Just my opinion:
Personally, I’ve begun to have doubts on the Melchizedek=Shem identification.
First of all, I do not doubt we do have some Jewish and Christian sources on the belief which identifies Mel with Shem (Christian ones sometimes basing themselves on the Jewish idea). However, I feel that this tradition – and other ones of such nature as well – has sprung up rather late; first of all, some of the early extra-Biblical sources which mention Mel: the
Genesis Apocryphon found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (early 1st century BC), Josephus and Philo, for example, make no mention of his connection with Shem or even his origins. But then again, most of these stories only reiterate the Biblical story, perhaps with the addition of a detail or two:
Abram camped in the valley of Shaveh, which is the valley of the king, the valley of Beth-ha-Kerem; and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out food and drink to Abram and to all the men who were with him. He was the Priest of the Most High God. And he blessed Abram and said, “
Blessed be Abram by the Most High God, Lord of heaven and earth! And blessed be the Most High God who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him the tithe of all the possessions of the king of Elam and his companions.
-
Genesis Apocryphon (xxii.14ff)
Moreover, God made Melchisedek, the king of peace, that is of Salem, for that is the interpretation of this name, “
his own high Priest,” without having previously mentioned any particular action of his, but merely because he had made him a king, and a lover of peace, and especially worthy of his priesthood. For he is called a just king, and a king is the opposite of a tyrant, because the one is the interpreter of law, and the other of lawlessness.
-Philo,
Allegorical Interpretation 3.79
And when the great high priest of the most high God beheld him returning and coming back loaded with trophies, in safety himself, with all his own force uninjured, for he had not lost one single man of all those who went out with him; marvelling at the greatness of the exploit, and, as was very natural, considering that he had never met with this success but through the favour of the divine wisdom and alliance, he raised his hands to heaven, and honoured him with prayers in his behalf, and offered up sacrifices of thanksgiving for his victory, and splendidly feasted all those who had had a share in the expedition; rejoicing and sympathising with him as if the success had been his own, and in reality it did greatly concern him. For as the proverb says:–
“
All that befalls from friends we common call.”
And much more are all instances of good fortune common to those whose main object it is to please God.
-Philo,
On Abraham 235
And Habramos, having rescued those of the Sodomites who were prisoners (including his kinsman Lotos), who had previously been captured by the Assyrians, returned in peace. And the king of the Sodomites went out to meet him at a certain place that they call the royal plain. There the king of Solyma, Melchisedek, received him. And this signifies “
righteous king.” And he was such indisputably, since for this reason he was also made priest of God. As to Solyma, they later called it Hierosolyma. And this Melchisedek granted hospitality to Habramos’ army and furnished a great abundance of their needs, and in the feast he began both to praise him and to bless God who had subjugated the enemy to him. And when Habramos gave him the tithe of the spoil, he accepted the gift.
-Josephus,
Antiquities 1.10.2 (179-181)
In fact, Josephus even suggested in his Wars of the Jews that Melchizedek was a Canaanite!
And thus was Jerusalem taken, in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, on the eighth day of the month Gorpeius [Elul]. It had been taken five times before, though this was the second time of its desolation; for Shishak, the king of Egypt, and after him Antiochus, and after him Pompey, and after them Sosius and Herod, took the city, but still preserved it; but before all these, the king of Babylon conquered it, and made it desolate, one thousand four hundred and sixty-eight years and six months after it was built. But he who first built it **was a potent man among the Canaanites **(Χαναναίων δυνάστης), and is in our own tongue called [Melchisedek], the Righteous King, for such he really was; on which account he was [there] the first priest of God, and first built a temple [there], and called the city Jerusalem, which was formerly called Salem. However, David, the king of the Jews, ejected the Canaanites, and set-tied his own people therein.
Now there are also other Jewish works in which Mel features, but these do not really tell us anything about his origins. One work among the DSS features Mel in a major role (
11QMelch, dating from the 1st century BC). There, Melchizedek appears as a heavenly end-time redeemer, with attributes of the archangel Michael. He appears in the tenth and final jubilee of world history to rescue the elect, the “
men of the lot of Melchizedek” (ii.8), doing battle with Belial and his fellow evil spirits.
) that some Christians themselves began to adopt this idea - such as St. Ephrem, St. Nicolas of Lyra, and St. Jerome (St. Jerome’s case is a bit confusing: on one hand, he seems to merely report about it). On the other hand - some of the Christians who still used the LXX or those based on it found this opinion rather hard to swallow since according to the text that they use, Shem should have been dead at around the time of Abraham. The Armenian abbot Gregory of Datev (1346-1411) was apparently aware of St. Ephrem’s identification of Mel with Shem, and devotes a passage to answering it in his Kirk Hartzmantz: