WHEN DID THE CRAFT RECEIVE THE LEGEND?

BY BRO. D.E.W. WILLIAMSON, NEVADA
THE BUILDER MAY 1922


INSTEAD of worrying about how many Hirams there may have been at the building of the Temple or wearying the brain with calculations as to the dimensions of the Temple itself, the student of Masonic lore should be shown that, from the point of view of research, the main question is how and when the legend of the Third degree became known to the Craft.

It is wrong to perpetuate the mistaken statement that we have any record of more than one artificer named Hiram, although only recently the Rev. Morris Rosenbaum, past master of a London lodge, Past Grand Chaplain of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Northumberland, and sometime contributor to the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronate Lodge of Research, has been quoted as reiterating the assertion that there were two Hirams, father and son.  Bro. Rosenbaum is a distinguished Jewish rabbi in London and therefore is quoted as an authority, but a Freemason may be an orator and an adept in Hebrew language and literature, yet be without standing as a Scriptural interpreter.  The simple truth, as the youngest graduate of a theological seminary of today could inform him if so disposed, is that all we know about Hiram is what we find in I Kings, vii.  It is true that in II Chronicles, ii and iv, there is more written about him, but it has no historical value, for, as Luther pointed out four centuries ago, the credibility of Chronicles is doubtful.  It could not be otherwise, for Chronicles is a book written at least 623 years after the death of Solomon and is merely an amplification, so far as its account of the Temple is concerned, of Kings; and Kings, itself, which was written in 622 or 621 B. C., is itself not first-hand but is based upon the book of the acts of Solomon ("And the rest of the acts of Solomon and all that he did and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon?" - I Kings, xi:41).  Chronicles, therefore, is a third-hand report and written after the Exile, at that.  In the Hebrew canon its weight is so slight that it is placed at the very end of the Bible and no competent Hebrew scholar, Jew or Christian, will presume to challenge a statement in Kings on the authority of anything in Chronicles.

While on the subject of "authority," there is absolutely none in ancient Hebrew or any other tongue for "Huram" as the name of the king of Tyre or of that of the artificer.  The Greek version of the Scriptures, of which probably the greater part was translated within thirty or forty years after the completion of Chronicles, transliterates the name "Chiram" (in which the "Ch" should be sounded as in the Scotch word "loch").  The Hebrew text of Chronicles gives the name with "i" (yod), but in the margin of the Hebrew of Chronicles, in what is called a q'ri, the reason is directed to pronounce it as "Huram," notwithstanding.  This Masoretic instruction may be given the date of 700 A. D. as the earliest possible, fully sixteen centuries after Hiram's time.  In other words, it is as if some Biblical editor sixteen centuries after Christ should direct us to say "Joshua" every time we came across the name of Jesus.

But, without being thought dogmatic, may a student say that it seems to be a waste of time to speculate on the real Hiram and the material Temple, when it is more important to know how they came into the Craft?

First, we shall have to get rid of the idea, so widely entertained fifty years ago when Hughan, Speth, Gould and the new school of Masonic historians were making their first researches, that the Legend of the Third degree was written or imported about 1723.  Gould entirely abandoned it himself in the last fifteen years of his life as shown by his "Collected Essays." What is the accepted view of investigators today seems to be well expressed by three eminent Masonic authorities in the discussion on the Royal Arch published in the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum of November, 1916.

"The time immemorial lodges did not begin to come in (under the English Grand Lodge) until after 1723," says Brother J. Littleton, author of "Freemasonry in Bristol." "And there could not have been any great difference in the ritual or they could not have come?'

"In Ancient Craft Masonry," says Brother W. Redfern Kelly, "there would appear to have existed from time immemorial a certain essential and well-recognized archaic legend."

And Brother William Watson says: "I have held the opinion for many years as others have done that a legend of the Builder may have been handed down from Master to Master, finally materializing in a dramatic form as a degree."

In Brother Kelley's adjective "archaic," and in Brother Watson's expression "dramatic form," the writer believes lies the key to the inquiry of how the legend found its way into the work.  Students of the modern drama's beginnings as seen in the miracle plays and mysteries of the Middle Ages cannot fail to recognize in the legend as we have it today the archaic dramatic form of the display at the old guild pageantries.  But what has become of the original play? The writer has searched through all the published plays of the Middle Ages, from the Latin comedies of the nun Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, and the plays of Hilarius, through the York, Chester and Townsley plays, and has found not one that will fit the case, thus repeating the exponence of investigators for the Quatuor Coronate Lodge of London.  But the period during which the play might have appeared is necessarily limited and it may be that an examination of the records of guild productions from 1535 to 1545 in England will yet reveal the missing drama.


If the tradition existed in England before 1535, the name of the hero was Abdemon, as in Josephus, which may account for the "Aynon." "Agnon," "Dyon," and other forms that have puzzled the readers of the old charges.  But, if it became a part of the Craft's work with the name of Hiram Abif, then it could not have been taken up by the Craft before 1535, when Tyndale's translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew first gave that name in English.  The Coverdale Bible is also said to have Hiram Abif in it, but the writer has not been able to investigate this.  The tradition is not likely to have come in after 1546 for in that year the Coverdale Bible was prohibited from being read by act of Parliament just as Tyndale's had been placed under the ban three years previously.  While thus the tradition is restricted to ten years during which we may hope to find its entrance into the Craft, this was a crucial period for Freemasonry on other grounds that make it important to look deeply into the happenings of the time.  In 1543, one of the final acts of Henry VIII, whose career was then drawing to a close, was to cause Parliament to pass a law confiscating the property of the guilds.  In London they were strong enough to defy him, but elsewhere it was not so and what escaped Henry was taken over by the realm under his son Edward three years later.  In 1537 Henry had already confiscated the lands and property of the larger monasteries, patrons of the guilds and the miracle plays at the pageants.  Thus the great guilds all over the country were severely hit and it is significant that the last miracle play of England was written by Bishop Bayle of Ossory in 1538.  It is of record that at the last York pageant the Masons' Guild was unable to support its own play and it was taken over by the glaziers. The concentration of Masonic research upon this decade of English history ought to repay with something tangible the time and study involved.  The writer at present believes that the secret tradition as we have it today was handed down within the monasteries of the Middle Ages and that it passed with the breaking up of these institutions in 1537 into the custody of the secret circles into which the persecuted guilds were forced to resolve themselves.  Eventually in 1717 it came from these secret associations into the possession of the first Grand Lodge, but only because the four lodges which formed that Grand Lodge were themselves in full possession of it.  That is one hypothesis of the way in which the legend entered the "work" and was carried on.  But it is not to be overlooked that the New Learning appeared in Europe in the latter half of the fifteenth century and that Hebrew learning and philosophy, the Talmud and the Kabbala, first became accessible to western scholars.  Eramus visited Europe for a few years before 1509 and was professor of Greek at Cambridge.  Sir Thomas More, executed by Henry VIII in 1536, was a fount of learning.  Even if the theory that the tradition was fostered in the monasteries should fall to the ground, therefore, it is possible that the investigator may make a discovery of as great importance should he find that the legend had been brought down from the misty past within the bosom Kabbalist students.

In the United States we have small opportunity examine ancient manuscripts or to read the origin records of the period spoken of, but our English brothers, who already have done much, may yet find reward for their labours in the study of these particular years. In France the treasuries of the monks of St. Maur scattered, but a mass of material can be found by the French Masonic student.  In Germany there must an immense mass of manuscripts and early printed books dealing with the time immediately before Reformation.  These ought to produce rich pickings. And there is the great collection at the Vatican. All these possible sources of light may reveal truths with ten years that will set at rest forever the hypothes and guesses with which in many instances we still have to be satisfied.

