The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1528 page)

see
MELKITES
.

 
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(Heb., ‘my king is Zedek/righteous’). Biblical king of Salem. According to Genesis 14. 18–20, Melchizedek welcomed the
patriarch
Abraham
after he defeated the four kings, and he is described as ‘a priest of God Most High’. In Psalm 110. 4, it is written, ‘the Lord has sworn and will not repent, you are priest for ever after the manner of Melchizedek’. It seems likely, therefore, that David adopted a sacral
kingship
when he captured
Jerusalem
, and that these passages reflect a positive assessment of this move against those who protested against it as innovation.

 
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see
YEZ
D
S
.

 
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(d.
c.
190).
Christian
father
. He was bishop of Sardis in Asia Minor. The most important of his few surviving works is a sermon ‘On the
Pasch
’ in rhythmic prose, which expounds the Passover as a type of the work of Christ.

 
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(‘Emperor's men’, from Syriac
malkaya
, ‘imperial’). Christians of Syria and Egypt who accepted the Council of
Chalcedon
and remained in communion with
Constantinople
. After the rise of Islam their liturgical language became Arabic. Today the term embraces all Arabic-speaking Christians of the Byzantine
rite
, whether
Orthodox
or
Uniat
, in the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. The Orthodox number about 750,000, while the Uniats (for whom there has been a separate hierarchy since 1684) number
c.
400,000.

 
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