Melchizedek

Melchizedek appears in just three verses of Genesis. After Abram defeats a coalition of eastern kings, Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, brings out bread and wine and blesses him, and Abram gives him a tenth (Genesis 14:18–20). Psalm 110 speaks of a priest forever "after the order of Melchizedek," and the Letter to the Hebrews applies that line to Jesus.

His brief, unexplained appearance invited speculation. A Dead Sea Scroll, 11QMelchizedek, presents him as a heavenly judge who brings release at the end of days. The longer version of 2 Enoch ends with his miraculous birth: Noah's brother's wife conceives without a husband and dies, and the child emerges from her body already speaking, with the priestly badge on his chest, and is carried off by an angel before the Flood. In the Cave of Treasures, he and Shem bury Adam's body at Golgotha. Rabbinic tradition often identifies him with Shem.

Melchizedek is known from these texts only; there is no other historical record of him.