psychoceramics: the long-awaited review: The Hiram Key

["Nathan Shumate" <n--@1--.com>]

"The Hiram Key,"  Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas

It's a kook book, but the most insidious kind -- the bestseller kook book
that looks like serious scholarship to the reader with no academic
background.

The authors' thesis is that Freemasonry comes directly from the kingship
ceremonies of Egypt's Old and Middle Kingdoms, through Moses and Solomon's
temple, through the Essenes of the Qumran community and Jesus (their
leader); the secrets were buried under Herod's temple and excavated by the
Templars, from whom it was passed to the Masons as they constructed Roslyn
Chapel, where the secret scrolls of Jesus are still buried.

The logic by which they trace this progression is so tortured that it
screams out in pane.  Anyone who ever used two pillars in a building is an
ancestor of Freemasonry.  Anyone who ever espoused the ideas of freedom and
justice is consciously drawing on the Egyptian idea of "Ma'at".  Anyone
with a headwound is Hiram Abif.  Ugh.

The worst habit the authors have is to give a reconstruction of an event
(be it the assassination of exiled Egyptian king Seqenenre Tao II, the true
story of Jesus' resurrection, or the torture of Jacques de Molay), using
"historical facts, our own conclusions, and details to bring the scene to
life" -- but neveer citing the sources and telling which is which.  As a
result, most of the compelling parts of their case could be woven from the
whole cloth -- the reader can't tell.

Sadly, their scholarship does acquit itself well when they describe the
transition from Templars to Freemasons in the construction of Roslyn
Chapel, and the reason that those Templar rituals became associated with
stonemasons.  However, that comes so late in the book that many serious
readers may have already quit reading, or started dismissing the authors'
claims out of hand.

So... if you're looking for a book with highly subjective,
begging-the-question research that presents a highly questionable
conclusion as being "proven beyond the shadow of a doubt," this is the one.


Nathan Shumate
Fringe Benefit Analysts, Inc.

"Si hoc signum legere potes, operis in rebus
Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes."

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