus (Joshua).
Zechariah 3:1 “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. ”
The case can be made that early Christians saw this as a prophecy of a Jesus (Joshua) and built the story of Jesus from this and other scriptures, perhaps based on some historical man named Jesus, or perhaps entirely from fiction.
For more on the possible connection between Jesus and Zechariah 3, see, for instance, https://chatgpt.com/share/687b6e7e-d508-8007-9126-6e046a6b9df4 .
I’m talking contextually. I grew up in a sect that found Jesus everywhere in the Old Testament, context and textual meaning be damned.
The creation myth where God says “let us make man in our own image” was supposedly the Trinity discussing creating humans. God the Father supposedly created us with consent of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
It wasn’t until I was out of Christianity that I learned that Jesus wasn’t mentioned in the OT, and that the OT wasn’t the massive prelude leading up to Jesus the Messiah.
The best references for this are what Judaism scholarship has to say. The YouTube channel Jews for Judaism has multiple lectures by Michael Skobak that delve into these topics. Granted, they believe in a supernatural God and are passionate about Judaism being the way, but they know the Old Testament inside and out. The multiple takedowns of Christianity is eye opening for someone who grew up in fundagelicalism. After going through several of these lectures, one can see how nothing that the NT claims stands up to a critical review that takes context into account.
https://youtu.be/795pXd59FdQ?si=Cd2zEp9GhX4WIMgj