Melchizedek's Place in Scripture and Legend

1922

AS TYPE OF MONOTHEISM

Melchizedek So Figures in Pages of Scripture and as Character in Legends

Melchizedek is a vague character occasionally mentioned in the Scriptures, whose name means "king of righteousness." The most definite references to him indicate that he was king of Salem, and priest of Jehovah in the time of Abraham, uniting the royal with the priestly dignity, and so becoming a welcome type for the Scripture writers.

Later on his name seems to have become more or less legendary, and was used in a figurative sense as "a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek," and he is placed in the same category as the Messiah, Himself, apparently as a type of ancient monotheism.

Still later he becomes identified with Shem, the son of Noah, and the ancestor of Abraham, and is the subject of an elaborate story in the Egyptian book of Adam and Eve. In this story he is represented as having been chosen of God "from all generations of men," to stand by the body of Adam after it had been brought back to Jerusalem. He is supposed to have remained with Adam's body under the protection of an angel until he encountered Abraham.

He is one of the four mentioned in Holy Writ as "without father and without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the son of God abiding forever."

—The Pointer, Riverdale/Dolton, Illinois, July 28, 1922, page 5.