The Top Mysterious Scriptures' People

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Opening a thread to discuss the top mysterious “characters” in the Scriptures 🙂

I’d say Melchizedek is the most mysterious character.
He’s mentioned very shortly in Genesis and Psalms and totally disappears from the scriptures, to mysteriously “come back” in the Letter to the Hebrews, and this mention renders him even more mysterious than ever!
Hebrews 7:1-4
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“For this Melchisedech was king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him: To whom also Abraham divided the tithes of all: who first indeed by interpretation, is king of justice: and then also king of Salem, that is, king of peace: Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but likened unto the Son of God, continueth a priest for ever. Now consider how great this man is, to whom also Abraham the patriarch gave tithes out of the principal things.”
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Some say he is Shem, some say he is an angel, but there is no real consensus about his enigmatic character.

Now, following Melchizedek, I think Jesus’ Beloved disciple to be the second most enigmatic person. Even though we have enough internal evidence to believe it’s John the Apostle, there are equally strong arguments to believe it could not be John… but if it’s not John, why is John the only one of the twelve not even mentioned in the Gospel of John?

Third… The Pharaoh of the Exodus. Who wouldn’t love to know who he was? 🙂

Fourth… Balaam! Balaam is one of those enigmatic and mysterious Biblical characters who is hard to evaluate. Each time in the New Testament where he is mentioned, it is in connection with apostasy. Some saw him very strange. Some saw him as a genuine prophet of God. Others say he was a religious racketeer. McGee asks, “Is Balaam sincerely seeking to serve God or is he a fake, a phony?”

Next, I would place Joseph of Arimathea, He was was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus’ Crucifixion. He is mentioned in all four Gospels… yet we know almost nothing of him :eek:

Who else? Any more thoughts 🙂
 
Melchizedek is truly the most mysterious to me, even in non-biblical works such as what was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls which has him as Messianic. Even the author of Hebrews makes his mystery even more obscure.

The Antichrist is quite mysterious to me even though I have spent lots of time studying about him and have written many things about him. He is one of those figures that we won’t completely knows until he arrives. So much speculation about his mark 666 bring a great deal of mystery to him.

Also the 2 witnesses in Revelation, which I have speculated to be Enoch and Elijah, but would not proclaim that as 100%.
 
Could I nominate three for now?
  1. Maher-shalal-hash-baz 😃
  2. The young man at Gethsemane
    3 Tola
 
I believe everybody in the Bible is pretty much enigmatic to me. Especially in the NT, which is full of pericopes and essentially episodic, written from the memories of the witnesses, but in reality we know not much of anybody in the whole Bible!
I think the text made sense to people at the time, and they were totally familiar to all these characters at the time, supressing the need of a proper introduction by the authors. But now, much of what the early witnesses knew is lost, perhaps forever.
 
I would say Enoch and Melchizedek!
  1. Enoch practically has a 2 or 3 verses about him in the Old Testament and one quotation in the New Testament. Althought we have the book of Enoch, it is apocryphal and only give us an idea of who Enoch MIGHT have really been. From the bible we have very little to know of him. I also speculate that he is one of the two witnesses of the book of the Revelation. The other being Elijah the prophet. This of course is from Catholic prophecy
  2. Melchizedek, well read the letter of Hebrews and the little bit about him that is in Genesis and you’ll be left in awe.EVEN Abraham honoured this man greatly :eek:
 
minichibi said:
I think the text made sense to people at the time, and they were totally familiar to all these characters at the time, supressing the need of a proper introduction by the authors. But now, much of what the early witnesses knew is lost, perhaps forever.
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I couldn’t agree more. When the tradition of story telling disappeared, so did the identities of the people in the story. This also illustrates why it is so very important that we tell our children about the persons and events of history; even though there are textbooks, history often gets rewritten for the next generation - those who didn’t live through it or were too young to remember. (Think about how Russia rewrote history about 15 years after Hitler’s death to blame the Pope and the entire Catholic Church for the death of the Jews in concentration camps. I’ve heard that if you go to Auschwitz today there is a very heavy anti-Catholic sentiment because they believe what has been written as “history”.)
 
minichibi said:
I believe everybody in the Bible is pretty much enigmatic to me. Especially in the NT, which is full of pericopes and essentially episodic, written from the memories of the witnesses, but in reality we know not much of anybody in the whole Bible!
I think the text made sense to people at the time, and they were totally familiar to all these characters at the time, supressing the need of a proper introduction by the authors. But now, much of what the early witnesses knew is lost, perhaps forever.
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We do know a good deal about some of them (a bit of a cliche here, but Jesus would be our prime example), only we do not know as much as we would like.

That’s what you get when high-context literature produced by a high-context culture are read in a low-context setting.
 
COPLAND_3 said:
Melchizedek is truly the most mysterious to me, even in non-biblical works such as what was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls which has him as Messianic. Even the author of Hebrews makes his mystery even more obscure.
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The Genesis Apocryphon (22.14ff) sticks close to Genesis in that Melchizedek is the priest-king of Salem. His bringing out of bread and wine is interpreted as him feeding Abram and his men after the battle. (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 1.179-81) Other works, like The Coming of Melchizedek (11Q13, aka 11QMelch) and a few other fragments, portray Mel as some sort of angel or even a (semi-) divine being. In fact in one instance he seems to be even equated with Michael.
The Antichrist is quite mysterious to me even though I have spent lots of time studying about him and have written many things about him. He is one of those figures that we won’t completely knows until he arrives. So much speculation about his mark 666 bring a great deal of mystery to him.
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Or 616. 😃
 
I’d also like to nominate the patriarch Cainan son of Arpachshad who only appears in the Septuagint and in Luke. 😉
 
Next, I would place Joseph of Arimathea, He was was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus’ Crucifixion. He is mentioned in all four Gospels… yet we know almost nothing of him :eek:
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There’s a good fiction book, Sun and Wind - The Legend of Joseph of Arimathea by William Boardman – that is guaranteed to make you consider the man with the tomb as someone special.
 
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