The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasonry, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

When the authors continue to the New Testament times, the authors' obviously biased view on the orthodox Christianity compel them to readily and uncritically embrace marginal theories about early Christianity (such as propagated by Eisenman), despite their lack of acceptance (or even serious consideration) by the majority of scholars.

Here are some examples of the authors' questionable assertions:

- In one chapter, the authors weave a story of a murder of an Egyptian king by Jacob's two sons, Simeon and Levi, and use a biblical verse (Gen 49:6) to substantiate it. Obviously the authors are willing to go to any length to establish their case, which includes endorsing this purely imaginative tale and overlooking the more plausible explanation of the verse (that it relates to the events described in Gen 34).

- One of the more puzzling things is how the authors can claim that the name 'Hiram Abiff', a master mason of the Solomon's temple, is nowhere to be found and therefore prompts a grand quest to search for his identity, which concludes in the identification of an Upper Egypt king of late Hyksos dynasty, while a simple reading of 2 Chronicles 2:13 can give you a name 'Huram', a master mason sent by King of Tyre to work on the Solomon's temple. In NIV translation, the name is written as 'Huram-Abi'. Certainly this similarity merits some mention by the authors, unless, of course, they never read that verse before.

- One evidence the authors offer to assert their idea that James the Just was both a priestly and kingly messiah is a medieval-age picture depicting the New Jerusalem with twelve pillars, where two of the largest pillars are both named James (Jacob). Again, the authors somehow manage to overlook the fact that all of the other pillars are named with the names of Jesus' twelve disciples (with the exception of Judas Iscariot who is replaced by Matthias (Acts 1:26)), thus making it safe to assume that the two James are actually the disciples James son of Zebedee and James son of Alphaeus (Mat 10:2-3).

What make this book is so amazing (or scary) that given their surprisingly lack of knowledge on the biblical literature, as demonstrated in the examples above, the authors boldly treats the orthodox Christian beliefs as if it's just long history of falsification. Even if there is at least some truth in their conclusions about the origin of Freemasonry, the book just doesn't carry much weight to make itself a credible scholarly work. A good bedtime reading? Perhaps yes for the fiction-lovers, but hardly for the truth-seekers.

The current Christian Bible also leaves many loose ends that must have more to the story. There is clearly no way to prove ancient history but the story told here rings true on too many point to be far from the mark.

I couldn't put the book down.