Product Description

The Hiram Key is a book that will shake the Christian world to its very roots. When Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, both Masons, set out to find the origins of Freemasonry they had no idea that they would find themselves unraveling the true story of Jesus and the original Jerusalem Church. As a radically new picture of Jesus started to emerge, the authors came to the startling conclusion that the key rituals of modern Freemasonry were practiced by the early followers of Jesus as a means of initiation into their community.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127904 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author
Christopher Knight was born in 1950 and completed his education with a degree in advertising and graphic design in 1971. He has always had a strong interest in social behavior and belief systems. For many years he has been a consumer psychologist involved in the planning of new products and their marketing. In 1976 he became a Freemason and is now the managing director of a marketing and advertising agency.

Dr Robert Lomas was born in 1947 and gained a first class honors degree in electrical engineering before taking up research into solid state physics. He later worked on guidance systems for Cruise missiles and was involved in the early development of personal computers and has always had a keen interest in the history of science. He currently lectures at Bradford University Management Centre. In 1986 he became a Freemason and quickly became a popular lecturer on Masonic history in lodges in West Yorkshire.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction:

Henry Ford once declared that ‘all history is bunk’. It may have sounded a little abrupt but when it comes to the ‘facts’ of the past which most Westerners are taught in school, it turns out that Mr. Ford was right.

Our starting point was a private piece of research to find the origins of Freemasonry — the world’s largest society that today has almost five million male members in regular Lodges and has in the past included many great men amongst its number, from Mozart to Henry Ford. As Freemasons, our goal was to try to understand a little about the meaning of Masonic ritual: those strange, secret ceremonies carried out by mainly middle-class, middle-aged men from Huddersfield to Houston.

At the center of Masonic lore is a character called Hiram Abif who, according to a story told to every Freemason, was murdered almost three thousand years ago at the building of King Solomon’s Temple. This man is a total enigma. His role as the builder of King Solomon’s Temple and the circumstances of his horrible death are clearly described in Masonic history, yet he is not mentioned in the Old Testament. For four of the six years we spent working on this research, we believed that Hiram Abif was a symbolic creation. But then he materialized out of the mists of time to prove himself very real indeed.

Once Hiram Abif emerged from the distant past, he provided nothing less than a new key to Western history. The intellectual contortions and labored conclusions that have previously formed Western society’s collective view of the past gave way to simple and logical order. Our researches led us first to reconstructing the ancient Egyptian kingmaking ritual of four thousand years ago; that in turn led us to uncover an assassination that took place around 1570 BC, which gave rise to a resurrection ceremony that is the direct antecedent of modern Freemasonry. As we tracked the development of this secret ritual from Thebes to Jerusalem, we uncovered its role in the building of the Hebrew nation and in the evolution of Jewish theology.

In startling contrast to what is currently held to be fact, the Western world actually developed according to a very ancient philosophy encoded into a secret system that has come to the surface at three key moments over the last three thousand years.

The final proof of our findings may well turn out to be the archaeological find of the century. We have located the secret scrolls of Jesus and his followers.

Customer Reviews

Free at last
I read The Hiram Key a few months ago and I cannot in any number of words say how interesting it was. I was raised in a very strict church that believed only in a literal translation of the Bible. The content of The Hiram Key shocked me. Instead of being turned off, I read hungrily. Believing the authors to have honorable intentions, I finished the book and then researched every avenue I could via the footnotes,etc. It all proved out.I was amazed at how long some of this knowledge has been out there and how long it took to come to the eyes of the general public. I am 48 years old and feel released for the first time in memory. I finished The Second Messiah last week and last night started Uriel's Machine. Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas are refreshing, intellegent, courageous and so much more. I will read anything they write and wish I could share with them the dept of effect they have had on my family and many of our friends. Of course, I read the other reviews that would make them out to be of the devil or some such nonsense as that and surely there are many who would agree. It is threatening to read substantive material that flys in the face of all the beliefs that make up our eternal retirement plan. Truth doesn't set everyone free. Everyone can't handle the responsiblity. Hurray for these men and thank you so very much.

Creative speculation that merits consideration
While authors Knight and Lomas can get dangerously speculative at times, their conclusions are plausable.

The Hiram Key persents many theories to complete it's 'presented' history; and while it's unlikely that all of their speculation is true many of the statements undoubtably are correct.

The prinicpal value of the Hiram Key would be to as a starting point for further academic research in an environment that lends itself to such study (ie, a University). To the casual reader it might spark an interest in other works on related topics.

Unfortunatly, due to it's speculative nature and controversial subject matter, this book will come under fire (with whatever ammunition) is available ) by those who find the topic offensive or dangerous. But, despite it's speculative nature I would reccommend the material to anyone willing to further thier understanding of either Free Masonry or the modern Christian church.

Cracking the Door
I have read many of these reviews and some of the fiercest criticisms as well. Almost uniformly the critics seem to read as live people I have met who are Christians who become quite shrill when certain newer historical concepts are mentioned or written about. But in the interest of my own satisfaction, I went back and researched a few of the cheif complaints.

It turns out that many of the criticism repeated over and over are nothing more than petty objections to historically controversial "facts" that historians have debated for a long time. The existence of Nazareth is one example. Yes, you can find it on maps of the first century period because their is much assumption that it existed then. But the town is not mentioned in the Hebrew texts, not in Josephus, nor in the Talmud. Jerome in the 5th century says that it was a vicilus or mere village of perhaps a couple hundred people. It was a satellite of the larger city of Sepphoris four miles away. To add to that, the respected historian Zindler argued as did many others, that Nazareth did not exist in the first century. He cites Paul, Josephus, the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud as well as the statement that the brow of the hill near Nazareth is not steep enough for someone to be thrown off and killed, referring to Luke 4:28-30. Add to all this the very diverse historical evidence of an active Nasoean sect and the Ebionites who seemed to be the real source of Jewish "Christianity" - rejected by the Paulinians and you have just the beginning of what is really an much more complex historical setting than just saying one thing or another and sticking to it for two thousand years. A deep study of early Christianity or a good reading of Gibbons classic history "Fall the of the Roman Empire" will lend more support than not to "The Hiram Key."

It is my guess that what irritates most people aside from those who react as true-believing modern Christians, is the writing style of the two authors. That and the lack of a Bibliography. Certainly, Knight and Lomas have noticed that error and their subsequent books have very long Bibliographies. But the writing style is casual, and people used to reading solid historical works are made to feel that they are being taken on a fantasy ride, however plausable the narrative manages to make itself. And that rise and falls throughpout the book. The two slimest sequences are the story of the murder of Hiram Abif and the story of the mock crucifixion of Jaques de Molay.

But the reader must understand that the book has been written by those and for those who are very familiar with the traditional history of Freemasonry. Knowing it as well as I did, I could see how this could be an explanation. Time perhaps will add or detract from their theory. The story of Jaques de Molay was very rich because it was written almost as a play might have been written. But it does appear that the victim was nailed to a door and the door slamed over and over. This was not an unusual torment during that period, and if you have traveled in Europe and visited a few dungeons, you will find that this was not the most inventive torture that was invented by apparently horribly bloodthirsty monks in the service of the Lord. The more intiment I have become with the entire history of Christianity and Europe in general, the more likely I can find a scenario such as the torture of de Molay as described. Certainly, he was tortured- there is plenty of historical record on that and all the other Templars that were tortured and burned to death during their suppression.

So what? Well, I say read the book and then do real objective research. You will find as I have that the critics tend to fall into certain classes and much of what these men quote is either well known to many in the field or at least the opinion of learned scholars if not completely agreed upon.

Certainly, the world needs a cleansing from these bloody, middle eastern religions. Books on alternative theories highly substantiable at some points - like this one are needed. For a good review of Christianity's start read Joel Carmichael's "The Birth of Christianity."

However, I am amazed over and over at how few people seem to have noticed the really remarkable message that this book contains. The book of Enoch survived in Freemasonic literature and appears no where else until the Dead Sea Scrolls are made available for public study and voila, there it is, the Book of Enoch. How did the Freemasons in England come to be the custodians of such an important text? Yes, there must be a link and the most logical link is the digging of the temple ruins by the original nine Templars and the bloodline connection that other authors have discussed. The Dukes of Lorraine and Burgundy knew they were there!

Unfortunately, too much of history is the history of cover-up and usurpation. It is going to require people like PhDs of engineering and graphic artists who excel in historical research and alternative thinking to crack the "good old boys" club of established historical tradition. If for no other reason than that you can't get into the club if you don't sing the right tune. But that is changing, slowly.

Finally, one must realize that Freemasonry itself underwent a huge change after 1717 and was greiviously mangled by Christian apologists who added many degrees and Christian tradition to what had previously existed. There is a historical competition of the London - York Rite against the Scottish Rite and the authors have been attempting to prove with their research and writings to show the London Grand Lodge that there needs to be a huge revision, bringing a completed and rational read to the story of Freemasonry in order for it to survive much longer. If the reader understands some of these things, then the many turns of the book is easier to understand.

I gave this book four stars simply because it lacks a bibliography, which would have eliminated at leat 50% of the critics outright.

And that's how it goes