Angels-MELCHISEDEK

Melchisedek (the god Zedek is my king) is also known as Melchizedec,
and Melch-Zadok. Dionysius the Areopagite referred to Melchisedek
as the hierarch most beloved of God, whereas pseudo-Tertullian mentions
him as a celestial virtue of great grace whose function in heaven
is like the one Christ has on earth.
King of righteousness, Melchisedek is also mentioned in the Old
and New Testaments, where he is the fabled priest-king of Salem (the
ancient name of Jerusalem) and the one to whom Abraham gave
tithes. The meeting of Abraham and Melchisedec is represented in a
woodcut in the great Cologne Bible (1478–80), in Rubens’s painting
titled The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, and in a painting by
the fifteenth-century Dutch artist Dierick Bouts.
Melchisedek is called an angel of the order of virtues in Epiphanius’s
Adversus Heareses, whereas in Phoenician mythology, where he
is called Sydik, he is regarded as the father of the seven elohim or
angels of the divine presence. Melchisedek is called Zorokothera in
the Gnostic Book of the Great Logos. According to Hippolytus,
Melchisedec was a power greater than Christ.
In occult lore Melchisedek represents the Holy Spirit, whereas in
the Book of Mormon, he is the prince of peace, his symbol being a
chalice and a loaf of bread. In R. H. Charles’s edition of 2 Enoch,
Melchisedek is mentioned as the supernatural offspring of Noah’s
brother Nir. Nir was preserved in infancy by Michael and became,
after the Flood, a great high priest, the “Word of God,” and king of
Salem. Melchisedek is also identified as Shem, one of Noah’s sons, as
in Midrash Tehillim, which also contains the legend of Melchisedec’s
feeding the beasts in Noah’s ark.