THE TEMPLE LEGEND
by Albert G. Mackey
The Temple Legend is a name that I give to that legend or tradition which
traces the origin of Freemasonry as an organized institution to the Temple of
Solomon and to the builders, Jewish and Tyrian, who were employed in the
construction of that edifice.
This is the legend that is now almost universally accepted by the great niass
of the Masonic fraternity. Perhaps nine out of ten of the Freemasons of the
present day - that is to say, all those who receive tradition with the
undoubting faith that should be given to history only - conscientiously believe
that Freemasonry, as we now see it, organized into lodges and degrees, with
Grand Masters, Masters, and Wardens, with the same ritual observances, was first
devised by Solomon, King of Israel, and assumed its position as a secret society
during the period when that monarch was engaged in the construction of the
Temple on Mount Moriah.
This theory is not a new one. It was probably at first suggested by the
passage in the Legend of the Craft which briefly describes the building of the
Temple and the confirmation by Solomon of the charges which his father David had
given to the Masons.
There can be no doubt from this passage in the Legend that the Temple of
Solomon occupied a prominent place in the ideas of the mediaeval Masons. How
much use they made of it in their esoteric ceremonies we, of course, are unable
to learn. It is, however, significant coincidence, if nothing more, that there
was a somewhat similar legend among the "Compagnons de la Tour," those mystical
associations of workmen who sprang up in France about the 12th century, and who
are supposed to have been an offshoot of dissatisfied journeymen from the body
of oppressive Masters, who at that period constituted the ruling power of the
corporate guilds of operative Masons and other crafts.
As the traditions of this society in reference to the Temple of Solomon are
calculated to throw much light on the ideas which prevailed among the Masons in
respect to the same subject, and as the Temple legends of the "Compagnons" are
better known to us than those of the mediaeval operative Masons, and finally, as
it is not at all unlikely that the ideas of the former were derived from those
of the latter, it will not be inexpedient to take a brief view of the Temple
legend of the Compagnonage.
The Compagnons de la Tour have three different legends, each of which traces
the association back to the Temple of Solomon, through three different founders,
which causes the Compagnonage to be divided into three distinct and,
unfortunately, hostile associations. These are the Children of Solomon, the
Children of Maitre Jacques, and the Children of Pere Soubise.
The Children of Solomon assert that they were associated into a brotherhood
by King Solomon himself at the building of the Temple. The Children of Maitre
Jacques and those of Pere Soubise declare that both of these workmen were
employed at the Temple, and after its completion went together to Gaul, where
they taught the arts which they had learned at Jerusalem.
The tradition of Maitre Jacques is particularly interesting. He is said to
have been the son of a celebrated architect named Jacquain, who was one of the
chief Masters of Solomon and a colleague of Hiram Abif. From the age of fifteen
he was employed as a stone-cutter. He traveled through Greece, where he acquired
a knowledge of architecture and sculpture. He then went to Egypt and thence to
Jerusalem, where, being engaged in the construction of the Temple, he fabricated
two pillars with such consummate skill that he was at once received as a Master
of the Craft.
It is not necessary to pursue the legend of the French Compagnonage any
further. Sufficient has been told to show that they traced their origin to the
Temple of Solomon and that the legend referred, to events connected with that
edifice.
Now, as these traveling journeymen (for thus may we translate their French
title) are known to have separated themselves in the 12th century from the
corporations of Master Workmen in consequence of the narrow and oppressive
policy of these bodies, making what in modern times would be called a " strike,"
it is reasonable to suppose that they carted Nvkh them into their new and
independent organization many of the customs, ceremonies, and traditions which
they had learned from the main body or Master's guilds of which they were an
offshoot. Therefore, although we have not been able to find any legend or
tradition of the medioeval operative Masons which traced their origin to the
Temple of Solomon, yet as we find such a tradition prevailing among an
association of workmen who, as we know, were at one time identified with the
Operative Masons and seceded from them on a question of policy, we have a
reasonable right to believe that the legend of the Compagnons de la Tour, or
Traveling journeymen, which traced their origin to the Temple of Solomon, was
derived by them from the Corporations of Masters or Guilds of Operative Masons,
among whom it was an accepted tradition.
And therefore we have in this way the foundation for a reasonable belief that
the Legend of the Temple origin of Masonry is older than the era of the Revival
in the beginning of the 18th century, and that it had been a recognized doctrine
among the operative Masons of the Middle Ages.
The absence of the Legend in any formal detail from all the old manuscripts
does not prove that there was no such Legend, for being of an esoteric
character, it may, from conscientious motives, or in obedience to some
regulation, never have been committed to writing. This is, however, a mere
supposition and can not in any way interfere with deductions drawn from positive
data in reference to the Legend of the Third Degree. There may have been a
Temple Legend, and yet the details narrated in it may have been very incomplete
and not have included the events related in the former Legend.
The first reference in the old records to the Temple of Solomon as connected
with the origin of Freemasonry is to be found in the Cooke MS. and is in the
following words:
"What tyme that the children of isrl dwellid in Egypte they lernyd the craft
of masonry. And afterward they were driven, out of Egypte they come into the
lond of bihest (promise) and is now callyd Jerl'm (Jerusalem) and it was ocupied
and chsrgys yholde. And the makyng of Salomonis tempull that kyng David began.
Kyng David lovyd well masons and he gaf hem rygt nye as thay be nowe. And at the
makyng of the temple in Salomonis tyme as hit is seyd in the bibull in the iij
boke of Regum in teicio Regum capito quinto (i Kings, Cap. 5) That Salomon had
iiii score thowsand masons at his werko. And the kyngis sone of Tyry was his
master mason, And (in) other cronyclos hit is seyd and in olde bokys of masonry
that Salomon confirmed the chargys that David his fadir had geve to masons. And
Salomon hymself taught hem here (their) maners (customs) but lityll differans
fro the maners that now ben usyd. And fro thens this worthy sciens was brought
into Fraunce and into many other regions."
The Dowland MS., whose supposed date is some fifty or sixty years later than
the Cooke, gives substantially the same Legend, but with the additional
circumstances, that David learned the charges that he gave, from Egypt, where
they had been made by Euclid; that he added other charges to these; that Solomon
sent into various countries for Masons, whom he gathered together; that the name
of the King of Tyre was Iram, and that of his son, who was Solomon's chief
Master, was Aynon; and finally that he was a Master of Geometry and of carving
and graving. In this brief narrative, the first edition of which dates back as
far as the close of the 15th century, we see the germs of the fuller Legend
which prevails among the Craft at the present day. That there was an
organization of Masons with "Charges and Manners," that is, laws and customs at
the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, and that King Solomon was assisted in
the work by the King of Tyre and by a skillful artist who had been sent to him
by Hiram, are the two most important points in the theory of the Temple origin
of Masonry, and both are explicitly stated in these early legends. We next find
the Legend repeated, but with more elaborate details, most of which, however,
are taken from the Book of Kings as referred to in the Legend of the Craft by
Anderson, in the first edition of the Constitutions, and with a few additional
particulars in the second edition of the same work.
Preston, the next important Masonic writer after Anderson, does not indeed
relate or refer to the Legend in any part of his Illustrations of Masonry, but
the theory that Masonry found its origin at the Temple is to be deduced from the
historical traditions contained in the third lecture of the Prestonian system,
from which Webb derived it, and has perpetuated it among American Masons to the
present day.
Hutchinson, who followed Preston, although, as has been seen, he inclined to
a remoter origin of the Order, repeatedly refers in his spirit of Masonry, and
especially in his Sixth Lecture, to the Temple of Solomon as the place where
"the true craftsmen were proved in their work," and where Solomon distinguished
them into different ranks, giving to each appropriate signs and secret tokens,
and organized them for the first time into an association of builders, the
predecessors of the Masons being previous to that time sages who, though
acquainted with the principles of geometry and architecture, were engaged solely
in philosophical speculations. In this way Hutchinson gave the weight of his
influence in favor of the Legend which ascribed the origin of operative and
speculative Masonry to Solomon and to his Temple, although his views on this
subject differ from those of other writers.
Dr. Oliver, one of the latest and the most prolific of the legendary writers,
although in his own theory he seeks to trace the origin of Freemasonry to a much
more remote antiquity, yet speaks so much in detail in most of his works, but
principally in his Antiquities and in his Historical Landmarks, of the system
which was for the first time organized at the building of the Solomonic Temple,
that most readers who do not closely peruse his writings and carefully scan his
views are under the impression that he had fully adopted the Legend of the
Temple origin, and hence his authority has been lent to the popular belief.
Existing, as may be supposed from the analogy of a similar legend of the
Compagnons de la Tour, among the craftsmen of the Middle Ages; transmitted to
the Revival era of the beginning of the 18th century, and since then taught in
all the rituals and sustained by the best Masonic writers up to a recent period,
this Legend of the Temple origin of Freemasonry, or, in plainer words, the
theory that Freemasonry received at the time of the building of the Temple of
Jerusalem that form and organization which it holds at the present day, has been
and continues to be a dogma of faith implicitly believed by the masses of the
fraternity.
It is well, therefore, that we should now see what precisely is the form and
substance of this popular Legend. As received at the present day by the body of
the Craft, it may be stated as follows:
When Solomon was about to commence the building of his Temple, his own people
not being expert or experienced architects, he applied to his friend Hiram, the
monarch of the neighboring kingdom of Tyre, for assistance. Hiram, in complying
with his request, sent to him a numerous body of workmen, and at their head a
distinguished artist called, as a mark of distinction, Hiram Abif, equivalent to
the title, "Hiram his father," who is described as "a cunning man endued with
understanding."
King Solomon then proceeded to organize the institution into a form, which
has been adopted as the model of that which exists at the present day in every
country where Freemasonry exists. The Legend that contains the classification of
the workmen at the Temple, which has been adopted in the rituals of modern
Masonry, is delved partly from Scipture and partly from tradition. An
examination of it will not be inappropriate.
There are two accounts, slightly conflicting, in the Scriptural narrative. In
the Second Book of Chronicles, chapter ii., verses 17 and 18, are the following
words:
"And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel,
after the number wherewith David his father had numbered them, and there were
found an hundred and fifty thousand and three thousand and six hundred.
"And he set three score and ten thousand of them to be bearers of burdens and
four score thousand to be hewers in the mountains and three thousand six hundred
overseers to set the people at work." The same numerical details are given in
the second verse of the same chapter. Again in the First Book of Kings, chapter
v., verses 13 and 14, it is said:
"And King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty
thousand men.
"And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses; a month they
were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy."
In the Legend of the Craft this enumeration was not strictly adhered to. The
Cooke MS. says that there were "four score thousand masons at work," out of whom
three thousand were chosen as Masters of the work. The Landsdowne MS. says that
the number of Masons was twenty-four thousand. But this number must have been a
clerical error of the copyist in which he is followed only by the Antiquity MS.
All the other manuscripts agree with the Dowland and make the number of Masons
eighty thousand, including the three thousand overseers or Masters of the Work.
This statement does not accord with that which is in the Book of Kings nor
with that in Chronicles, and yet it is all that the Legend of the Craft
furnishes.
Dr. Anderson, who was the first author after the Revival who made an
enumeration and classification of the workmen at the Temple, abandoned the
Legend altogether and made up his account from the Bible. This he published in
the first edition of the Constitutions and tempered it with some traditional
information, whence derived I do not know. But it is on this classification by
Anderson that all the rituals that have been in use since his time are framed.
Hence he may justly be considered as the author of the Legend of the Workmen at
the Temple; for notwithstanding the historical element which it contains,
derived from Scripture, there are so many traditional interpolations that it
properly assumes a legendary character.
Anderson's account is that there were employed on the building three thousand
six hundred Master Masons, to conduct the work according to Solomon's
directions; eighty thousand hewers of stone in the mountains who he says were
Fellow Craftsmen, and seventy thousand laborers who were not Masons, besides the
levy of thirty thousand who worked under the superintendence of Adoniram, making
in all one hundred and eighty-three thousand six hundred. For this great number,
Anderson says Solomon was "much obliged" to Hiram, King of Tyre, who sent his
Masons and carpenters to Jerusalem.
Over this immense number of builders and laborers, Anderson says that King
Solomon presided as Grand Master at Jerusalem, King Hiram in the same capacity
at Tyre, and Hiram Abif was the Master of Work.
Fifteen years afterward, Anderson, in the second edition of his Constitutions
somewhat modified these views and added certain other particulars. He promotes
Hiram Abif from the position of Magister Operis or Master of the Work, to that
of Deputy Grand Master in Solomon's absence and to that of Senior Grand Warden
in his presence. He also says:
"Solomon partitioned the Fellow Crafts into certain Lodges with a Master and
Wardens in each; that they might receive commands in a regular manner, might
take care of their tools and jewels, might be paid every week, and be duly fed
and clothed, etc., and the Fellow Crafts took care of their succession by
educating Entered Apprentices."
Anderson adds in a marginal note that his authority for this statement is
"the traditions of old Masons, who talk much of these things." If such a
tradition ever existed, it is now lost, for it can not be found in any of the
old manuscripts which are the record of the Masonic traditions. It is admitted
that similar usages were practiced by the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages,
but we have no historical authority, nor even legendary, outside of Anderson's
work, for tracing them to the Temple of Jerusalem.
Out of these materials the ritualists have manufactured a Legend; which
exists in all the Masonic rituals and which must have been constructed in
London, at a very early period after the Revival, to have secured such an
universal acceptance among all the nations who derived their Masonry from the
Grand Lodge of England. The Legend of the Temple origin of Masonry, as generally
accepted by the Craft at the present day, is that there were one hundred and
fifty-three thousand, three hundred workmen employed in the construction of the
Temple. Three thousand three hundred of these were overseers, who were among as
well as over the Craft, but who at the completion of the Temple were promoted to
the rank of Master Masons. The remaining workmen were divided into eighty
thousand Fellow Crafts and seventy thousand Entered Apprentices.
Three Grand Masters presided over the large number of workmen, namely,
Solomon, King of Israel; Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abif. These were the
only persons who at the building of the Temple were Master Masons and in
possession of the secrets of the Third Degree. The statement in the ritual is
that the workmen were divided into Lodges. The Lodge of Master Masons, for there
could be only one of that degree, consisted of three members; the Lodges of
Fellow Crafts, of which there must have been sixteen thousand, was composed of
five members each; and the Lodges of Entered Apprentices, of which there must
have been ten thousand, was composed of seven each.
But as this statement has neither historical authority nor logical
possibility to support it, it must be considered, as it undoubtedly was
originally intended to be considered, merely as a reference to the symbolic
character of those sacred numbers in Masonry - three, five, and seven. In the
same spirit of symbolic reference the steps of the winding stairs leading to the
middle chamber were divided into a series of three, five, and seven, with the
addition in the English ritual of nine and eleven. All of this is, therefore, to
be rejected from the class of legends and referred to that of symbols.
Viewing then this Legend or theory of the origin of Masonry at the Temple,
tracing it from the almost nude state in which it is presented in the Legend of
the Craft through the extraneous clothing which was added by Anderson and I
suppose by Desaguliers, to the state of tinsel ornamentation in which it appears
in the modern ritual, we will come to the following conclusion:
In the Legend of ihe Craft we find only the following statement: That King
Solomon was assisted in the building of the Temple by the King of Tyre, who sent
him materials for the edifice and a skillful artist, on whose name scarcely any
two of them agree, and whom Solomon appointed as his Master of the Work; that
Solomon invited Masons from all lands and having collected them together at
Jerusalem, organized them into a body by giving them a system of laws and
customs for their government. Now, most of these facts are sustained by the
historical authority of the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and those that are
not have the support of extreme probability.
That Solomon, King of Israel, built a Temple in Jerusalem is an historical
fact that can not be doubted or denied. Richard Carlile, it is true, says, "My
historical researches have taught me that that which has been called Solomon's
Temple never existed upon earth; that a nation of people called Israelites never
existed upon earth, and that the supposed history of the Israelites and their
Temple is nothing more than an allegory." But the measure of the moral and
mental stature of Carlile has long been taken, and even among the most skeptical
critics he remains alone in his irrational incredulity.
Doubtless there are Oriental exaggerations in respect to the amount of money
expended and the number of workmen employed on the building, which have been
overestimated. But the simple, naked fact that King Solomon built a temple
remains uncontradicted, and is as historically true and undoubted as that of the
construction of any other public edifice in antiquity.
It is equally historical that the King of Tyre gave assistance to Solomon in
carrying out his design. However fiercely the skeptics may have attacked certain
portions of the Bible, the Books of Kings and Chronicles have been placed upon
the footing of other ancient historical records and subjeated to the same canons
of criticism.
Now we are distinctly told that Hiram, King of Tyre, "sent masons and
carpenters to David to build him a house; " we learn subsequently that the same
Hiram (some say his son) was equally friendly with Solomon, and although there
is no distinct mention either in Kings or Chronicles that he sent workmen to
Jerusalem, except his namesake, the artificer, yet we may infer that he did so,
from the friendship of the two kings, from the need of Solomon for expert
workmen, and from the fact which we learn from the First Book of Kings, that the
stones for the edifice were hewn by " Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders
and the Giblim." The authorized version, on what authority I know not,
translates this word "Giblim" as "stone-squarers." They were, however, the
inhabitants of the city of Gebal, called by the Greeks, Byblos, which was the
principal seat of the worship and the mysteries of Adonis. The inhabitants were
celebrated for their skill in stone-carving and in shipbuilding.
Thus we see that there were, according to the Scriptural account, three
classes of Masons engaged at the building of the Temple. First there were the
workmen of Solomon: these were of the "four score thousand hewers in the
mountains " who were taken by Solomon from "the strangers that were in the land
of Israel" - men whom Dr. Adam Clarke supposes to have been not pure Israelites,
but proselytes to the Jewish religion so far as to renounce idolatry and to keep
the precepts of Noah. But we must believe that among these four score thounnd
snangers mtre to be enumerated the workmen who came from Tyre, or there will be
no place allotted to them in the distribution in the First Book of Kings. The
three thousand three hundred who were "over the work," are said to have been
chief officers of Solomon and therefore Israelites, and the remaining seventy
thousand were mere laborers or bearers of burden - a class for whom Solomon need
not have been indebted to the King of Tyre.
Secondly, there were the workmen of Hiram, King of Tyre. These I have already
said were probably, and indeed necessarily, included in the number of four score
thousand strangers or foreigners. The words in the original are amoshim gherim,
men who are foreigners, for Gesenius defines the word gherim, to be "sojourners,
strangers, foreigners, men living out of their country."
Thirdly, we have the Giblim, the inhabitants of the city of Gebal in
Phoenicia, who came to Jerusalem, invited there by Solomon, to assist in the
construction of the Temple, and who must also be reckoned among the four score
thousand strangers.
Thus the Legend of the Craft is justified in saying; that Solomon "sent after
Masons into divers countries and of divers landes," and that he had "four score
workers of stone and were all named Masons." For these were the foreigners or
sojourners, whom he found in Jerusalem, many of whom had probably come there on
his invitation, and the Tyrians who had been sent to him by King Hiram, and the
Phoenicians, whom he had called out of Gebal on account of their well-known
skill in stone-cutting. And all of these amounted to eighty thousand, the number
stated in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and just the number mentioned in
the Legend of the Craft.
It will be seen that the Legend of the Craft takes no notice of the levy of
thirty thousand who worked under Adoniram on Mount Lebanon, nor of the seventy
thousand who were employed as bearers of burdens. As the former were merely
wood-cutters and the latter common laborers, the Legend does not class them
among the Masons, any more than it does the three thousand three hundred who
were, according to the Biblical account, officers of the court of Solomon, who
were appointed merely to overlook the Masons and to see that they worked
faithfully; perhaps also to pay them their wages, or to distribute their food,
and to supervise generally their conduct.
In all this, the Legend of the Craft differs entirely from the modern
rituals, which have included all these classes, and therefore reckon that at the
building of the Temple there were one hundred and fifty-three thousand three
hundred Masons, instead of eighty-thousand. The Legend is certainly more in
accord with the authority of the Bible than are the rituals.
The Legend of the Craft is also justified in saying that Solomon organized
these Masons into what might be called a guild, that is, a society or
corporation, by giving them "charges and manners" - in other words, a code of
laws and regulations. On this question the Bible account is silent, but it
amounts to an extreme probability, the nearest approximation to historical
evidence, that there must bave been some regulations enacted for the government
of so large a number of workmen. It is also equally probable that to avoid
confusion these workmen must have been divided into sections, or what, in modern
parlance, would be called "gangs," engaged in various parts of the building and
in different employments. There must have been a higher and more skillful class
occupied in directing the works of these several sections; there must have been
others less skillful and yet competent to discharge the duties of stone-cutters
and layers, and there must have been another and still inferior class who were
only acquiring the rudiments of the profession.
Founded on these enident propositions, Anderson made his division of the
workmen at the Temple into the three classes of Master Masons, Fellow Crafts,
and Entered Apprentices. But he abandoned the Legend in calling the three
thousand six hundred officers of King Solomon Master Masons, and making the
whole number, exclusive of the seventy thousand laborers and the thirty thousand
wood-cutters on Mount Lebanon, eighty-three thousand, and afterward stating that
there were one hundred and eighty-three thousand Masons in all - a contradiction
of his own previous statement as well as of the Legend of the Craft which states
the whole number of Masons to have been eighty thousand.
The modern ritual may, however, be considered as having adopted the Temple of
Jerusalem as a type of that abstruse symbol of a spiritual temple, which forms,
as will be hereafter seen, one of the most important and most interesting
symbolic lessons on which the philosophy of Speculative Masonry depends. But
viewing it as an historical statement, it is devoid of all claims to credence.
The facts stated in the ritual are an outgrowth of those contained in the Legend
of the Craft which it has greatly altered by unauthorized additions, and it is
in entire contradiction to those given in the Books of Kings and Chronicles.
The claim that Freemasonry took its origin at the building of the Temple is
without any historical authority. The Legend of the Craft, upon which, to be
consistent, all Masonic rituals should be founded, assigns its oigin equally to
two other periods - to that of the building of the Tower of Babel, when Nimrod
was Grand Master, and to Egypt under the geometrician Euclid. Why the Temple of
Solomon was exclusively selected by the modern Masons as the incunabulum of
their Order can be only conjecturally accounted for.
I am not unwilling to believe, for reasons that have been already assigned,
that the Operative or Stone Masons of the Middle Ages had some tradition or
Legend of the origin of the Institution at the Temple of Solomon. If so, I am
inclined to attribute their selection of this in preference to any other stately
edifice of antiquity to these reasons. The mediaeval Masons were, as an
association of builders, most intimately connected with the ecclesiastics of
that age. Their principal home at one time was in the monasteries, they worked
under the immediate patronage and supervision of bishops and abbots, and were
chiefly engaged in the construction of cathedrals and other religious edifices.
Private houses at that early period were mostly built of wood, and the building
of them was the business of carpenters. The treow-wyr-hta, literally the
tree-workman, in modern phrase the carpenter, was one of the most important
handicrafts of the early Anglo-Saxons. He was the builder of their ships as well
as of their houses, and the trade is frequently spoken of in ancient Saxon
documents. He was constantly employed in the construction of vessels for the
carrying on of trade, or the erection of dwellings for the residences of the
people.
To the stone-masons was exclusively entrusted the nobler vocation of building
religious edifices.
Imbued, from their connection with the priests as well as from their peculiar
employment, with religious sentiments, they naturally looked for the type of the
great cathedrals which they were erecting, not to Pagan temples, however
splendid might be their architecture, but rather to that Jewish cathedral which
had been consecrated on Mount Moriah to the worship of the true God. Hence the
brief notice of that building in the Legend of the Craft was either the
suggestion of that esoteric Legend of the Temple which has not, from its
necessarily oral character, been handed down to us, or if the written Legend was
posterior in time to the oral one, then it was a brief record of it.
But I do not believe that this lost Legend of the stone-masons was ever
intended to be historical. It was simply a symbol to illustrate the idea that
the Temple at Jerusalem was the type of all Christian cathedrals. This symbolic
Legend, which I suppose to have existed among the stone-masons of the Middle
Ages, was probably lost before the revival of Masonry in the year 1717. Anderson
therefore framed a new Legend out of the Legend of the Craft, the Scriptural
account, and his own invention. Upon this Andersonian Legend, simple in the
first edition of the Constitutions, but considerably expanded in the second, the
modern ritualists have framed another Legend, which in many important details
differs from Anderson's, from the Legend of the Craft, and from the account in
the Bible.
This is the Legend now accepted and believed by the great body of the Craft
to be historically true. That it has no claim to historical credence is evident
from the fact that it is, in its most important details, unauthorized, and in
fact contradicted by the Scriptural account, which is the only authentic
memorial that we have of the transactions that took place at the building of the
Solomonic Temple.
And moreover, the long period that elapsed between the building of the
Temple, a thousand years before the Christian era, and the time, not earlier
than the 3d century after Christ, during which we have no traces of the
existence of such an architectural association connected with Jewish Masons and
transmitted from them to the Christian architects, presents an extensive lacuna
which must be filled by authentic records, before we can be enabled, as scholars
investigating truth, to consent to the theory that the Freemasons of the present
day are, by uninterrupted successions, the representatives of the Masons who
wrought at King Solomon's Temple.
The Legend of the ritual is, in fact, a symbol - but a very important and a
very interesting one, and as such will be fully discussed when the subject of
Masonic symbols comes to be treated in a subsequent part of this work.
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