Who Is Melchizedek?

[Music] hi and thanks for watching melchizedek he's got to be one of the most fascinating of the biblical characters he makes a brief appearance in genesis 14. he shows up in the highly significant psalm psalm 110 where he's connected to the messiah's priesthood and of course he features prominently in the letter to the hebrews especially in chapter 7. there's also non-biblical writings about him jewish literature from the first century josephus and philo the dead sea scrolls a document known as second enoch and together all of these provide us with quite a picture of this biblical figure from way back in abraham's day in fact i was so fascinated by melchizedek that i spent a couple of years researching him and wrote my master's thesis about melchizedek so what i want to do is look at the biblical evidence as well as the non-biblical evidence especially from the dead sea scrolls and second enoch to help us to have a better understanding of exactly what various people were saying about melchizedek in the first century in order that we might then approach a letter to the hebrews and better understand exactly what the letter to the hebrews is telling us about melchizedek so sometimes you want to ask will the real melchizedek stand up because there's all sorts of identities that have been placed upon who exactly he is everything from a canaanite priest king a historical figure to what some christians think that he's the pre-incarnate christ the appearance of the son of god before his incarnation jewish tradition identifies him as noah's son shem just known by a different name some jewish literature speculates that he was angelic redeemer or the manifestation of the logos some say that he was an end-time priest and some early christians thought that he was in fact the holy spirit so as you can tell there's all sorts of identities that have been placed upon melchizedek well why don't we start first of all with what the scriptures themselves tell us the first appearance of melchizedek in the biblical canon is in genesis chapter 14. genesis 14 if you remember is the story of when abraham took his men and they pursued the four kings which had captured his nephew lot and a lot of other people and possessions abraham and his men defeated those kings and they brought back lot and all the people to where they had lived the king of sodom comes out to meet them and then another king the king of salem comes out to meet him that's where we pick up in genesis 14. melchizedek king of salem brought out bread and wine he was priest of god most high and he blessed him and said blessed be abram by god most high possessor of heaven and earth and blessed be god most high who has delivered your enemies into your hand and abram gave him a tenth of everything now it seems as if every single detail of this particular text has been mined by latest later jewish writers in trying to kind of identify exactly the significance of melchizedek everything from his name to the name of the city where he served as a priest and a king to his actions with abraham the bringing out of bread and wine as well as abram giving him a tithe of all the possessions so we'll we'll return to those as we proceed through all these other texts that tell us about melchizedek we want to first go though to the other old testament text which tells us about melchizedek and his significance this is from psalm 110. psalm 110 is a highly important psalm in fact of all the old testament texts that are either quoted or alluded to in the new testament psalm 110 has more than any of the others it is the most old frequently old cited old testament text in the new testament you may know the first verse the lord said to my lord sit at my right hand until i make your enemies a footstool for your feet but you might not be as familiar with the fourth verse this is where melchizedek enters the picture it says the lord has sworn and will not change his mind you are a priest forever according to the order of melchizedek now not only is the anointed one of god the messiah going to sit at yahweh's right hand and put all his enemies beneath his feet as the victorious king but he's also going to be a priest but he's not going to be a priest like the priest of aaron and his sons instead he is going to inherit the priesthood of melchizedek whatever that means well we're going to wait to find out what that means when we get to the letter to the hebrews but bear in mind that because this psalm put a connection an explicit connection between melchizedek and the messiah that invited a lot of later jewish writings to engage in speculation about who he was and his significance in the biblical narrative now one of these speculations about melchizedek is from the dead sea scrolls it's known as 11 q melchizedek 11 because it was found in cave 11 q because it's part of the qumran manuscripts and melchizedek because of course of the subject of this particular document it was written in hebrew sometime within the 100 year span of about 50 bc to ad50 and it was first made known to the world in a scholarly publication that came out in 1965. what is 11q melchizedek all about and how does melchizedek himself fit into this particular document well lebanesque melchizedek divides history into jubilee periods this was relatively common for jewish literature of the day it just so happens that this document is about the 10th and the final jubilee of world history so this is end of the world kind of stuff melchizedek appears from heaven as the general of the heavenly armies he's the visible representative of god and he's the redeemer of the lord's people not only that but he appears on yom kippur on the day of atonement thus indicative of the priestly role that he is going to play in this end-time scenario and as if that was not enough he's called el or elohim god so we've we've come a long way from genesis chapter 14 when we get to 11 q melchizedek because all of a sudden now we no longer have a historic king and priest in the city of salem but now we have this heavenly angelic redeemer figure who appears at the end of time as the leader of the lord's armies in order to redeem the sons of light the followers of god and he begins this victorious march on yom kippur on the day of atonement which of course is a highly priestly festival in israel's calendar so keep all of that in mind as we jump to probably the most bizarre of the melchizedek traditions and this is in a document known as second enoch there was a lot of enoch literature that circulated in the first centuries it was well known to the jews of the first century in fact first enoch is quoted in the new testament or at least alluded to this is second enoch where melchizedek makes his appearance it's basically a midrash which is a word for jewish interpretation often creative a midrash on genesis chapter 5 where enoch makes his appearance in the biblical story it was probably written around the first century a.d all those scholars dispute it's dating but if it is for the first century a.d that locates it as a contemporaneous writing with the letter to the hebrews now it's divided by scholars into 73 chapters the first few chapters talk about enoch's ascent through the seven heavens his instruction by angels and you get to the end and we have this wild and crazy story about the birth of a child priest named melchizedek so here's how the story goes noah has a brother whose name is near and near is married to sophaneem but this couple are childless they've never been able to have any children then all of a sudden even though near and sophonine are separated one from another and thus not having intercourse she becomes miraculously pregnant when near finds out he confronts her and the shock of the encounter actually kills sopanim she dies before she's able to give birth to her child noah and near leave her body they come back to prepare for her burial and sitting on the edge of her bed is a child a son who is fully developed he has the badge of priesthood on his chest and he opens his mouth to bless the lord it's at that point that they name him melchizedek later in the story the archangel gabriel takes melchizedek from earth to heaven to await the flood and then after the flood the archangel gabriel will bring melchizedek back down from heaven to earth where he will establish or re-establish the priesthood so if eleven key melchizedek seems strange to you well second enoch is even stranger because now we have this predilution this pre-flood figure who doesn't seem to have a father and he's born from a dead mother and he's a precocious vunderkind he's he's already fully developed and he has this priestly badge on his chest and he's already opening his mouth to bless the lord and he becomes the establisher of this new priesthood after the flood then with all of this in mind we jump to a couple of other jewish writers who even though they didn't say quite as much about melchizedek still expanded on the biblical narrative and these two figures are philo and josephus we've talked about philo as well as josephus in some of the earlier videos philo was a contemporary of jesus he was a jewish philosopher who lived in egypt he left us a vast body of literature and in four of his writings he talks about melchizedek he describes him as a king of peace so he's translating king of salem as king of peace which is the same thing that hebrews chapter 7 does he also calls him god's own priest and not only that not only is he a priest but he is a visible representation on earth of the logos and all his thoughts are vast and sublime and he hasn't inherited the priesthood from anyone his inheritance his his priesthood is atomathey philo says it's self-taught it's alto de doctan it's instinctive so philo goes beyond the biblical narrative to describe who melchizedek is but he's not alone josephus who is a little bit later than jesus he's late first century a jewish historian who also has left us a vast body of literature and in two of his writings in wars and antiquities he also talks about melchizedek he describes him as a canaanite chieftain a righteous king that he was the original founder of the city in which he lived and he was also josephus says the first to officiate as priest the first to build a temple and he's the one who renamed salem jerusalem so even though philo and josephus are a little bit more conservative and what they have to say about melchizedek as in comparison to 11q melchizedek and in comparison to second enoch they still take the biblical story and they expand on these details to tell us a little bit more about who they thought melchizedek was let's kind of take all of this together and and regroup what we've learned so far before we jump into the letter of the hebrews what do we know we know that there's basically a couple of different trajectories that speculations about melchizedek go one is that he is a historical figure that he's a canaanite chieftain a priest a king founder of jerusalem representative of the logos and he has this enduring priesthood that's connected to the messianic king but there's also a trajectory which locates him more as a heavenly figure where he's either an angel or a divine redeemer leader of the heavenly armies precocious child with no father and a dead mother the founder of a post-flood priesthood and he's the end-time priest in the final jubilee of world history so all of this was kind of swirling around in the environment when the letter to the hebrews was written these speculations about melchizedek would have been known to jews they would have known the various myths and and speculations and traditions about melchizedek so keep that in mind when we jump into the letter to the hebrews because this is going to be important for understanding exactly why the author of the hebrew seemingly out of the blue picked melchizedek to talk about his connection to the messiah let's jump first of all into the most important chapter in hebrews for understanding melchizedek and that is chapter 7. here's how the chapter begins this melchizedek king of salem priest to the most high god met abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him and to him abram apportioned the tenth part of everything he is first by the translation of his name king of righteousness and then he's also king of salem that is king of peace he is without father or mother or genealogy having neither beginning of days nor end of life but resembling the son of god he continues a priest forever now we're going to return to those points in just a minute but bear in mind that the main reason that the author of the hebrews brings up melchizedek is to say that the messiah according to psalm 110 has a priesthood according to the order of melchizedek and not according to the order of aaron he's showing that christ has a priesthood like melchizedek and melchizedek has a priesthood that is superior to that of aaron and his sons it predates the priesthood of aaron and abraham himself this great patriarch paid tithes to melchizedek and received a blessing from melchizedek thereby according to the author of hebrews indicating that melchizedek is superior even to abraham so that's the way that starts out when we get to answering the question who is melchizedek there's a couple of things to bear in mind about who he is not first of all in the book of hebrews melchizedek is not a typical kind of comparison and then contrast figure like a lot of the other people in in the book of hebrews so what hebrews will do it will it will compare christ to the priests but then show how christ is superior to the priest or we'll compare christ to moses but show how christ is superior to moses does the same thing with aaron but even though the messiah and melchizedek are compared one to another are joined one to another it's never said that the messiah is superior to melchizedek they're just joined one to another in the priesthood that they share secondly this is not an old testament christophany melchizedek is not a pre-incarnate appearance of christ because it says that he resembles the son of god or he's made like the son of god and that he continues a priest forever but these are two separate figures i say that because there are some christians who believe that he is in fact a pre-incarnate appearance of christ but we don't have biblical justification for that instead the two are compared one to another they are not equated as if they were the same figure now let's jump into what is by far the most unlikely of descriptions or at least unexpected descriptions of who melchizedek was in the book of hebrews this is from those verses that i already read where there's this string of withouts these alpha primitives in the greek in which something is said to be lacking so he's without father without mother without genealogy without beginning of days without end of life and he's made like the son of god now what's going on here with all of this well i would argue that based upon what we've learned based upon everything that we've heard from the dead sea scrolls and from second enoch and the speculations in both philo and hebrews that what's going on here is that the author of hebrews is simply reflecting various traditions and speculations about the person of melchizedek he is saying nothing that his audience would not already have been familiar with they were part of the ethos of this day they were immersed in this jewish culture in which these various traditions about biblical figures circulated around so what the author of hebrews was telling them was not going to be radically new they were familiar with what was being said about melchizedek in their time so he the author to the hebrews is building upon this speculation building upon all these various traditions about melchizedek in order to further his argumentation about the superiority of the priesthood of christ so what is happening he's the author of hebrews is echoing the views of others in his culture regarding melchizedek without necessarily espousing those views as true he's simply saying you've heard about this melchizedek you've heard what people are saying about him that he's without father and without mother without genealogy without beginning of day is your end of life you know these traditions about these jewish traditions about melchizedek and in that way he is like the son of god well this is not something that only happens here in the new testament paul does something similar to this when he cites in second timothy 3 verse 8 he cites the non-biblical names of the egyptian magicians janies and jamborees or yanez and yambres now if you go back to the book of exodus the names of the egyptian magicians are not given there instead these names were jewish traditions that were attached to these particular egyptian magicians we have these names that are reflected in other jewish literature that was contemporaneous with paul we have it for instance in the damascus document which was another text that's found among the dead sea scrolls and found as in as far away as the the genizah in the in cairo the the synagogue there had against that also had a damascus document located in it and the demise of damascus document just like paul does is simply using this tradition to talk about these egyptian magicians so just like the author of hebrews is reflecting these traditions about melchizedek paul does the same thing when he reflects those traditions about the names of these egyptian magicians all of this in order to help us to understand the significance of reading non-biblical literature when we're interpreting the scriptures themselves if you didn't know about 11k melchizedek if you didn't know about second enoch if you didn't know what philo and josephus were saying about melchizedek in other words if you weren't aware of these traditions that were present in the first century outside of the biblical canon than what the author of hebrews says wouldn't make any sense but now that you know that that swirling all around the people that the letter to the hebrews was addressed to as well as the author now that you know all these traditions were out there you can see why he said what he said at the beginning of hebrews chapter 7. he was reflecting traditions that were present in that particular culture in order to further his argumentation about the superiority of the priesthood of christ he's not necessarily espousing the truthfulness of these speculations he's simply using them as a springboard whereby he can talk more about the priesthood of christ now if you find this fascinating as i found it fascinating i'm going to put in my notes a link where you can read either the whole thing or read portions of the thesis that i referred to earlier about melchizedek and biblical and non-biblical traditions but mostly i just hope that it is is helpful for you to understand why we read not just the bible when we interpret it but we read literature outside the bible in order that we might more fully understand that every biblical author was situated in a unique place in time they were surrounded by texts and traditions and myths in their culture and all of these had the potential to shape their world view and the way that they express themselves so reading this literature outside the bible helps us to understand better the bible itself so as always thank you for watching i hope that you're all doing well and i look forward to making more of these videos in the future peace be with you all thank you

Channel: Chad Bird

Views: 34,391

Rating: 4.8595042 out of 5

Keywords: Melchizedek, Genesis 14, Psalm 110, 11QMelchizedek, 2 Enoch, Philo, Josephus, Inner-Biblical Interpretation, Old Testament, New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, First Century Judaism, Qumran

Id: FMtuuXjc0Ng

Length: 21min 26sec (1286 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020