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| The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasonry, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus | 
 enlarge | Authors: Christopher Knight, Robert Lomas
Publisher: Fair Winds Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95 (44.61 RON)
Buy New: $12.89 (30.34 RON)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  228 reviews
Sales Rank: 77724
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 1931412758
Dewey Decimal Number: 366
EAN: 9781931412759
ASIN: 1931412758
Publication Date: August 1, 2001
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| Customer Reviews:
 Take it for what it is. September 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A book that would shake Christianity to its core?
That's the reason I bought it.
I'm sure I don't need to tell you, Christianity is still on its feet.
The Da Vinci Code did a better job of whipping Christian's into a frenzy than this book did.
So what was good about this book?
It's an interesting read with a lot of interesting history, but like the bible itself, you really can't take it all word for word.
That's where the bad comes in.
The authors come to WAY too many conclusions based on little or no evidence.
Kind of like organized religion, you either believe it or you don't.
I don't.
Maybe some of it is true, but I'm the eternal skeptic and many of their conclusions seem a little "forced".
Maybe it's just me; maybe I've been searching for answers for so long now that anything I read comes across as less than genuine.
I've been looking for answers into Christ and his religion for many years now and maybe this book IS accurate, maybe only some of it is.
The real question is, how can anyone prove it?
How can the authors really claim to have evidence and proof that Jesus was who they say he was?
Their evidence is about as flimsy as the Churches evidence.
Throw some interesting theories together, link them up with some ancient documents that may or may not be genuine and WHAM, you get to re-write the last two thousand years of history.
Like I said folks, take this book for what it is.
An interesting read, with very interesting theories and ideas that cannot be proven.
As much as this book wishes to completely level Christianity, it fails.
The same reason organized religion fails.
You either believe it or you don't and this book did nothing to enlighten the masses.
Recommended?
It's a good read but don't expect it to be life changing.
 Fascinating! July 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasonry, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
If you enjoy books that challenge convention, this one fits the bill. Through their research on the roots of modern Freemasonry, the authors present a highly entertaining and thought-provoking look at the history, hijacking and politicization/corruption of religion as a powerful means of control. Quite a lid-blower!
 The Hiram Key March 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was an excellent and informative book. Much research and thought went into it's creation. Through the intent, focus, and dedication of these two authors, to uncover the truth, the law of attraction came into play and syncronized the process of discovery. It has a very unusual ending (related to scripture) which causes one to be open minded to all possibilities in faith and trust. I highly recommend it.
3.5 Stars for Stirring Up Orthodox Egyptology With Obviously Not Easily Dismissable Challenges January 7, 2008
The authors reveal this much about ancient Egypt, Jesus, the Knights of the Temple, the Turin Shroud, the Scottish "Rosslyn Chapel" and Freemasons that it should have sufficed to fill half a dozen books, not just one, even if 528 pages thick. In fact, one chapter lead to the spin-off Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud and the Great Secret of Freemasonry. "The Hiram Key" is the first part of a trilogy of the authors' quest for the recovery of the lost secrets of the Freemasons. The second part being The Book of Hiram: Freemasonry, Venus, and the Secret Key to the Life of Jesus which basically intensifies the first book's issues and the third part being Civilization One: The World Is Not as You Thought It Was which is about ancient measurements and not at all about Freemasons. However, Lost Star of Myth and Time maybe reveal (one of the) real lost secrets. But by other authors.
As this book is written like a detective story, I do not want to spoil too much on the content. It would be counterproductive anyway, as the discoveries/theories cannot get pitched in a nutshell. You would have to follow the reasoning, if not to automatically dismiss any of it. As the 224 reviews before mine show, even that is not enough for a considerable number of readers. (Though it seems to be obvious that some reviewers didn't [fully] read the book.) Basically the book is saying that Freemasonry has a much longer history, stretching into Egyptian pre-Christian times; that there were two brothers called Jesus, son of God, of whom one was crucified; that there were also two Hirams, one of which being a pharao in a divided Egypt, who got assassinated by the other side for not revealing the pharao-making initiation rites; that the Templars searched and found original scrolls on Jesus under the Jerusalem temple mount during the Crusades, hiding them eventually beneath specially built look-a-like "Rosslyn Chapel". Also Paul (labeled a lying heretic), the Essenes and the Hyksos play a role.
I do not take 100% of the authors' conclusions at face value, even though I consider most of it for the base of further research. One reason why I don't dismiss as much as quickly as many other reviewers is that most of the book's content I do not know as false for certain, irrespective of what I have been conditioned with. As a theory, most of the book is conclusive, no matter wether some readers feel a lack of evidence. (Some additional evidence is provided in the second part of the trilogy.) Another reason is: By the time I have read the book, nobody IN MORE THAN A DECADE since 1996 was able to seriously debunk this book. It is one thing to say the evidence is not enough and a completely different to prove the falsity of the provided evidence. It may be all theories - I don't work with permanent absolute truths anyway -, but they are largely still valid. Only 3 reviewers challenged some specifics. Unfortunately providing no sources, ironically something the authors of the book are (falsely) accused of.
What does NOT leave an impression on my mind: Empty rhetoric. One of the reviewers calls anyone believing anything in this book "gullible autodidacts". As much as lacking formalities are criticized, the impression forces itself on me that adherents of orthodox Egyptology may at least be equally gullible... if the formalities are in order. I would have to be very gullible indeed, if I believed the 1 star reviewers: By not directly challenging any content, but resorting virtually exclusively to formalities, I get actually confirmed in having to take this book seriously. Amazingly, some of the accusations aren't even true. Many, many dozens of reviewers claim the authors wouldn't provide sources. Sooner or later even positive reviewers mention that. It seems to have become a fact. Well, is it? No. In my 1997 edition, 105 footnotes lead to 58 different sources. How about that? As an infamous German propaganda minister once said: "No lie is big enough, you just have to repeat it often enough." The authors don't list the publishers of their sources. Big deal. Won't need that data, when searching amazon... Some reviewers claim the sources would be dubious. (Which is it, no or dubious sources?) I am amazed, they know all 58 of them. I know the work of Norman Cohn for example and would not qualify him as dubious.
Another endlessly repeated criticism is that the authors build one theory upon the former. I am amazed about the self-proclaimed saviors of orthodox science. If they really were, they would know perfectly that it is standard procedure to build theory upon theory. As in a domino effect. Only that way has it become possible that human knowledge doubling accelerates ever more. From many millennia up to several decades at the start of the 20th century to currently every 5 years. Yes, some knowledge of yesterday will turn out to be ossiefied tomorrow, but without the former the latter would not have been possible. That's how I take and appreciate this book.
Looking closer at the not-enough-evidence routine. What exactly defines as enough evidence, universally accepted? Having read reviews on books about inerrancy of the Bible and debunking evolution, I find the same phrases as for this book. There is also very orthodox scientifically measurable evidence of American cocaine and Australian eucalyptus residues to be found in Egyptian mummies, and yet reviewers of books on the issue of who travelled to the Americas before Columbus still cry for more hard evidence. Some people simply refuse to know what must not be true according to their world view.
On the other hand, there are books which provide much, much less evidence than this one, yet they cannot get a worse rating than this one, when this one is given the lowest. I am amazed - again - how many of the negative reviewers supposedly have read Erich von Däniken's "Chariots of the Gods". Why do they keep reading books they detest, which should be obvious from the back cover blurb? I haven't read that one, but accidentally, as it is less infamous, David Hatcher Childress' Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients. With no evidence this author is averring anything from flying carpets to ancient atomic warfare, including within the "Cheops" pyramid. Isn't there a difference?
One last word on the criticism, namely on the so-called official science, of Egyptology in this case. Hardly anything is known for certain. E.g., there are no vowels written in ancient Egyptian. So what did "official science" decide to do for transliteration? In cases of complete lack of vowel-knowledge to include an "e". On the evidence of: complete arbitrariness. Before Ptolemaic rule, absolutely no dating of pharaos' rules is certain as the Egyptians used a different concept of writing history. Yet, official Egyptology provides specific dates, usually as if set in stone. Official Egyptology must not engage in religion, as this is viewed as unscientific. Thus, official Egyptology blinds e.g. mystic initiation rites as funerary beliefs. As a result claiming, the pyramids would be graves - no matter that virtually no corpses were ever found in a pyramid... Any phenomenological approach to ancient Egypt cannot apply to current official science, because the latter is incompatible with the Egyptian phenomena. Space restrictions make me stop at this point. In other words: When nothing is certain, deviating theories should at least get considered to be proven or disproven. Otherstupid no progress in knowledge will ever get made.
Besides, on some "revelations", this book is hardly alone. For example, on the Egyptian origins of Freemasonry read also AFRICAN ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY: Treatise of the Ancient Grand Lodge of Khamet.
All of that said, I actually have some criticism of my own. Ironically, some of that qualifying the book as being TOO ORTHODOX at times. The authors talk about Gnostics, but clearly do not overstand mysticism in the universal sense - which would be advisable when dealing with ancient Egypt. They are also still European centered and in turn biased against Africa. Exemplified in the reproduction of the belief that Sumer is 1) Asian (as in un-African) and b) preceding Egypt, providing its source. It has also been revealed elsewhere that Abraham could not have originated from "Ur of the Chaldees" (read e.g. The Africans Who Wrote the Bible). The authors depend too much on the inerrancy of the Bible at certain places.
Interpretations of e.g. Edward II being weak, simply because he discontinued downpressing the Scots is war-hero worship from the historian's romantizising perspective. Another potential reason for the Templars seeking refuge in Scotland is not provided, even though tentatively referenced with "James (the Black) Douglas". Back then, many Scottish nobles were still Black in the popular definition, as they were derived among others from a former Egyptian colony. Read e.g. the classic two-volume Ancient and Modern Britons: Volume One (Ancient & Modern Britons). Positive bias did not lead to a more critical view of King James' conduct, as the authors usually exhibit with less liked historic figures.
The authors also do not debunk OTHER "alternative" knowledge first, before they establish their new theories. E.g. the Christian cross, according to other sources, is derived from ancient Egypt all right, but not from the sign for "savior", but the sign of life, the "ankh".
Some positive lessons to be learned for me personally are e.g. that it should have been obvious that America wasn't named after the given name of anyone, yet I never questioned that. So I will raise questions even more intensely from now on. As a RastafarI I find it interesting that the Essene prohibition of contact with the dead wasn't meant literally with corpses (as Rastas take it), but metaphorically with the uninitiated. I am left wondering, wether there is a direct meme pool link. (As proto-Rasta Marcus Garvey is believed to have been a Freemason.)
One last irony: Reading the second part of this trilogy, I felt much like the negative reviewers of this book and could suddenly comprehend them better. Yet, this is a different book and will get reviewed separately.
One advice for the 5 star reviewers: Do not stop reading books like this. Then you will find out that as much as this book appears to make perfect sense, other unorthodox books make the same sense or even more - but are head-colliding with this one in some respects. An ever more precise amount of knowledge is obtainable only via constant crosschecking and synthesizing. Read the "dubious" books of e.g. Ahmed Osman, Rocco A. Errico, Gary Greenberg, and Moustafa Gadalla. One example is the role of the Hyksos in this book. Here, they are the foreign downpressors from Canaan, believing in the antagonistic Seth. In Ralph Ellis' Jesus: Last of the Pharoahs they are Egyptians in a religious civil war, representing the orthodox theology, following a planned cycling shift in veneration of Aris (sheep), the Southernes had forgotten. Both - and additional - books make perfect sense within themselves, yet have to get challenged with questions among each other.
 Terrible, on so many levels August 22, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a Jew, Mason, and former History major, I can say that this book has problems on so many levels that its embarrassing. As countless reviews here have mentioned, the authors tend to jump to ridiculous conclusions. With all due respect to the Brothers who wrote this book, they should be ashamed of themselves for trying to capitalize on the Fraternity. "Mercenary motives" indeed.
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