Fictitious character in Masonic allegory, based on Old Testament character
Hiram Abiff
(also
Hiram Abif
or the
Widow's son
) is the central character of an
allegory
presented to all candidates during the third degree in
Freemasonry
.
Hiram is presented as the chief
architect
of
King Solomon's Temple
. He is murdered inside this Temple by three ruffians, after they failed to obtain from him the Master Masons' secrets. The themes of the allegory are the importance of fidelity, and the certainty of death.
The Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff
[
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]
Architect Hiram,
St. John's Church, Chester
(1900).
Bronze statue by Nickolaus-Otto Kruch, Berlin, Germany (2013).
The legend of Hiram Abiff as related in Anglo-American Masonic jurisdictions underpins the Third Degree and first appeared in the early 1720s. It generally starts with his arrival in
Jerusalem
, and his appointment by Solomon as chief architect and master of works at the construction of his temple. As the temple is nearing completion, three fellowcraft masons from the workforce ambush him as he leaves the building, demanding the secrets of a master mason. Hiram is challenged by each in turn and, at each refusal to divulge the information, his assailant strikes him with a mason's tool (differing between jurisdictions). He is injured by the first two assailants, and struck dead by the last.
[1]
His murderers hide his body under a pile of rubble, returning at night to move the body outside the city, where they bury it in a shallow grave marked with a sprig of
acacia
. As the Master is missed the next day, Solomon sends out a group of fellowcraft masons to search for him. The loose acacia is accidentally discovered, and the body exhumed to be given a decent burial. The hiding place of the "three ruffians" is also discovered, and they are brought to justice. Solomon informs his workforce that the secret word of a master mason is now lost. He replaces it with a substitute word which is considered a secret by Masons.
In
Continental Freemasonry
, the tale is slightly different: a large number of master masons, and not just Hiram, are working on the Temple, and the three ruffians are seeking the passwords and signs that will give them a higher wage. The result is the same, but this time, it is Master Masons who find the body. The secrets are not lost, but Solomon orders them buried under the Temple, inscribed on Hiram's grave, and the same substitution is made as a mark of respect. The secrets "lost" in the other tradition are here given to new Master Masons as part of their ritual. In this version, Hiram is often renamed Adoniram.
[2]
Historical Origin of the Legend
[
edit
]
There have been many proposals for the origin of the Masonic Hiram Abiff story that are dismissed by most
historical-critical
Masonic scholars.
The leading theory supported by many scholars of historical Freemasonry was advanced by the French masonic historian
Paul Naudon
who, in 2005, highlighted the similarity between the death of Hiram and the murder of
Renaud de Montauban
in the late 12th Century
chanson de geste
,
The Four Sons of Aymon
. Renaud, like his prototype Saint
Reinold
, was killed by a hammer-blow to the head while working as a mason at
Cologne Cathedral
, and his body hidden by his murderers before being miraculously re-discovered.
[3]
In 2021, Christopher Powell published a paper in the journal of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, the
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum
, which argues that
John Theophilus Desaguliers
likely authored the Hiram Abiff legend in the early 1720s and introduced it into the Master Mason degree.
[4]
In his research, Powell notes how Desaguliers also introduced the "lost word" aspect of the Royal Arch degree which he likely read in a book he owned titled "The Temple of Solomon, portrayed by Scripture-light."
[5]
If the word was to be found, it would need to be first lost, hence the Hiram Abiff story. According to Powell, Desaguliers as a Frenchman living in England, would have known the
chanson de geste
legend, and used it as a base for the legend of Hiram Abiff. However instead of being used as a ritual since the 12th century, Powell argues that Desaguliers used this existing myth to create a central story for the newly created Master Masonic degree, for which there is no evidence before 1720.
Hirams in the Bible
[
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]
In the
Hebrew Bible
or
Old Testament
, there are three separate instances of people named Hiram that were involved in the construction of the temple of Solomon:
- Hiram
, King of the realm of
Tyre
(today, in the modern nation of
Lebanon
), is credited in
2 Samuel
5:11 and 1 Kings 5:1?10 for having sent building materials and men for the original construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. In the Masonic drama, "Hiram, King of Tyre" is clearly distinguished from "Hiram Abiff". The former is clearly a king and the latter clearly a master craftsman. They can be confused in other contexts.
[6]
- In
1 Kings
7:13?14, Hiram is described as the son of a widow from the tribe of
Naphtali
who was the son of a Tyrian bronze worker, sent for by Solomon to cast the bronze furnishings and ornate decorations for the new temple. From this reference, Freemasons often refer to Hiram (with the added Abiff) as "the widow's son." Hiram cast these bronzes in clay ground in the plain of the Jordan between
Succoth
and
Zarethan/Zeredathah
(1 Kings 7:46?47).
- 2 Chronicles
2:13?14 relates a formal request from King Solomon of Jerusalem to King Hiram I of Tyre, for workers and for materials to build a new temple. King Hiram (Huram in Chronicles) responds "And now I have sent a skillful man, endowed with understanding,
?uram 'abi.
[7]
(the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre), skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood,
purple
and
blue
, fine linen and crimson, and to make any engraving and to accomplish any plan which may be given to him, with your skillful men and with the skillful men of my lord David your father."
[8]
The phrase italicised above is translated in the
New King James Version
as "Huram my master craftsman". Most translations of this passage take the "'ab-" in "'abi" as the construct state of 'abba, here translated as master. Older translations preferred to translate "'ab-" as father. The common translation of the -i suffix is "my", giving the problematic reading that Hiram was sending his own father, also called Hiram. This is found in the
Vulgate
, the
Douay?Rheims Bible
and in
Wycliffe's Bible
.
[9]
The other reading is as the old Hebrew genitive, and some variant of "of my father" is found in the
Septuagint
,
[10]
the
Bishop's Bible
and the
Geneva Bible
.
[9]
In his 1723 "Constitutions",
James Anderson
announced that many problems with this text would be solved by reading "'abi" as the second part of a proper name, which he rendered as "Hiram Abif",
[11]
agreeing with the translations of
Martin Luther
[12]
and
Miles Coverdale's
reading of 2 Chronicles 4:16.
[13]
Other accounts of a biblical Hiram
[
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]
Flavius Josephus
in his
Antiquities of the Jews
(Chapter 8:76) refers to Hiram as τεχν?τη?,
tekhnit?s
, artificer, craftsman. "Now Solomon sent for an artificer out of Tyre, whose name was Hiram: he was by birth of the tribe of
Naphtali
, on his mother's side (for she was of that tribe); but his father was Ur, of the stock of the Israelites."
[14]
The
Targum Sheni
, an
Aramaic
commentary on the
Book of Esther
written sometime between the
fall of Rome
and the
Crusades
, credits Hiram with the construction of a miraculous
throne
for Solomon, which in Esther's time is being used by the descendants of
Cyrus the Great
.
[15]
Later accounts of Hiram Abiff
[
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]
The most elaborate version of the legend occurs in
Gerard de Nerval's
1851 account,
Voyage en Orient
, where he relates the tale, inserting all the masonic passwords, as part of the story of
Balkis
, the "Queen of the Morning" and "
Soliman
", Prince of the
Genii
. This is an elaboration of the second version above, where the Master Craftsman is named
Adoniram
. Before his death, he undergoes mystical adventures as his tale is interwoven with that of Solomon and Balkis, the
Queen of Sheba
. The ruffians who kill him are under the instruction of Solomon himself. De Nerval relates the story as having been told in an Eastern coffee house over a two-week period.
[16]
A similar account is given in
Charles William Heckethorn
's
The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries
, where Solomon plots to destroy Hiram because of the mutual love between Hiram and the Queen of Sheba.
[17]
Meanwhile, in 1862, the whole adventure of Adoniram's love for Balkis and his murder by three workmen in the pay of Solomon had been set to music in
Charles Gounod
's opera,
La reine de Saba
.
[18]
Other theories
[
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]
Seqenenre Tao II
[
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]
Lomas and Knight claim the wounds of Sequenre Tao II make him a match for Hiram Abiff
According to authors
Robert Lomas
and
Christopher Knight
, the prototype for Hiram Abiff was the Egyptian king
Seqenenre Tao II
, who (they claim) died in an almost identical manner.
[19]
This idea is dismissed by most Masonic scholars, some of whom have described the theory as "highly imaginative" but ultimately one with "no historical validity."
[20]
Dhul-Nun al-Misri
[
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]
In his book
The Sufis
, the
Afghan
scholar
Idries Shah
suggested that
Dhul-Nun al-Misri
might have been the origin of the character Hiram Abiff in the masonic
Master Mason ritual
. The link, he believes, was through the
Sufi sect
Al-Banna
("The Builders") who built the
Jami Al-Aqsa
and the
Dome of the Rock
in Jerusalem. This fraternity could have influenced some early masonic guilds which borrowed heavily from the
Oriental architecture
in the creation of the
Gothic style
.
[21]
Others, such as, German orientalist
Annemarie Schimmel
, are critical of the work of Shah. She has claimed that
The Sufis
, along with his other books, "should be avoided by serious students".
[22]
Notes
[
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]
- ^
Pietre Stones
Kent Henderson, The Legend of Hiram Abif, retrieved 14 September 2012
- ^
Rituels
French language collection of ritual, 18th-early 19th century, retrieved 14 September 2012
- ^
Naudon, Paul (2005).
The secret history of Freemasonry: Its origins and connection to the Knights Templar
. Translated by Graham, Jon. Rochester, Vermont, United States: Inner Traditions. footnote on page 59.
ISBN
978-1-59477-028-9
.
- ^
Powell, Christopher (2021).
"The Hiramic Legend and the Creation of the Third Degree"
(PDF)
.
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum
.
134
. London: Quatuor Coronati Lodge
. Retrieved
22 March
2024
.
- ^
Lee, Samuel (1659).
Orbis miraculum, or, The temple of Solomon pourtrayed by Scripture-light
. London: George Sawbridge
. Retrieved
13 December
2023
.
Also available from the
Internet Archive
- ^
1 Kings 5 & 7:13?46
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%205,7:13-46&version=NIV
and 2 Chronicles 2:1?14 & 4:11?16
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Chronicles%202:1-14,4:11-16&version=NIV
- ^
"The Second Book of the Chronicles. Chapter 2"
. Hebrewoldtestament.com
. Retrieved
19 October
2021
.
- ^
2 Chronicles 2:13?14, New King James Version ? From
BibleGateway.com
- ^
a
b
"Search results for '2 Chronicles 2' using the 'Jerome's Latin Vulgate (405)' ? Bible Search ? Reference Desk ? StudyLight.org"
.
StudyLight.org
.
- ^
"Chronicles II"
. Ecmarsh.com
. Retrieved
13 June
2014
.
- ^
Anderson's 1723 Constitutions, in Franklin's 1734 reprint
retrieved 14 September 2012
- ^
"Biblia 1545 Ausgabe Letzter Hand"
. Lutherbibel.net. Archived from
the original
on 4 December 2008
. Retrieved
13 June
2014
.
- ^
Coverdale Bible
2 Chronicles 4:16, retrieved 20 September 2012
- ^
Sacred Texts
Flavius Josephus,
Antiquities of the Jews
, Book VIII (in this version chapter 3 para 4 contains v76) retrieved 20 September 2012
- ^
Paulus Cassel (tr. A. Bernstein), An Explanatory Commentary on Esther, Edinburgh, 1888, p. 268.
- ^
The Women Of Cairo, Scenes Of Life In The Orient, Volume Two
English translation of Gerard de Nerval, Voyage en Orient (1851), Harcourt, Brace & Co, New York, 1930, pp244-380
- ^
Charles William Heckethorn, The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries, London, 1897, Vol ii, pp3-7
- ^
Charles Gounod.com
La Reine de Saba
, accessed 26 July 2014
- ^
Lomas, Robert; Knight, Chris (1997).
The Hiram Key
. Arrow Books LTD.
- ^
"Sec. 6, Anti-masonry Frequently Asked Questions"
.
freemasonry.bcy.ca
. Retrieved
13 December
2023
.
- ^
Shah, Idries (1971).
The Sufis
. Anchor. p. 187.
ISBN
0-385-07966-4
.
- ^
Schimmel, Annemarie (2011).
Mystical Dimensions of Islam
. Univ of North Carolina Press.
ISBN
978-0-8078-9976-2
.
References
[
edit
]
- de Hoyos, Arturo; Morris, S. Brent (2004).
Freemasonry in Context: History, Ritual, Controversy
. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.
ISBN
0-7391-0781-X
.
- Strong, James (1990).
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible
. Thomas Nelson Publishers.
ISBN
0-8407-6750-1
.
- Domenico V. Ripa Montesano, Vademecum di Loggia, Edizione Gran Loggia Phoenix ? Roma Italia 2009
ISBN
978-88-905059-0-4