araoh and
Abimelech, would not have appeared in a fictitious narrative. The mythical
accounts of Abraham, as found among the Mohammedans and in the
Talmud,[350] show, by their contrast, the difference between fable and
history.

The events in the life of Abraham are so well known that it is not
necessary even to allude to them. We will only refer to one, as showing
that others among the tribes in Palestine, besides Abraham, had a faith in
God similar to his. This is the account of his meeting with Melchisedek.
This mysterious person has been so treated by typologists that all human
meaning has gone out of him, and he has become, to most minds, a very
vapory character.[351] But this is doing him great injustice.

One mistake often made about him is, to assume that "Melchisedek, King of
Salem," gives us the name and residence of the man, whereas both are his
official titles. His name we do not know; his office and title had
swallowed it up. "King of Justice and King of Peace,"--this is his
designation. His office, as we believe, was to be umpire among the chiefs
of neighboring tribes. By deciding the questions which arose among them,
according to equity, he received his title of "King of Justice." By thus
preventing the bloody arbitrament of war, he gained the other name, "King
of Peace." All questions, therefore, as to where "Salem" was, fall to the
ground. Salem means "peace"; it does not mean the place of his abode.

But in order to settle such intertribal disputes, two things were
necessary: first, that the surrounding Bedouin chiefs should agree to take
him as their arbiter; and, secondly, that some sacredness should attach to
his character, and give authority to his decisions. Like others in those
days, he was both king and priest; but he was priest "of the Most High
God,"--not of the local gods of the separate tribes, but of the highest
God, above all the rest. That he was the acknowledged arbiter of
surrounding tribes appears from the fact that Abraham paid to him tithes
out of the spoils. It is not likely that Abraham did this if there were no
precedent for it; for he regarded the spoils as belonging, not to himself,
but to the confederates in whose cause he fought. No doubt it was the
custom, as in the case of Delphi, to pay tithes to this supreme arbiter;
and in doing so Abraham was simply following the custom. The Jewish
traveller, Wolff, states that in Mesopotamia a similar custom prevails at
the present ti