STB-N082
Music by J. L. F. Mendelssohn
THE IMPORTANCE: OF
THE LEGEND OF HIRAM ABIFF
by Conrad Hahn, P.C.M.
This Short Talk Bulletin has been adapted from a
speech given by the late Most Worshipful Brother
Conrad Hahn, in 1972, while serving as thc Executive Secretary of the Masonic Servicc Association.
The legend of "Hiram, the widow's son," is
the foundation of Freemasonry's ritualistic
drama of the third, or Master's Degree. While
it would be improper to reveal the details of the
drama as it is presented in the lodge room, or to
make public the ritualistic secrets and symbolism which it contains, the story of Hiram is
so well known and has been referred to in
Masonic writings so frequently that it has
become a part of the cultural heritage of civilized men everywhere.
Briefly stated, the Hiramic legend is as
follows: When Solomon, King of Israel, undertook the building of the Temple in Jerusalem,
he sent to Hiram, King of Tyre, for materials
and assistance. In exchange for agricultural
products like corn and wine and oil, King
Hiram sent Solomon cedar trees cut from the
forests of Lebanon and a skilled and cunning
worker in metals. These facts may be found in
the Old Testament, especially in Chapter 7 of I
Kings and Chapter 2 of 11 Chronicles, where the
skilled artisan, named Hiram, is referred to as
the "son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali"
whose husband was "a man of Tyre."
This much of the Masonic legend of Hiram
comes from the Bible; but the story known to
Masons has a tragically different development.
Hiram, called Abiff (which is simply a Hebrew
expression for "father," a term of respect),
worked for King Solomon at Jerusalem, not
only in casting all the metallic ornaments for
the Temple, but also as a Master of the Works,
a superintending architect.
More than 85,000 workmen were employed
in the building of the Temple; it took approximately seven years to complete. To those
workmen who labored faithfully on the project
was promised the status of Master Workman,
or Mason, upon its completion.
But some time before the Temple's completion, some of the workmen became dissatisfied
and demanded the promotion which they had
been promised. Not being organized like
modern employees and being used to the harsher and more brutal modes of direct action
characteristic of the more primitive times in
which they lived, they sought the higher wages
and fringe benefits of a Master Workman by
conspiring to extort them from Hiram Abiff.
If spite of their violent threats, Hiram steadfastly refused to yield to their demands. Reminding them of their obligations to King Solomon
and his God, he resolutely insisted that they
honor the contracts by which he and they were
bound. Three of them, more brutal than the
rest, conspired to attack Master Hiram to force
the concessions they were demanding; but he,
being faithful to his trust, was more adamant in
his refusal, and they in their wrath slew him in
the unfinished Temple.
That, essentially, is the legend of Hiram
which has become in Masonry one of the most
impressive ritualistic dramas of all time.
Historically-minded Brethren continue to
wonder from whence it came and whose imagination and gifts of language transmitted it
into the matchless drama which furnishes the
core of "the sublime degree of Master Mason."
Certainly, the tragedy of Hiram is not to be
found in the Bible. If only one Hiram is referred to in the Old Testament, the story of his
assassination is not corroborated in either I
Kings or 11 Chronicles; for there we read as
follows: "So Hiram finished all the work he did
for King Solomon on the House of the Lord."
Dr. Joseph Fort Newton, the most gifted
and inspiring of Masonic writers fifty years
ago, chose to believe that the tragic story of
Hiram was long in the possession of operative
Masons from the Middle Ages down to the
dawn of Speculative Masonry in the 17th and
18th centuries. This I seriously doubt, since no
mention of Hiram is to be found in any of the
Old Charges and Gothic Constitutions, or in
any of the remnants of old ritualistic practices
to be found in the records of operative lodges
which date from 100 years or more before the
founding of the first Grand Lodge, which
marks the beginning of the era of modern
Speculative Freemasonry in 1717 . Had there
been even a shred of evidence that the Hiramic
legend existed in Masonry before that date, I
feel sure that Dr. James Anderson would have
known of it and used it in the legendary history
of the Craft which he published in The Constitutions of the Freemasons in 1723.
Furthermore, modern Masonic scholars
have shown rather conclusively that there was
no tri-gradial system of initiation during the
period of operative Masonry, that there was no
third or Master Mason Degree as a rite or
ceremony before the creation of the Premier
Grand Lodge in 1717. The first recital of the
Hiramic legend as the dramatic cornerstone of
a third or Master Mason's degree appears in an
expose of the ritual of Freemasonry entitled
Masonry Disseeted, written by a Samuel
Prichard and published in London in 1730.
Consequently, it seems a logical conclusion
to assume that the Master Mason Degree, and
with it, the legend of Hiram Abiff, were introduced into Freemasonry when it became a
speculative, or philosophic organization.
Just where did the legend of Hiram come
from? No one really knows; scholars have yet
to discover its origins and its introduction into
Freemasonry. My own scholarly prejudices lead
me to believe that it's a re-working of some
mediaeval mystery play, whose original may yet
be discovered in a private library or the rubbish
of an ancient building.
Mystery plays were the most popular form
of public entertainment in the Middle Ages.
Each guild or trade had its own preferred
dramas; most of them were Biblical in origin.
They were produced, staged and acted by
members of the guild, first in churches, and
then in public squares, to which they were
banished when the plays became too boisterious
and irreverant for the sacerdotal authorities.
These drams were called mysteries, not
because they treated of witches, ghosts, or
detectives, but because they were produced by
craft guilds or "mysteres," which is variant of
the French word "mestaire," a craft or guild.
So the plays became known in England as
mysteres, or mysteries, because they were produced by "mestaires," or guilds. The expression, "the mysteries of Freemasonry,"
therefore, originally meant the ritualistic
ceremonies, or work of the Lodge.
To Masons who thirst for historical certainty about Hiram Abiff and his position in
Masonic ritual, I can only give a dusty answer.
It's not really important.
It's a mistake to consider the Hiramic
legend as history. There was a Hiram Abiff in
history, but our Third Degree is not interested
in him as such. The drama of Hiram is a conflict of a man with other men, of an individual
against evil forces embodied in other men.
Hiram Abiff is the dramatized symbol of
the human soul-of mine, of yours, of every
man. The work he was engaged in is symbolic
of the work which you and I are committed to
perform in the supervision, organization and
direction of our lives from birth to dissolution.
The enemies that Hiram meets are really symbols of those lusts and passions and failures
of the spirit which in ourselves and others
make war on our characters and spiritual
aspirations.
In my opinion, this symbolic increment to
the Hiramic legend was added by one of the
Speculative Masons of the early Eighteenth
Century, by someone with the education and
philosophical attainments of a man like Dr.
John Theophilus Desaguliers or other Rosicrucian adept.
Hiram's death was also his triumph--as the
resurrection of truth over ignorance is always
a victory, in spite of its being buried for a while
in the rubbish of scorn and deliberate persecution.
This is the real importance of the legend of
Hiram, that it still stirs men to serve the Truth
by steadfastly maintaining the necessity of their
noblest aspirations, even to apparent defeat in
death, out of which can arise a more perfect
Living Perpendicular!
Edwin Booth, the famous actor and loyal
Mason, was no mean judge of the essencc of
tragedy; he evaluated the Hiramic legend in
these words:
"In all my research and study, in all my
close analysis of the masterpieces of
Shakespeare, in my earnest determination to
make those plays appear real on the mimic
stage, I have never, and nowhere, met tragedy
so real, so sublime, so magnificant as the legend
of Hiram. It is substance without shadow-the
manifest destiny of life which requires no picture and scarcely a word to make a lasting impression upon all who understand. To be a
Worshipful Master, and to throw my whole
soul into that work, with the candidate for my
audience and the Lodge for my stage, would be
a greater personal distinction than to receive the
plaudits of people in the theaters of the world."
And that should tell us, if we are Master
Workmen, what we should do with the legend
of Hiram when we work in "the mysteries of
Freemasonry." We must make it truly sublime!
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