28
MKLITA
MELITA
8onal Helper instead of with a dubious process of reasoning;.
3. Significance in Hebrews. — The apparent object of the writer was to mark the adequate and tinal character of the priestliood of Jesus Christ. As a person He is compared with Melchizedelv, whose order of priesthood was confessedly above that of Aaron {q.v.) ; while in regard to priestly acts and functions His efliciency and freedom from limitations are exhibited in comparison with the necessary defects of the Aaronic oHice. More particularly three features in the story of Melchi- zedek are singled out. (a) He was king as well as priest, and as priest-king he possessed the endow- ments of righteousness and peace, and was able to impart them with royal bounty. (6) He was dis- sociated from all the relations of time, neither qualitied by priestly descent for his otiice, nor interrupted in its discharge by death (He 7'). (c) Accordingly, through these timeless and regal qualities his priesthood becomes unique, incom- parably above all Aaronicand Levitical institutions, and with nothing like it in human history until the Incarnate comes upon the stage and takes to Him- self a Priesthood in which He admits no peer, and of which eternal and superabundant adequacy is the note {see Priest).
4. Later developments. — In the patristic litera- ture of our period no objection appears to have been taken to the use of the story in Hebrews, though its classification among the alleged theo- phanies was early and had probably already begun. On the other hand, the Jewish writers adopt an interpretation of their own, either through dislike of the teaching in Hebrews, or in substitution for its application to John Hyrcanus, which had been discredited by the collapse of his infiuence before the end of his reign. Shem was identified with Melchizedek in early parts of the Talmud and Targums {Nedarim, 32A, Sanhedrin, 1U86, Targ. Jonathan), and the narrative was taken to mean that the priesthood was transferred to Abraham, while the rest of the descendants of Shem were excluded. Another tradition distinguishes Shem from Melchizedek, but associates them in the work of transferring the body of Adam to Jerusalem. The story survives with many embellishments in the Ethiopic Book of Adam ; and only for its be- ginnings, with mixed Jewish and Christian influ- ences at work upon it, can a place be allowed within our century. R. W. Moss.
MELITA (MeX/ri;).— Melita, now Malta, is an island in the Mediterranean, 47 miles S. of Sicily, 17 miles long, 9 miles broad, and 96 square miles in area. Its excellent harbours, together with its position in the track of ships sailing east and west, gave it commercial importance from very early times. Occupied by Phoenician settlers (Diod. v. 12), it was long under the power of the Cartha- ginians, who surrendered it to the Romans in the Second Punic War, 218 B.C. (Livy, xxi. 51), after which it was annexed to the province of Sicily. The identity of Malta with the island on which St. Paul was shipwrecked on his voyage to Italy (Ac 28') was formerly disputed, but is now univer- sally admitted. The case for another Melita on the Dalmatian coast — the modern Melcda — was presented by Padre Georgi, a Dalmatian monk who was a native of the island (1730), and by W. Falconer in his Dissertation on St. Paxil's Voyage ('1872). The theory was examined and refuted by James Smith in his admirable monograph on The Voyage and Shipivreck of St. Paul (''1880). It was based on two groundless assumptions: (1) that ' the Adria ' through which St. Paul's ship drifted must have been the modern Adriatic, or Gulf of Venice, whereas the term is kno'wn to have in-
cluded in the Apostle's time the whole expanse of sea between Sicilv, Italy, Greece, and Crete (.\dria) ; and (2) that the N.E. hurricane, which threatened to drive the ship upon the African quicksands, must have veered completely round and sent her northwards through the Strait of Otranto ; an essential point, which the passenger St. Luke, whose narrative is the most vivid and instructive account of a voyage and wreck that has come down from antiquity, could not have failed to mention.
All the facts are in harmony with the theory that 'St. Paul's Bay' in Malta was the scene of the shipwreck. (1) If the E.N.E. wind, known to present-day sailors as the ' Gregalia ' or ' Levanter,' continued to blow day after day, as it often does in the late autumn, tlie ship, having been laid to on the starboard tack (i.e. with her right side to the wind) to avoid being swiftly driven to the African coast, would move in the exact direction of Melita at the mean rate of 1^ miles an hour, covering the distance from Clauda — about 480 miles— in a little over 13 days (Ac 27"). The nautical problem is worked out by Smith (p. 125 f.). (2) Driven in the direction indicated, the ship could not enter St. Pauls Bay without passing within a quarter of a mile of the low rocky point called Koura, and it was the ominous roar of the waves breaking on this headland— a sound at once de- tected by practised ears — that led the sailors to surmise that some land, which they could not see in the stormy night, was 'nearing' them (v.-'; ■wpoaayeLv is one of the ;nany nautical terms which St. Luke heard the crew use; B* has 7rpo(Tdxe"' = resonate). (3) At the first indication of danger, orders were given to heave the lead, and the suc- cessive measurements of 20 and 15 fathoms (v.'*) exactly correspond to modern soundings taken at the entrance of the bay. (4) As the rapid shoaling proved that not a moment was to be lost, four anchors were cast from the stern, not, according to the usual practice, from the bow, for in that case the ship would have swung round from the wind, and either have wrecked herself in so doing, or at any rate have put herself in the worst posi- tion for grounding on the following day. The anchors could not nave held in the hurricane ex- cept in a bottom of extraordinary tenacity, and the Sailing Directions state that ' the harbour of St. Paul ... is safe for small ships, the ground, generally, being very good ; and wliile the cables hold there is no danger, as the anchors will never start ' (Smith, p. 132). (5) On attempting at day- break to beach the ship, the sailors came unex- pectedly upon ' a place where two seas met ' (rd-rov StOaXaaiTov, v.^"), which probably means (though there are other explanations of the difficult expres- sion) the narrow channel between the little island of Salmonetta, on the western side of the bay, and the mainland. Si0a.\a<riTos, 'two-sea'd,' was a term commonly used to describe the great Bosporus (Strabo, II. v. 12), and St. Luke notes the fact that the ship met her fate at the end of a miniature Bosporus. (6) When she grounded herself on a bank covered with water too deep for wading, 'the prow struck' (v."). This fits the conditions exactly, for the nearest soundings to the mud indicate a depth of 3 fathoms, which is what the corn-ship would draw ; and the bottom which she struck is ' of mud graduating into tenacious clay, into which the fore part would fix itself and be lield fast, whilst the stern was exposed to the force of the waves' (Smith, p. 144). (7) The only physical feature that is now missing is the sandy or shingly beach (alyioKdv, v.^'), but there are in- dications that a creek (KfiKirov Si nva) ' must at one time have had a beach which has been worn away, in the course of ages, by the wasting action of the sea ' (Smith, p. 247).