Note 2 — Chapter XIV · Solomon Melchizedek.

Obviously a tremendous question arises here as to how a story should be found in Genesis xiv. about Melchizedek, which as a proper name really occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible,2 and the mystery is increased by the absence of any allusion to such a personage in Jesus Ben Sira’s enumeration of “famous men” (Ecclus. xliv.), or elsewhere. It almost looks as if Jesus Ben Sira had not read, or else had cancelled as spurious, the strange passage in Genesis—which is as follows: