The Hiram Key

The Gnostic Connectioll
Chapter Four
The Gnostic Connection
The Early Christian Censors
The twentieth century has been very fruitful in the unearthing of lost
manuscripts, the most important discoveries being the so-called 'Dead
Sea Scrolls' fo und at Qumran in a series of caves in the desert twenty
miles to the east of Jerusalem and the extensive collection of so-called
'Gnostic Gospels' discovered at Nag Hamrnadi in Upper Egypt in 1947.
lseems reasoD1!ble to supP:Qse that there are yet more discQ y~ rie s to
be made in the future and that many unrecorded discoyeries..bave been
made in the PJll. T ~s that are behind us in time can be categori;d
under three headings: those that are known and logged; those destro ed
or sub...s.equently)ost; and those that have been found but have been ke t
secret .. Perhaps, we speculated, the Templars had unearthed a collection
of writings si milar to these recent finds but they hid them from the gaze
of the general world.
,Moderweemasonry has often been described as being 'Qnosti,{ in
many respects, so we decided that our best starting point would be a
study of the Nag Harnmadi library to see if we could find any clues as to
what the Templars may have found.
The Gnostic Gospels
The term 'Gnostic' is used today as a collective name for a range of
heretical works which infected the true Church for a while in the distant
past but which were outlawed as nonsense imported from other
religions. It is a very inexact label and it does not identify a single school
of thought. Writings described as Christian Gnosticism range from those
with Indian, Persian and other influences to those with more traditionally
Jewish concepts at their heart. Some of these works are bizarre in the
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extreme with such stories as the boy Jesus murdering other children in a
rage then returning some of his victims to life. Others are clear and
simple philosophical messages altributed to Jesus.
The word itself is from the Greek gnosis meaning kn..owLedg£..2[..
uodeUJanding, not meant in the scientific sense but in a more spiritual
interpretation, ' the manner that Buddhists may nd enlig~eru
through self contemplation and an empathy with the world around them.
An awareness of one's self, an appreciation of nature and the natural
sciences are pathways to God for the Gnostic. Most Christian...Gnostics
saw Jesus Ch~st not as a god ... but as....,the man who ' lIuminated that
,£!thway.., in the same way that Gautama~udha an uhammad are
unde by their followers .
Gnostic Gospels have been around at least as long as the New
Testament Gospels but these noncanonical works became k.nown to n
broader, non ~acade mi c audience following the publication of the
translation ofifty~two papyrus scrolls written in Coptic script unearthed
in December 1947 near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt.
Whilst these particul ar documents date from AD 350-400, many are
known to be copies of works that are some three hundred years older.
They were found by an Arab boy called Muhammad Ali al~Saman and
his brothers in a sealed red earthenware jar, about three feet tall, which
was buried in soft soil near to a massive boulder. The brothers had
smashed the jar open hoping to find treasure but were disappointed to
find inside only thirteen papyrus books bound in leather. They took the
books home and as they were nice and dry they were thought to be an
excellent material for li ghting the family oven. Thankfully young
Muhammad Ali was due to be in vestigated by the police so, fearful of
being accused of stealing the texts, he asked a local priest, a l ~Q umu s
Basiliyus Abd al-Masih, to hi de the books for him. Naturally, the priest
saw the possible worth of the documents and sent some to Cairo to be
valued; there they passed through the hands of a number of dealers and
scholars until a section of the Gospel of Thomas, far older than any he
had seen before, finally ended up in the hands of Professor Quispel of the
Jung Foundation in Zurich. He was astounded at what he saw and
quickly traced the rest of the hoard, which had understandably by then
found its way to the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
Once he had the opportunity to study the full documentation Professor
Quipel found that he was looking at many previously unknown texts thai
had been buried nearly 1,600 years ago in a period which was critical in
the formation of the Roman Catholic Church. The rediscovered works
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