Salem isn’t Jerusalem

The popularly declared Melchizedek Temple in Jerusalem isn’t actually old enough to go back to the time of Abraham, there was a good un-biased analysis of it by the Armstrong Institute of all people. They mistakenly identify it with the "City of David" location of The Ark but that was a Tent. 

I had argued what I'm about to about Salem on a different blog in the past, but because I fell for the Melchizedek Temple hype I abandoned it, but now that I know that doesn’t hold up, I’m revisiting the issue again with some new information.

Genesis 14 is not the only time Salem is mentioned in Genesis, people just miss the other one because of a difference in transliteration. In the Hebrew text Shalem in Genesis 33:18 is the exact same name. 

The Genesis 33 Shalem is a City of Shechem, in fact Shechem is never a City name in Genesis but this general area, in fact using Shechem as a geographical term at all seems to be one of those anachronisms, it was named after the son of Hamor. So no Shechem wouldn't be mentioned by name in the Ebla Tablets. Since I place the time of Jacob and Joseph as Middle Bronze IIA at the latest the entire Genesis narrative predates Shechem ever becoming a major fortified city. 

Before the city named Shalem is where Jacob pitched his tent on land he bought from Hamor, the same land in which Joseph would be buried centuries later. Genesis 33:19 and Joshua 24:32.

The non Canonical book of Judith 4:4 also places Salem in the allotment of Ephraim.

Salem’s other appearance in the Hebrew Bible is Psalm 76:2. I already argued that Zion here isn’t Jerusalem but Bethlehem. The gist of my reading of the verse is the same, God’s Tabernacle and Dwelling Place “YHWH is there” being different locations is actually consistent with Ezekiel 40-48’s geography where YHWH-Shammah is in the southern third of the Holy Portion but the Tabernacle (misleadingly called a Temple in Translations) is in the exact center. 

I think the Salem/Shalem of Genesis is also Salim in John 3:23. Aenon is a Hellenized form of the Hebrew/Aramaic word for Spring, so this could be any Spring in the Nablus Governorate. There is a village today called Salim in the Nablus Governorate east of Nablus and west of Joseph’s Tomb that has ruins going back to the Early Bronze Age. Ain al-Kabira is a Spring near it. 

Both David Rohl and Immanuel Velikvosky’s Revised Chronologies involve identifying the Shalem Ramses II Miamun captures in his 8th Year Campaign as recorded at the Ramesseum with Jerusalem, for Rohl that’s making him Shishak and for Velikovsky it’s to make him Necho. But the Egyptians were calling this city Jerusalem, form Middle Kingdom Execration Texts to the Amarna Letters.