hakeem wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:20 pm
... the Jews expected their Christ, their Messianic ruler... Tacitus himself wrote about the fact ...
Tacitus' Histories 5.13
... there was a firm persuasion, that in the ancient records of their priests was contained a prediction of how at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers, coming from Judæa, were to acquire universal empire.
The association or identification of Melchizedek with a/the Messiah predates Christianity, developing in Second Temple period Jewish messianism.
The last section of the Second Book of Enoch (a Jewish sectarian work dated to the 1st century AD) is 'the Exaltation of Melchizedek' which tells how Melchizedek was born of a virgin, Sofonim (or Sopanima), the wife of Nir, a brother of Noah. The child came out from his mother after she had died and sat on the bed beside her corpse, already physically developed, clothed, speaking and blessing the Lord, and marked with the badge of priesthood. Forty days later, Melchizedek was taken by the archangel Gabriel (Michael in some manuscripts) to the Garden of Eden and was thus preserved from the Deluge without having to be in Noah's Ark. See
Gnostic scripts in the Nag Hammadi library contain a tractate proposing Melchizedek is Jesus Christ. Melchizedek, as Jesus Christ, lives, preaches, dies and is resurrected, in a gnostic perspective. Coming of the Son of God Melchizedek speaks of his return to bring peace, supported by God, and he is a priest-king who dispenses justice. See http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/melchiz.html
And of course, the association of Melchizedek with Christ is made explicit in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where Melchizedek the "king of righteousness" and "king of peace" is explicitly associated with the "eternal priesthood" of the Son of God.