Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.

Hello. In this bonus episode of the History in the Bible podcast, Stephen Gwera of the history of the papacy podcast and I launch into the very mysterious Melchazidic of Jewish tradition and how he relates to the Jewish and Christian priesthoods. I hope you enjoy it. Now, one of the roots of the Christian priesthood

and the Jewish priesthood, for that matter, goes back to a mysterious character mentioned only twice in the Bible,

once in Genesis and once in Psalm 110. And that man is, in English, he's called Melchizedek.

In Hebrew, he's called Melchizedek. And I've spent months researching those pronunciations, and there doesn't

seem to be much agreement about which one one should do. I prefer the Hebrew pronunciation, Malkad Zedek,

because in fact his name comes from two words, Malki and Zedek. Now Malki means roughly king,

and Zedek or Zedek means righteous.

So his personal name simply means righteous king.

Now the first time that Malki the Mysterious or Malki the Magnificent appears,

Genesis 1418, then King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine.

He was a priest of El El-L El Yon. He blessed Abraham and said,

Blessed is Abraham by El El Yon, maker of heaven and earth. Blessed is El Elian, who has handed

your enemies over to you. Then Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. Now that phrase El Yon

is usually translated as God Most High,

and it's the first time that the phrase occurs in the Bible. So that's the first mention of

Melchizedek. He appears out of nowhere, and he blesses Abraham. The implication is that there

is something very special about this guy, who is so important that he can actually

bless the chosen man of God, Abraham. Now, the second and last mention of Melchizedek

is in Psalm 110. Now, firstly, I'm going to give you the translation of the two lines in that

Psalm as given in the New American Bible revised edition, which is the

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