Melchizedek, Paul explains, was "king of Salem and priest of God Most High." He was both a king and a high priest, something that Jews of that time believed wasn't possible. In Chapter 7 of Hebrews, an explicit connection is made between Melchizedek and Jesus. In the book of Hebrews, which is a letter to a young Christian community struggling to part ways with its Jewish beliefs and traditions, Paul (or someone else - the authorship of this book is unclear) makes the case that Jesus Christ's power and authority supersede all of Israel's prophets and high priests. This one mention of Melchizedek in Psalm 110, together with the heavily edited episode in Genesis, provided theological framework for early Christian apologists like Paul, who were tasked with defending the divinity and authority of Jesus after his death. And by depicting Abram as making tithes to the priest-king of Salem, it strengthened the authority of the Jerusalem priests to also demand tithes from the faithful. The Samaritans worshipped the same God as the Jews but had their own priests and their own temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria.Ĭargill believes that the Levite priests were the ones who changed Shalem to Salem as part of a centuries-long campaign to centralize all priesthood authority in Jerusalem and write Samaria out of the picture. Starting around 300 B.C.E., there was a rivalry between the Levite priests in Jerusalem (who had sole authority to sacrifice at the Jewish temple) and the Samaritans. Cargill asserts that the scribes switched out Sodom for Shalem, a known city in Samaria.īut how, then, did we get from Shalem to Salem (translated as "peace"), a city believed to be a precursor to Jerusalem? That's the result of yet another, later textual "tampering," writes Cargill. In the original version, they were the same person. That would explain why Melchizedek is so abruptly inserted into the narrative after the king of Sodom greets Abram. Some have wondered if Melchizedek was even Jesus Christ himself in another form.
Meanwhile, early Christians saw Melchizedek as a "type" or precursor of Jesus Christ, in that they both derived authority from an eternal and higher priesthood. Some apocalyptic Jewish writers cast Melchizedek as a heaven-sent high priest who existed before the flood and would return to usher in the messiah. He makes a brief but significant appearance in Genesis - the first book of the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament) - when he blesses the patriarch Abram and is introduced as the "priest of the Most High God."įrom that single mention, various Jewish sects and early Christians developed their own disparate interpretations of who Melchizedek was and what he represented.
The mysterious biblical figure of Melchizedek has intrigued (and puzzled) religious thinkers and scholars for centuries. Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images This painting by Peter Paul Rubens is titled "The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek," c.
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