Melchizedek: How a Literary Phantom Became an Eternal Priest and Savior of Israel, , by Paul Davidson at https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/.
The text below are extracts from his very in-depth article and are included her as my “talking points”.
- Genesis 14
- The purpose and origins of the Melchizedek story in Genesis are also far from obvious. He appears out of nowhere as a Canaanite priest-king devoted to the God of Israel at a time when the Canaanites were supposedly wicked idol worshippers.
- Genesis 14 is sandwiched between—interupts—chapters 13 and 15, and provides a story that is unlike anything else in Genesis. It tells of an invasion by four nations led by the king of distant Elam, named Chedorlaomer. First, these invaders subdue the towns of southern Canaan. Then they defeat the kings of the Dead Sea pentapolis, including Sodom. They pillage Sodom, kidnap Lot, and then depart.
- Abram takes armed men and goes after them and reclaims his people and possessions.
- A few things happen when Abram returns. First, the king of Sodom comes out to meet him at a place called the King’s Valley. In the next verse, verse 18, we are told that “King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of El Elyon.” In verses 19 and 20, Melchizedek says to Abram: “Blessed be Abram by El Elyon, maker of heaven and earth, and blessed be El Elyon, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” Lastly, the text says “and he gave him one-tenth of everything.” Grammatically, the subject he should refer to the speaker Melchizedek, who gives a tenth of his wealth to Abram, even though all English Bibles translate it the opposite way. This becomes an important issue later on. Whoever gets the tith is the priest.
- The use of the name El Elyon, often translated as “God most high,” is also interesting. The phrase is rare in the Bible and occurs mainly in later texts. It is also frequently used in Sirach, a Hellenistic book, and it was part of the title used by the Hasmonean priests.
- See the section of his paper titled Genesis 14 as a Late Addition to the Abraham Legend. Also later he relates a view that the three verses speaking of Melchizedek, verses 18 through 20, was added even later as they disrupt the dialogue between Abram and the king of Sodom.
- Granerød and many other leading Old Testament scholars, including Thomas Römer and Israel Finkelstein, believe that Genesis 14 was composed in the Persian or Hellenistic period.
- The Problem of Psalm 110
- Some scholars propose that rather than being based on Genesis, the Melchizedek mention in Psalm 110 actually came first.
- In summary, a strong case can be made that Genesis did not contain a character named Melchizedek until a fairly late date. The word malki-tsedek, [in Psalm 110] if properly understood, is actually a description of the loyalty or righteousness of the king toward Yahweh. However, in Hellenistic times, this psalm was regarded as a poetic version of the story about Abraham in Genesis 14, and malki-tsedek was reinterpreted as the name of a priest-king associated with Abraham and his battle campaign.
- See the section titled Melchizedek in the Epistle to the Hebrews for his discussion of the idea that Hebrews was originally a Jewish book that was later Christianized.
- The conclusion of this argument in Hebrews chapter 7 is that Christ must be the one spoken of in Psalm 110, and the oath sworn by God that Christ would live on as a priest forever makes his position superior to the earthly Levites, who must continue to offer sacrifices day after day.
- Over the years, scholars have often noted the affinity between Hebrews and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a few have speculated that Hebrews might have been written for an audience of Essenes who had converted to Christianity. One New Testament scholar, the late John O’Neill of Edinburgh University, even goes so far as to suggest that Hebrews was originally written about the Teacher of Righteousness – the martyred leader of the Jewish sect at Qumran – and only later revised as a Christian epistle. (O’Neill 1999) His proposal is based not only on the theology of Hebrews but also on the fact that every appearance of the name “Jesus”, aside from the epistolary appendix at the end, is either missing from certain manuscripts or can be challenged on grammatical grounds as a secondary gloss. O’Neill’s view has not been widely accepted.
- The idea that Melchizedek is immortal probably originates with the statement in Psalm 110:4 (especially in the Septuagint) that Melchizedek is a priest “forever”. A connection with the Jewish tradition of 11Q Melchizedek is also implied, because both 11Q Melchizedek and Hebrews link the messianic high priest and salvation of God’s people to the Yom Kippur ritual – a point of similarity that cannot be derived from either of the two Melchizedek passages found in the Old Testament. (Aschim 1999:139)
- No matter how the puzzle of the Book of Hebrews and its origins gets resolved, our exploration of the Melchizedek legend through the ages demonstrates that belief in a heavenly high priest who was once a human on earth, who was elevated to God’s right hand in heaven, and who will bring judgment, atonement, and salvation at the eschaton, was present in Jewish communities well before the earliest Christian writers began applying these beliefs to Jesus.
End extracts from Paul Davidson’s post.
