Melchizedek is the priest-king of Salem who appears in Genesis 14:18–20, where he brings out bread and wine, blesses Abram in the name of El Elyon, "God Most High," and receives a tenth of the spoils. He is named only twice in the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis 14 and Psalm 110:4, yet later writers made him an eternal priest in the Letter to the Hebrews, a heavenly judge in the Dead Sea Scrolls and a miraculously born child in 2 Enoch.
That gap between three verses of narrative and two thousand years of interpretation is why Melchizedek matters. He sits where the Bible's oldest layers, its Canaanite vocabulary for God and its later priestly politics meet, and nearly every tradition that has touched him, from Qumran to the early church to the Latter-day Saints, has used him to explain where true priesthood comes from.
What Genesis 14 actually says about Melchizedek
Genesis 14 introduces Melchizedek in a single scene after a war of kings. Four eastern kings led by Chedorlaomer of Elam carry off Abram's nephew Lot; Abram pursues them with 318 trained men and rescues him. On his return, in the Valley of Shaveh, "the king's dale," Melchizedek steps into the story.
In the King James wording: "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth... And he gave him tithes of all."
Three details stand out. First, "most high God" translates the Hebrew El Elyon. Second, this is the first place in the Bible where anyone is called a priest (kohen), long before Aaron or the Levites. Third, the last line is genuinely ambiguous. The Hebrew reads literally "and he gave him a tenth of everything," without saying who "he" is. Josephus, Philo and the author of Hebrews all take it to mean that Abram paid Melchizedek, and that is the majority reading, but the grammar alone does not settle it. Melchizedek then disappears from the narrative.
In Genesis 14:22 Abram swears by "the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth," joining the divine name YHWH to Melchizedek's title. Many scholars read the verse as deliberately identifying the God of Abram with the God of the Salem priest.
What the name means and where Salem was
The name Melchizedek is usually translated "king of righteousness" or "my king is righteousness," from the Hebrew melek, "king," and tsedeq, "righteousness." Hebrews 7:2 gives the first meaning and adds that "King of Salem" means "King of peace," playing on shalom. Some scholars note that Tsedeq may also have been a divine name in the region, as in the later Jerusalem king Adoni-zedek of Joshua 10.
Salem has been identified with Jerusalem since antiquity. Psalm 76:2 (76:3 in Hebrew numbering) sets them in parallel: "In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion." Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews (book 1, chapter 10), says the name "signifies, The righteous King" and that "they afterward called Salem Jerusalem." In the Jewish War (6.438) he calls Melchizedek "a potent man among the Canaanites" who was "the first priest of God, and first built a temple there," folding him into the prehistory of the sanctuary later associated with Solomon's Temple.
Who El Elyon was
El Elyon, "God Most High," is a title with roots older than the Genesis narrative. El headed the Canaanite pantheon in the texts from Ugarit, and Elyon appears as a divine name outside the Bible: the Aramaic Sefire treaty of around 750 BCE names a pair written "El and Elyon," which some scholars read as two gods.
Inside the Bible, Elyon divides the nations in Deuteronomy 32:8. The traditional Hebrew text says he set their boundaries "according to the number of the children of Israel," but a Dead Sea Scrolls copy reads "sons of God," and many Septuagint manuscripts read "angels of God." For historians of Israelite religion, Genesis 14 belongs to a wider pattern in which El, Elyon and Elohim preserve an older Near Eastern divine vocabulary later merged with the worship of YHWH, a debate that overlaps with the plural Elohim of Genesis.
Why Psalm 110 calls the king "a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek"
Psalm 110:4 is the only other verse in the Hebrew Bible that names him: "The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." The psalm addresses a king enthroned in Zion, and its opening line, "The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand," is among the Old Testament verses most quoted in the New Testament.
Most scholars read verse 4 as royal theology. Israel's priests were meant to come from Levi, yet Jerusalem's kings also performed priestly acts. Appealing to a pre-Israelite priest-king of the same city gave the Davidic king a priesthood that did not depend on Aaron. Whatever its date, the psalm turned a one-scene character into an "order" a ruler could belong to.
How the Letter to the Hebrews uses Melchizedek
Hebrews, an early Christian text by an unknown author, builds its case for Jesus as high priest on Psalm 110:4, quoting it at 5:6 and returning to it at 5:10, 6:20 and throughout chapter 7.
The argument runs in three steps. First, it reads the silence of Genesis as meaningful: because no parents, birth or death are recorded, Hebrews 7:3 describes Melchizedek as "without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually." Second, it uses the tithe: Levi was still "in the loins" of Abraham when Abraham paid Melchizedek, so the Levitical priesthood itself is the lesser order (7:4–10). Third, Jesus came from Judah, not Levi (7:14), so his priesthood must belong to this older order confirmed by God's oath.
Most commentators read this typologically rather than as a claim that Melchizedek was literally eternal, since he is "made like unto" the Son of God, not identical to him.
Melchizedek in the Dead Sea Scrolls and 2 Enoch
The most striking Second Temple portrait is 11Q13, or 11QMelchizedek, a fragmentary Hebrew scroll from Qumran Cave 11, first published by A. S. van der Woude in 1965 and dated to the late second or early first century BCE. It is an end-time commentary on the Jubilee laws of Leviticus 25 and on Isaiah 61:1, "to proclaim liberty to the captives." Melchizedek appears as a heavenly figure who proclaims release in the tenth jubilee, linked to a Day of Atonement, and executes God's judgment against Belial and his spirits. The scroll even applies Psalm 82:1, where Elohim takes his stand in the divine council, to Melchizedek. Some scholars identify him with the archangel Michael; others see a distinct heavenly being. Either way, Jews were already treating Melchizedek as more than human before Hebrews was written, as our guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls explains.
2 Enoch, an apocalypse preserved in Old Church Slavonic in longer and shorter recensions, closes with a birth story. Sopanima (Sothonim in some manuscripts), the barren wife of the priest Nir, Noah's brother, conceives without her husband and dies; the child emerges from her body fully developed, with the badge of priesthood on his chest. Nir and Noah name him Melchizedek, and an archangel, Gabriel in some manuscripts and Michael in others, carries him to the paradise of Eden so he survives the Flood. The book belongs to the same literature as the Book of Enoch, and its date remains contested.
Philo, the rabbis and the Gnostic Melchizedek
Writers outside the Bible took Melchizedek in three directions. Philo of Alexandria, in the first century CE, read him allegorically. In Allegorical Interpretation, book 3 (sections 79–82), he is "the king of peace, that is of Salem," a just king rather than a tyrant, and Philo identifies this priest with the Logos, treating the bread and wine as nourishment for the soul.
The rabbis made him human. The Targums and the Babylonian Talmud (Nedarim 32b) identify Melchizedek with Shem, son of Noah, and Nedarim 32b adds that his priesthood passed to Abraham because he blessed Abram before blessing God.
The Nag Hammadi library offers a third. The first tractate of Codex IX, titled Melchizedek, is badly damaged: of roughly 750 lines, only 19 survive complete. What remains calls him "the true high priest of God Most High" and closely links or identifies him with Jesus Christ; some scholars connect it with Sethian Gnostics. It sits beside the texts covered in the Gnostic Gospels and Nag Hammadi.
The Melchizedek Priesthood and the modern Order of Melchizedek
Today the name is most widely used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches that the higher, Melchizedek Priesthood was restored in 1829 to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery by the apostles Peter, James and John, after John the Baptist conferred the Aaronic Priesthood on May 15, 1829. Doctrine and Covenants 107 says it was first called "the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God," and was named after Melchizedek out of reverence, to avoid repeating the name of God too often.
In modern esoteric and New Age writing, "the Order of Melchizedek" usually describes a timeless spiritual priesthood or lineage of teachers rather than a historical institution; the author Drunvalo Melchizedek, of The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, is a well-known example of the name's use. These ideas draw on Hebrews 7:3 and the heavenly figure of the scrolls, but they are modern interpretations, not a documented continuation of an ancient order.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson has not published a dedicated study of Melchizedek, so his reading is best described through his wider approach to the Bible rather than any specific claim about this figure. Carson treats the Bible as a compiled, edited collection that preserves older Near Eastern layers. He argues that the plural Elohim of Genesis and the Anunnaki of the Sumerian tablets describe the same beings, and he sees the Dead Sea Scrolls as evidence that the canon is an edited selection, with material about heavenly beings once mainstream rather than marginal.
Through that lens, Melchizedek is a case study rather than a settled answer. Genesis 14 preserves a non-Israelite priest serving El Elyon, Psalm 110 adapts him for a king, and Qumran, Hebrews and 2 Enoch each rebuild him for their own purposes. Carson's approach asks what the oldest layer of a passage says before accepting later edits, the same question mainstream historians ask, even if they reach different conclusions about the "gods" in those layers. His conversation with author Paul Wallis on Yahweh, El Shaddai and the Bible's divine names shows that approach applied to the Hebrew titles for God.
Watch, read and go deeper
Carson develops his arguments on the Elohim and the Bible's divine names on 4BK TV in Bible Study. For the titles Melchizedek's story depends on, the Paul Wallis episode of the 4biddenknowledge Podcast covers Yahweh, El Shaddai and the Elohim. For the wider debate over gods and beings in the ancient texts, start at the Anunnaki topic hub.
Frequently asked questions
Was Melchizedek a real person?
No evidence for Melchizedek survives outside the Bible and the texts that interpret it. Genesis 14 presents him as a king of Salem, but no inscription or archaeological find names him. Historians treat him as a figure of tradition whose historical core, if any, cannot be confirmed.
Is Melchizedek the same as Jesus?
Hebrews says Melchizedek was "made like unto the Son of God," which most Christian interpreters read as foreshadowing rather than identity. The Nag Hammadi tractate Melchizedek does closely link or identify the two. Mainstream Christian teaching treats him as a human priest who serves as a type of Christ.
Did Abram give Melchizedek a tenth, or the other way round?
The Hebrew of Genesis 14:20 says only "he gave him a tenth of everything," without naming the giver. Hebrews, Josephus and Philo all read it as Abram tithing to Melchizedek, the majority interpretation. Some modern scholars note that the grammar alone does not settle it.
What is 11QMelchizedek?
11QMelchizedek (11Q13) is a fragmentary Hebrew scroll from Qumran Cave 11, dated to the late second or early first century BCE. It portrays Melchizedek as a heavenly figure who proclaims liberty in the tenth jubilee and carries out God's judgment against Belial. It is one of the earliest surviving texts to treat him as more than human.
What does "the order of Melchizedek" mean?
The phrase comes from Psalm 110:4, which promises a king that he will be "a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." In context it means a priesthood modeled on Melchizedek's rather than on Aaron's Levitical line. Hebrews applies it to Jesus, Latter-day Saints to their higher priesthood, and modern esoteric groups to a spiritual lineage.
Sources and further reading
- The Hebrew Bible: Genesis 14, Psalm 76 and Psalm 110 (King James Version)
- The Letter to the Hebrews, chapters 5–7
- 11Q13 (11QMelchizedek), in Florentino García Martínez and Eibert Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition
- 2 Enoch, translated by F. I. Andersen, in James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, volume 1
- Philo of Alexandria, Allegorical Interpretation, book 3; Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews and the Jewish War
- Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 32b
- Birger A. Pearson (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codices IX and X
- Fred L. Horton Jr., The Melchizedek Tradition
