CHAD BIRD ON MELCHIZEDEK (GENESIS 14:17-20; HEBREWS 7:1-3)

First off, let me say that from watching this one podcast, it appears that Mr. Bird is a very knowledgeable and trustworthy teacher who has a gift for making even difficult subjects understandable to a general audience. This particular video was on the subject of his Master's Thesis: Melchizedek. It was, as one would expect, well researched and free from any factual errors, at least that I could detect. However (as I can personally attest after researching and writing my own thesis in another field), as with most anyone who has spent a great deal of time in an academic setting studying a very specific subject, there are always at least two great temptations: (1) reading too much into the available data in order to strengthen one's final conclusions and (2) not considering alternative explanations for the data seriously enough.

Thus, Mr. Bird contends firstly that the author of Hebrews, in speaking about Melchizedek in chapter 7, was directly influenced by the extra-canonical writings of 2 Enoch, Josephus, Philo, and the Qumran community or their original sources (which we do not possess). However, to prove that conclusion one must demonstrate (1) that these writings or sources date to before the writing of Hebrews, (2) that the author of Hebrews was actually aware of these writings, (3) that the borrowing was not actually in the opposite direction (i.e., they were dependent on the Book of the Hebrews for their ideas, and not vice versa), and above all (4) that the ideas and language in the various sources were close enough to those in Hebrews to show that any borrowing even occurred in the first place. None of these conditions has been met with any degree of certainty.

In terms of the relative dates of writing, there is great uncertainty concerning some of the documents, as even Bird allows. In particular, Second Enoch has been felt by some scholars to to date as late as the 10^th century AD, since we possess no early manuscripts. A date of 100-200 AD is probably more reasonable to assume. Most recent scholarship seems to locate the writing of Hebrews somewhere between the early 60's and 70 AD. Therefore we can also take Josephus' actual writings out of the equation since they date to well after 70 AD. However, both Philo and the Qumran community were active well before the writing of Hebrews. But Ellingsworth states, “It is not even quite certain that it would have been chronologically possible for the writer of Hebrews to quote Philo.”

As to whether the author of Hebrews was aware of the demonstrably earlier sources, that is almost impossible to prove. The Qumran community was located in Palestine, but that geographical proximity says nothing regarding how widely disseminated their writings were outside of their very exclusive community. And although Philo's writings were definitely known to a later generation of Christian writers, there is little evidence that the NT authors were aware of them. Philo's life was mainly spent in Alexandria, Egypt, and that could have perhaps served as a geographical barrier to his writings being widely known in Palestine at the time.

Determining the direction of borrowing is also notoriously hard to pin down. But we can definitely state that Philo did not get his ideas from Hebrews since Philo died in 50 AD. On the other hand, Josephus could have possibly borrowed from Hebrews, and it is known that there are later Christian interpolations found in manuscripts of at least some of Josephus' writings. Some manuscripts of Second Enoch, as well as other non-canonical Jewish writings, also contain suspected Christian ideas in them. But whether they were in the original writings or added later by Christian writers is impossible to tell at the present time. Borrowing in either direction to or from the Qumran writings seems to be unlikely due to the sectarian nature of that group. For example, earlier attempts to show that the Gospels took some of their ideas from Qumran have been mostly disproved by now.

Concerning the key technical question of the similarities in wording and thought between the various sources, I must rely on those who are more expert in the matter than I am. Ellingsworth (Commentary on Hebrews) concludes after discussing several possible sources that there is no direct borrowing from Philo or the Dead Sea scrolls. In fact, he notes that Hebrews often contradicts ideas found in Philo's numerous writings. At best, Hebrews merely demonstrates a reflection of the general religious ideas circulating at the time. 

Similarly, D. C. Allison in the Dictionary of the Later NT and Its Developments says, “It may also be that, even if Hebrews 7:2-3 does not (as has been thought) borrow from a non-Christian source, the words depend upon pre-Christian tradition about Melchizedek.” He also states, “There is no sure evidence of direct dependence upon the Qumran material.” D. L. Allen (Lukan Authorship of Hebrews) agrees: “Recent scholarship stands firm, however, in its refusal to see any real connection between Hebrews and the Qumran writings.” And Schniedewind (Dictionary of NT Background) explains that in contrast to Hebrews, both Philo and Josephus “took a purely human interpretation of Melchizedek.”

The second part of Bird's thesis is that although the author of Hebrews quotes or alludes to the ideas circulating at the time, he is not actually endorsing them as being true. This appears to be an unlikely possibility and no way provable. Certainly NT writers such as Paul or Jude quoted from pagan or extra-canonical writings without endorsing all the other statements in those particular sources. But to say that they didn't really believe the actual statements they quote seems to make little sense. I can see how a preacher might, for example, compare Samson and his hair to Popeye and his spinach. But a mere illustrative example to clarify a point is not really the same as the way the author of Hebrews utilizes these supposed sources to prove a point.

So if the author did not utilize contemporary writings to get his ideas, where did he get them from? I think that the answer simply is that he got them directly from Genesis 14 (and partially from Psalm 110). There was a well-known principle of arguing from silence practiced by the early rabbis which said, “What is not in the Torah is not in the world.” Using this principle and writing to a Jewish audience who would have been acquainted with it, the author simply states that Genesis does not mention anything whatsoever about Melchizedek's mother and father, genealogy, birth or death. Therefore, he concludes that, according to Jewish rules of interpretation, none of those existed. There is thus no reason to invoke any additional sources for those statements outside of the Bible itself. 

So the author of Hebrews was only influenced in a negative way by the mass of theories concerning the person of Melchizedek circulating at the time. In this speculative climate the author of Hebrews was “left an ideal opening,..to chart a new way.” (Schniedewind)