Joseph A. Fitzmyer, «Melchizedek in the MT, LXX, and the NT», Vol. 81 (2000) 63-69

Melchizedek is mentioned in the Hebrew Old Testament only in Gen 14,18-20 and Psalm 110,4. The details about this (originally Canaanite) priest-king in these passages were further read and understood in the Hellenistic and Roman periods of Jewish, and later Christian, history. This is seen in the translation or interpretation of the passages in the Septuagint, the writings of Flavius Josephus, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in the Peshitta, where a process of allegorization was at work.

        Flavius Josephus recounts the meeting of Abram and Melchizedek in his own manner: (1) He not only interprets Melchizedek’s name to mean basileu_j di/kaioj, ‘righteous king’, but adds, ‘such he was by common consent’. (2) Josephus calls him o( th=j Soluma= basileu/j, ‘the king of Solyma’, and explains, ‘Solyma indeed they later called Hierosolyma’ (= Jerusalem). (3) He further adds that ‘this Melchizedek hospitably welcomed the army of Abram and liberally supplied for their needs; and during the feasting he began to praise Abram and to bless God for having delivered his enemies into his hands’. ‘God’ in Josephus’s understanding, however, means the God of the Jews, and there are no modifiers of to_n qeo/n²⁴. (4) Josephus also clarifies that Abram offered Melchizedek ‘a tenth of the booty’, which he accepted. (5) Josephus explains that the king of Sodom urged Abram to keep the booty and sought only to recover ‘the men, his domestic servants, whom Abram had rescued from the Assyrians’. (6) Josephus makes Abram say that he would not do this and that no further advantage would be his from that booty save what had been already the sustenance of his own servants and the portion for friends who had fought with him, whom Josephus calls Eschon, Enneros, and Mambres²⁵.

        Again, the Melchizedek story in the Vetus Latina follows the MT, but is influenced by the LXX in v. 21, da mihi homines, equos autem sume tibi, ‘give me the men, but take the horses for yourself’, and in v. 22 Abram raises his hand to Deum altissimum, with nothing corresponding to hwhy. In Psalm 110, the VL reads: secundum ordinem Melchisedec²⁶.

        The Vulgate curtails v. 20 and reads: benedictus Deus excelsus quo protegente hostes in manibus tuis sunt; and the king of Sodom begs, da mihi animas, cetera tolle tibi, which is closer to the MT, despite the plural animas.

        In the Peshitta the story shows only minor variations from the MT: (1) the king of Salem is named Mlkyzdq, which obscures the real etymology of the name²⁷; but he is called kwmr) d)lh) mrym), ‘priest of God exalted’, which uses for ‘priest’ the term often used of a pagan priest; it thus denies him the Aramaic title )nhk (v. 18) and eliminates the problem of his genealogy; (3)