It is possible that the genealogies of Jesus started from no other basis than Hebrews vii. 14: “It is clear beforehand that our Lord hath arisen out of Judah.”1 Yet nothing could be more subversive of the Epistle than a claim of any hereditary authority or advantage for Jesus.

The author of the Epistle, if he ever heard the phrase “Son of David,” avoided it, for David is here in the background, and in a quotation from one of his Psalms his name is passed over, with the vague words, “one hath testified somewhere, saying,” etc. It is an essential part of the writer’s argument that Christ is “without genealogy” of that kind. To some it was no doubt grateful to be told that Jesus was not of the priestly tribe, not of that “apostolic succession,” so to say; but it was more important to convince the conservative that their sacred history sanctioned faith in a high priest approved as such not by carnal descent, but by his sinlessness and by his resurrection. But it was not agreeable to any Jewish party to suppose that the new dominion was to be altogether in the heavens, or detached from the Solomonic Golden Age for whose return they were hoping. The writer therefore connects Jesus with a “first-born” forerunner, namely, with Melchizedek, concerning whom he “has many things to say, and hard of interpretation.” So Christian commentators have to this day found what he does say, and Melchizedek is not surrounded by any dogmatic fence that can turn a new hypothesis into a trespass.

The Epistle applies to Jesus lines from Psalm cx.:

But in this anonymous Psalm there is reason to believe that Melchizedek is not a proper name at all. It is admittedly a combination of malki’-tzedek, “king of justice,” and in the Jewish Family Bible (Deusch) the above lines are translated, “Thou art my priest for ever, my king in righteousness, by my word.” The Septuagint, regularly followed by the Epistle to the Hebrews, has Melchizedek in this Psalm cx., which was also messianized by the LXX. in its very first line, “The Lord said unto my Lord,” ?????? being the word for Lord in both cases, whereas in the original the words are different (“Jahveh declared to my Adonai”). And it is notable that Matthew xxii. whose Hebraic character is so marked, and Mark xii., both make Jesus follow the Septuagint in quoting these words.

In both of these Gospels the incident is evidently, in Mark clumsily, interpolated, and it would appear to have belonged to some legend of the Infancy, such as that of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, where it occurs naturally:

It is probable that this anecdote had floated down from an early period when the notion of a royal descent of Jesus had not arisen.

Obviously a tremendous question arises here as to how a story should be found in Genesis xiv. about Melchizedek, which as a proper name really occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible,2 and the mystery is increased by the absence of any allusion to such a personage in Jesus Ben Sira’s enumeration of “famous men” (Ecclus. xliv.), or elsewhere. It almost looks as if Jesus Ben Sira had not read, or else had cancelled as spurious, the strange passage in Genesis—which is as follows:

Professor Max MÜller, in his third lecture on the “Science of Religion,” gives some useful information concerning this peculiar name, “El-ElyÔn,” after consulting his contemporaries at Oxford and in Germany:

“One of the oldest names of the deity among the ancestors of the Semitic nations was El. It meant Strong. It occurs in the Babylonian inscriptions as Ilu, God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate or temple of Il.... The same El was worshipped at Byblus by the Phoenicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His father was the son of Eliun, the most high God, who had been killed by wild animals. The Son of Eliun, who succeeded him, was dethroned, and at last slain by his own son, El, whom Philo identifies with the Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet Saturn.... ElyÔn, which, in Hebrew, means the Highest is used in the Old Testament as a predicate of God.... It occurs in the Phoenician cosmogony as Eliun, the highest God, the Father of Heaven, who was the father of El.”

According to Sanchunvaton (Euseb. Proep. i. 10) the Phoenicians called God ??????.

The combination El ElyÔn occurs in but two chapters in the Bible,—Genesis xiv. and Psalm lxxviii. (The Revisers translate it in Genesis, “God Most High,” but in the Psalm (verse 35), “Most High God.”) That the name was imported from the earlier into the later chapter is suggested by a similar association of each with the idea of purchase or redemption: “God Most High, purchaser of heaven and earth” (Genesis), “God Most High, their redeemer” (Psalm). But which is the earlier? Probably the Psalm; for it is a long rÉsumÉ of the traditional history of Israel, but contains no allusion to Abraham. Had its unique name, “El ElyÔn,” been derived from any such traditional source surely some mention of Abraham would have been made.

The Psalm is Elohistic. Possibly the Phoenician name for God, Elioun, was used in order to set “El” above it. Or it may be that as Solomon had been declared “ElyÔn of Kings” (Psalm lxxxix. 27) it was important to recall that he at the same time said, “My Elohim,” and to place “El” before his title. This conjecture is warranted by the fact that in both of the Psalms, and in the corresponding passages, God is spoken of as a “Rock.” There are other resemblances between the two Psalms, one very striking:

Psalm lxxviii. 70—“He chose David also, his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds.”

Psalm lxxxix. 19, 20—“I have raised one elected out of the people; I have discovered David, my servant.”

The Psalm in which the Septuagint personalises malki’-tzedek (cx.) into “Melchizedek” is a fragmentary little piece, with two incomprehensible verses at the end which seem to allude to some legend or folklore now lost. These verses (6 and 7) are incongruous with the preceding ones and must be detached, and perhaps verse 5 also, as this seems an anti-climax. These closing verses look as if they may have been added by some admirer of Joshua’s slaughter of kings, and it is probable that the legend of Joshua’s making his captains tread on the necks of the five kings (Joshua x.) was developed out of the opening verse of this Psalm:

The leader of these kings was Adonai-Zedek, who, like Melchizedek, was King of Jerusalem; they are certainly mythical relatives, their names meaning “Lord of Justice” and “King of Justice.” It is philologically impossible that any persons with those proper names could have existed in Jerusalem before the invasion of the Hebrews. And “Adonai-bezek,” the “radiant lord,” whose thumbs and toes Joshua cut off when he captured Jerusalem, is a transparent variant of Adonai-zedek.

When the city, originally named Jebus, began to be called Salem (see Psalm lxxvi. 2), the aboriginal people who continued to dwell there might naturally dream of their ancient kings, as the Welch and Bretons so long did of Arthur, “flower of kings,” and perhaps similarly expect their return to restore their ancient freedom; and it may have become a useful political device to find beyond the ugly legends of Joshua’s cruelty to their “just” and “shining” lords a prettier one, made out of an old song, of an earlier “King of Justice,” whose bread and wine Abraham had eaten, to whom he had paid tithes, whose deity, El ElyÔn, the father of Israel had recognized as his own, and with whom he had made a treaty of salem, or peace,—Jebus thus becoming Jebus-Salem (Jerusalem).

Josephus records the legend as it was no doubt generally accepted among the Jews in the first century of our era: “Now, the King of Sodom met him (Abram) at a certain place which they called the King’s Dale, where Melchizedek, King of the City of Salem, received him. That name signifies the righteous king, and such he was without dispute, insomuch that on that account he was made the priest of God. However, they afterward called Salem Jerusalem.” (Antiq. Bk. i. ch. 10.)

Josephus is careful to identify Salem as Jerusalem, and in vi. ch. 10 of the same work states that the King’s Dale (identified as the Shaveh where Abraham met Melchizedek, Genesis xiv.) is “two furlongs distant from Jerusalem.” This carefulness may have been intended to distinguish Melchizedek’s Salem from the northern Shalem (Genesis xxxiii. 18), a place associated with Jacob, and apparently representing an attempt to set up a rival temple to that in Jerusalem. It was an old competition about tithes. Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, King of Salem, but Jacob, after his vision at Bethel, recognized that as the “house of God,” and vowed to give to God a tenth of all that was given him (Genesis xxviii).3 This quarrel between rival towns and temples, trying each to draw all tithes to themselves, harmonized in the later legends of the Bible, need not detain us, but it is of importance to remark that the story of Abram meeting the King of Justice and Peace near Jerusalem, and establishing the sanctity of that city, corresponds with, and is counterbalanced by, Jacob’s meeting with angels, and wrestling with a mysterious “man,” who, it is hinted, was some form of God himself. This reply to the story of Abram suggests that at the time of that tithe controversy between Bethel and Sion Melchizedek was not thought of as a flesh-and-blood king or a mere man, but as a shadowy shape, evoked from actual conditions for certain purposes, and named in accordance with the history or traditions out of which the conditions and the aims were evolved.

In investigations of this kind, concerned with ages really prehistoric, it is necessary to remember at every step that our search is amid eras when words and names were at once counters of actual forces and factors of history. How serious a play on words may be even in historic times is illustrated by a Papacy founded on the double meaning of Peter—a man’s name and a rock,—and as we approach earlier epochs, whose issues and struggles have long passed away, and their once antagonistic leaders harmonised by pious legends, it is largely by the aid of words and names that we are enabled to reach even historic probabilities.

As to Melchizedek, my inference above stated, derived from the two tithe legends, that his supernatural character is reflected in that of the corresponding phantoms met by Jacob may not be generally accepted, but that he (Melchizedek) was so understood by the writer to the Hebrews can hardly be disputed. Melchizedek is there (Hebrews vii.) declared to have been “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, being assimilated unto the Son of God.”

In the third century the Melchizedekian sect maintained that Melchizedek was not a man but a heavenly power superior to Jesus, and the Hieracites held similar views. Some eminent theologians have believed that Melchizedek was Christ himself. Most of the Christian theories concerning the mysterious king are virtual admissions that only the eye of faith can see in him any actual being at all. How then was this mythical being formed?4

1. A suitable nest for the Melchizedek Saga existed near Jerusalem, in a vale called the King’s Dale. It seems to have been a royal racing ground (Targum of Onkelos, Gen. xiv. 17) or hippodrome (lxx. xlviii. 7), and its name in Hebrew was Emek-ham-Melech.

2. In the ancient Psalm cx. 1 we have Adonai (Lord), and in verse 4 Melchi-Melech (or Moloch) king, combined with tsedek, justice.

3. Tzedek (Tsaydoc or Zadok), the priest who anointed Solomon to be king. Tsaydoc supplanted the legitimate High Priest Abiathar who had taken the side of the legitimate heir to David’s throne, Adonijah, supplanted by Solomon. The deprivation of Abiathar, and exaltation of Tsaydoc to be High Priest is said (1 Kings ii. 27) to have been in fulfillment of “the word of Jahveh, which he spake concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh.” The reference is to the sentence passed on Eli and his house, to which Abiathar belonged, when Jahveh said, “And I will raise me up a faithful priest, etc.,” (1 Sam. ii. 35). Faithful priests were called “sons of Zadok,” the phrase having apparently become proverbial (Ezek. xliv. 15).

4. In 1 Chron. iii. there appear, among the descendants of Solomon, “Amaziah, Azariah his son, Jotham his son.” In 1 Chron. vi. we find among descendants of Zadok, Ahimaaz, Azariah his son, Johanan his son. Johanan is also among Solomon’s descendants, and among the descendants of both Solomon and Zadok is Shallum,—written by Josephus Salloumos (Bk. x. ch. 8). Josephus also says that Zadok was the first High Priest of Solomon’s Temple. But Solomon himself, without the assistance of any priest, dedicated the Temple, offered the sacrifices on that occasion, and so continued: “three times in a year did Solomon offer burnt offerings and peace offerings upon the altar which he built to Jahveh.” (1 Kings ix. 25). These statements establish a probability that no such person as Zadok existed at all, and that the development of this personification of justice (zedek) into a priestly personage was due to an ecclesiastical necessity of introducing a priest among the provisions of Solomon for the temple. Zadok is thus a detachment from King Solomon of the priestly functions he had discharged in the temple, according to the book of Kings; and in 1 Chron. vi., where this personification is completed, the Solomonic family names are found, as above, recurring as descendants of the personification,—Zadok.

These names are the fossil remains of controversies with Shilonite and Samaritan pretensions, which ended in consecrating the throne and altar at Jerusalem, and they prove that the consecration was that of justice and peace. Of these the Wise Man was typical. Solomon was the model from whom all of these ideals were painted. His title, Adonai, and his equity (Psalm xlv. 7, 11) are combined in Adonizedek, his glory (Psalm xlv. 3, 4) is in Adonibezek; his high priesthood is allegorized in Zadok; and in “Melchizedek, King of Salem,” his supreme characters are summed up, “King of Justice, Prince of Peace.”

In a warlike age this peacefulness of a monarch was the great and supernatural phenomenon. It is the very central idea of the whole Solomonic legend. Solomon got his name from it, even the name with Jahveh in it (Jedediah) being set aside; he was preferred above David to build the temple, because David was a warrior; in building the temple the peace was not broken even by the noise of a hammer, the stones being all in shape, it seems by supernatural power, when taken from the quarry, so as to be noiselessly fitted together; he would not fight even those who were rending parts of his kingdom away. He was the hero of the Beatitudes,—the gentle one who inherited the earth, the one who hungered and thirsted for justice and was filled, the peacemaker called the Son of God. It was he who first said, If thine enemy hunger give him food, if he thirst give him drink. And all this was allegorized in Melchizedek, who, when his country was invaded, instead of joining the five kings who resisted, loved his enemy, gave the invader food and drink.

We thus find Solomon,—the glorious cosmopolitan and secularist, whose name Jahvism could not utter without a shudder,—distributed in fable, legend, psalm, through Hexateuch and Hagiographa, and finally transfigured into a type of divine and eternal Sonship. Thus he appears in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to which we now return.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is invested with the mystical robes of Solomon. To Christ are applied the words, “I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son,” quoted from Jahveh’s promise to David concerning Solomon (2 Sam. vii. 14). To Christ are twice applied the words, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,” quoted from Psalm ii. 7, admittedly Solomonic. From Psalm xlv., verses 6 and 7, ascriptions to Solomon, are applied to Christ in this Epistle. And Melchizedek is here declared to be “a great man,” “assimilated unto the Son of God.”

We may here recall the words of Josephus, a contemporary of our writer, who says that Melchizedek was made the priest of God on account of his righteousness (Ant., Bk. i. ch. 10). It may have been that there was a popular belief in the time of Josephus that Melchizedek received his ordination from Abram himself, but there is no doubt that the mysterious king’s priesthood was believed to rest upon his righteousness and above all his peacefulness.

With these preliminaries we may find the Epistle’s argument about Melchizedek less “hard of interpretation” than the writer says it is. After speaking of Abraham as having “obtained” the promise, not merely because it was God’s promise, but because he “patiently endured,” having argued that Christ, “though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things that he suffered”, this Epistle maintains (vi. 20) that this is the believer’s hope, whereby he enters within the veil, “whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest forever after the manner of Melchizedek.” (The sense of this is lost in the E. V. by rendering ?e??e??? “made”: the argument is that though he was a Son of God even that could not make him a high priest; this he had to “become” by his own merits, uninheritable even from God, as was the case with Melchizedek.) “For this Melchizedek, being of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first by interpretation King of Righteousness, and next also King of Salem, that is Prince of Peace; being without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but assimilated (???? ?f????????) unto the Son of God), abideth a priest perpetually” (vii. 1–3).

The mystical clauses of verse 3 have for centuries been an unsolved enigma to exegetists; and Alford, after summing up the many conjectures as to their meaning, expresses his feeling that the writer had a thought which he did not intend us to comprehend! Probably, however, the writer was using language understood in his time, and which may be interpreted by comparison with expressions familiar in Jewish folklore. Some of these are preserved in the apocryphal gospels. Thus, in the Pseudo-Matthew, Levi, the teacher of Jesus, astounded by the Child’s learning, says, “I think he was born before the flood.” In the gospel of Thomas, the teacher ZacchÆus says, “This child is not of earthly parents, he is able to subdue even fire. Perhaps he was begotten before the world was made.” These ideas, which correspond somewhat to the Teutonic superstition of the “changeling,” are traceable in the Fourth Gospel (viii. 56–59), where Jesus is stoned for saying, “Before Abraham was I am.”

It will be seen that by this early writer “to the Hebrews” Jesus was not thought of in connection with David, but bore Solomon’s preËminent title, King of Peace, and that conferred on him by the Queen of Sheba, King of Justice. In the “Wisdom of Solomon” the Prince of the Golden Age, historically associated with idolatrous shrines, had been rehabilitated, even apotheosized; he was now a sort of rival of Jesus in divine sonship. The writer of our Epistle therefore artistically, not to say artfully, utilizes a composite word made into a proper name under which Solomon’s combined royalty and priesthood, his peace and justice, had been detached from his personality and personified. The new exaltation of Solomon personally was thus ignored, while his essential glories, his wisdom, and his reclaimed virtues, were woven into the celestial mantle of mysterious Melchizedek, and through him passed to the shoulders of the risen Christ.