Hi Bro. Matthew.
Our GM Hiram was not a king but a worker of metals,there was King Hiram of Tyre that was a friend of King Solomons and a great contributer to the Temple.
Oh? Perhaps it's different over there, but here in England we teach that SKI and HKT were
also GMs. "Three rule a Lodge because there were but three GMs who bore sway at the building of the Temple at Jerusalem, namely SKI, HKT and HAb" - don't you have that part?
Myself I dont believe that Masonry is rooted in Christianity simply because all of our lessons and degrees are rooted in writings of the old testement.
The main legend is Old Testament for the simple reason that the building of the Temple is by far the most detailed description of a building anywhere in the Bible, and therefore a natural choice for an Order based on a construction trade.
In the old days there were a lot more explicitly New Testament references, but most of those were deliberately changed two hundred years ago when it was agreed to expand the Craft to non-Christians. None of these were central to the story, since that was Old Testament, so most of the New Testament references could be changed without spoiling the message for the existing (Christian) members whilst making it more compatible with the new (non-Christian) members. (Incidentally, you only did a partial job of this in the US - American rituals still tend to contain various explicitly Christian references, such as to the Sts. John.)
Also the MM degree didn't come on the scene until the mid to late 1700's and was at that time based upon Noah and his sons.
Not so. The MM came in sometime in the 1720s. I have a complete text of the MM ritual from 1730 (Prichard, "Masonry Dissected", published October 1730). And this uses the Hiramic legend, not the Noah version. It's only 3 pages long, so much less elaborate than it subsequently became, but the Hiramic legend is fully recognisable - HAb in the Temple, the ruffians, the crime, the search, the manner of discovery, the marking of the site, the f.p.o.f., the Wd., the re-burial - the essential elements are all mentioned briefly, except the fate of the ruffians.
It's true that there was another version, around the same time or slightly later, which used a Noah legend instead. However, it seems likely that this was merely someone's attempt to experiment with a different version of a degree which hadn't yet settled into its final form. The Noah version didn't catch on very widely, perhaps because the Hiramic version fitted better with the Temple story of the previous degrees, so before long everyone settled down with the Hiram version and the Noah version was dropped.
These men questioned the very foundations of the churches controll over
society ...
Neither then nor subsequently has the GL of England ever said anything on that subject.
As individuals, however, I agree that it's plausible that many of the founders might have been opposed to Church control: many of them were members of Dissenting Churches (i.e. not the Church that had the control), and many of the others who were members of the Established Church were supporters of tolerance.
... they invented scientific thought based on research not theology.
I think that's rather an exaggeration. Certainly several prominent early Brethren were involved in organisations such as the Royal Society which established the practice of real scientific research. However, they didn't invent the idea (Bacon had already done that a century earlier), and many non-Masons were also involved. But yes, we can be proud that our predecessors contributed significantly to the establishment of systematic research.
For this reason I feal that Masonry (as we know it) may have started with
Christian men, but it is and was intended for all men of all faiths to expand upon the sciences and arts for all mankind.
Obviously that's part of the intention now. But it wasn't the original concept to include non-Christians, that came along later.
As to the true origins of Masonry, since prior to 1717 there are very few references to Masonry other than "operative", I think this will become one of the topics we shouldn't discuss in lodge. It will be quite easy for mens passions to become aroused over what is for the most part theory and opinion.
Well it's a good thing that we're not in Lodge, then! However, fair point, I agree that we also shouldn't get involved in furious rows in forums.
There's actually a fair volume of non-operative references in the years running up to 1717, but the record does get sparse when we try to look further back. By far the richest source of pre-1717 information is Scotland rather than England, because the Scottish rules (under the Schaw Statute of 1599) required Lodges to keep Minutes, whilst there was no such rule in England. The most amazing records are the Minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel) #1 of the GL of Scotland, which still possesses
continuous minutes from 1599 through to today (!) No other Lodge anywhere has a record like this. At the start of the Minutes, the Lodge is a wholly operative body of stonemasons, and meetings are entirely concerned with trade matters and so on. Then over the first half of the 1600s, a few non-operatives join, but the Lodge is still basically operative. Then over the second half of the 1600s, non-operatives join in increasing numbers, until around the end of the century the speculatives predominate, and not long after the operatives fade out of the picture (not because they're pushed away, but simply because major building projects in stone ceased around that time, everyone was using brick instead). A unique record in which you can actually see the transition happen.
T & F,
Huw