Of interest to pagans, they mention in passing the “five points of fellowship” that apparently correspond to the Gardnerian Great Rite refer to, in Masonry, a five-fingered grip used to “resurrect” the candidate during the Third Degree initiation.

Ocr ABBYY FineReader 11.0 (Extended OCR) Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.11 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Old_pallet IA18199 Openlibrary_edition

The authors, both Masons, set out to find the origins of freemasonry they had no idea they would find themselves unravelling the true story of Jesus Christ and the original Jerusalem Church. Or at least that is part of the case they make in this book. They do make a reasonable case for many of the Masonic rituals and the parallels with the early – New Testament Bible. Are Jesus Christ and his disciples somehow directly connected with the freemasons? I am not convinced. The authors of The Hiram Key propose a possible sequence of events that led to modern Freemasonry, although much of their narrative has been debated by historians and other researchers. A criticism of their approach by those unfamiliar with the science of "dialectical progression" is that the authors have gathered irrelevant and often unevidenced 'facts' to arrive at an equally unproven theory. Even those familiar with the application of dialectics may concede that the conclusion of such logic is only as good as its weakest link. All Historical study is based on dialectical appraisal of evidence, and all sources of information subject to interpretation as the "weakest link." They did a vigorous analysis and comparison of ancient Egyptian records and compared them to the Old and New Testament as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. I cannot comment on how versed they are in ancient languages, so it is hard for me to really conclude how accurate these comparisons are. The do seem to make a decent case for early Christian rituals and some of the Masonic rituals, however. The biggest problem I ran into was their claim that the Christian Church was a political creation and had really had no connection with Jesus Christ. I reject that having been a practicing Christian for well over 20 years now, with far too many personal encounters with the Holy Spirit (including Christ).

The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasonry, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus, [1] is a 1996 book by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. The authors, both Freemasons, present a theory of the origins of Freemasonry as part of their "true story" of the historical Jesus and the original Jerusalem Church. The Knights Templar, discovering the Qumran communities' records in the vaults under the Temple in Jerusalem, transported them to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. There are a number of conclusions in this book including a link from the freemasons of today to the actual masons and builders of the Egyptian Pyramids. This book is very interesting and of very entertaining and agile reading. The authors know the art to express their ideas in a simple, straightforward and compelling way. You could almost say that it reads like an adventure novel. Following the diaspora of the Templars due to their outlawing in 1307, many settled in Scotland; Rosslyn Chapel was built in the image of a “New Jerusalem”, with a floor-plan identical to Herod’s Temple, to house the Nasorean scrolls at a point corresponding with its Holy of Holies. Knight and Lomas believe they have identified this location based on the layout of pillars in the Chapel.Knight and Lomas are not professional historians nor have they any qualifications in history or research, and their case is open to the criticism that they accept references that fit their theory and reject those that conflict with it. .

Quatuor Coronati Lodge No 2067 the principal Lodge of Masonic research under the United Grand Lodge of England, has criticised the book as Pseudohistory, [4] and some Masonic libraries categorise the volume as fiction. Moses merged this event with Sumerian and Egyptian mythology, symbols and philosophy, to create a putative 'royal line'. Those records were lost for over 1,000 years, at which time they were quietly uncovered and then interpreted by the Knights Templar. Those rituals were then adopted into the Templar’s teachings and rituals. So, the authors claim. However, these theories seem rather mere speculations, as the authors have very few sources and bibliography, and although the book presents these hypotheses as a consistent and solid all, would have been better if it had more opinions from the experts, which the authors are not. Other books dealing with similar themes have more than one hundred bibliographic sources, this barely reaches twenty. I read this at an interesting period of my life where things I know I no longer know if I know for sure. This book only added to questions I have about life, God, and what we really know about history.

Select a format:

urn:lcp:hiramkeypharaohs0000knig:epub:232be1d2-c389-4ce0-8393-b1fd98635d41 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier hiramkeypharaohs0000knig Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t7mq42345 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0099175622 I really enjoy their theory and think it would be cool if a genuine history of thousands of years for Masonry could be proven. For now, I'll accept it as a nice little fantasy that is fun to think about but is not grounded in any evidence close to certain.