Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

20 ADONHIRAMITE ADONHIRAMITE
which connect this Adoniram with the Temple
at Jerusalem derive their support from a single
passage in the 1st Book of Kings (v . 14)
where it is said that Solomon made a levy o'
thirty thousand workmen from among the Israelites
; that he sent these in courses of ten
thousand a month to labor on Mount Lebanon,
and that he placed Adoniram over these
as their superintendent .
The ritual-makers of France, who were not
all Hebrew scholars, nor well versed in Biblical
history, seem, at times, to have confounded
two important personages, and to have lost all
distinction between Hiram the Builder, who
had been sent from the court of the King of
Tyre, and Adoniram, who had always been an
officer in the court of King Solomon . And this
error was extended and facilitated when they
had prefixed the title Adon, that is to say,
lord or master, to the name of the former,
making him Adon Hiram, or the Lord Hiram .
Thus, in the year 1744, one Louis Travenol
published at Paris, under the pseudonym of
Leonard Gabanon, a work entitled Catechisme
des Francs Masons, ou Le Secret des Masons in
which he says : " Besides the cedars of Leianon,
Hiram made a much more valuable gift to
Solomon, in the person of Adonhiram, of his
own race, the son of a widow of the tribe of
Naphtali . His father, who was named Hur,
was an excellent architect and worker in metals
. Solomon, knowing his virtues, his merit,
and his talents, distinguished him by the most
eminent position, intrusting to him the construction
of the Temple and the superintendence
of all the workmen ." (Recueil Precieux,
p. 76 .)
From the language of this extract, and from
the reference in the title of the booktoAdoram,
which we know was one of the names of Solomon's
tax-collector, it is evident that the author
of the catechism has confounded Hiram
Abif, who came out of Tyre, with Adoniram,
the son of Abda, who had always lived at Jerusalem
; that is to say, with unpardonable ignorance
of Scripture history and Masonic tradition,
he has supposed the two to be one and
the same person . Notwithstanding this literary
blunder, the catechism became popular
with many Masons of that day, and thus arose
the first schism or error in relation to the
legend of the Third Degree . In Solomon in
all His Glory, an English exposure published
in 1766, Adoniram takes the place of Hiram,
but this work is a translation from a similar
French one, and so it must not be argued that
English Masons ever held this view .
At length, other ritualists, seeing the inconsistency
of referring the character of Hiram,
the widow's son, to Adoniram the receiver of
Mount Lebanon, and that he speaks of Hiram,
the widow's son, simply as a skilful artisan,
especially in metals, who had only made all
the mechanical works about the Temple according
to the will of Solomon . (viii . 3 .) This
apparent color of authority for their opinions
was readily claimed by the Adoniramites, and
hence one of their most prominent ritualists,
Guillemain de St . Victor (Recueil Precieux
de la Magonnerie Adonhiramite, pp . 77, 78),
propounds their theory thus : " We all agree
that the Master's degree is founded on the architect
of the Temple. Now, Scripture says
very positively, in the 14th verse of the 5th
chapter of the 3d Book of Kings,* that the
person was Adonhiram . Josephus and all the
sacred writers say the same thing, and undoubtedly
distinguish him from Hiram the
Tyrian, the worker in metals . So that it is
Adonhiram, then, whom we are bound to
honor."
There were, therefore, in the eighteenth
century, from about the middle to near the
end of it, three schools among the Masonic
ritualists, the members of which were divided
in opinion as to the proper identity of this
Temple Builder :
1 . Those who supposed him to be Hiram,
the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali,
whom the King of Tyre had sent to King Solomon,
and whom they designated as Hiram
Abif. This was the original and most popular
school, and which we now suppose to have
been the orthodox one .
2. Those who believed this Hiram that came
out of Tyre to have been the architect, but
who supposed that, in consequence of his excellence
of character, Solomon had bestowed
upon him the appellation of Adon, " Lord " or
" Master," calling him Adonhiram. As this
theory was wholly unsustained by Scripture
history or previous Masonic tradition, the
school which supported it never became prominent
or popular, and soon ceased to{ exist,
although the error on which it is based is
repeated at intervals in the blunder of some
modern French ritualists .
3 . Those who, treating this Hiram, the
widow's son, as a subordinate and unimportant
character, entirely ignored him in their
ritual, and asserted that Adoram, or Adoniram,
or Adonhiram, as the name was spelled
by these ritualists, the son of Abda, the collector
of tribute and the superintendent of the
levy on Mount Lebanon, was the true architect
of the Temple, and the one to whom all
the legendary incidents of the Third Degree of
Masonry were to be referred . This school, in
consequence of the boldness with which, unlike
the second school, it refused all compromise
with the orthodox party and assumed a
wholly independent theory, became, for a
time, a prominent schism in Masonry. Its
disciples bestowed upon the believers in Hiram
taxes, and the impossibility of t reconciling the
discordant facts in the life of both, resolved to
cut the Gordian knot by refusing any Masonic
position to the former, and making the latter,
alone, the architect of the Temple. It cannot Abif the name of
be denied that Josephus (viii . 2) states that
Adoniram, or, as he calls him, Adoram was,
at the very beginning of the labor, placed over,
the workmen who prepared the materials on called the 1st and 2d of Kings .
Hiramite Masons, adopted
as their own distinctive appellation that of
* In the LXX the two books of Samuel are