Talk:The Hiram Key

Edits 5 Apr
I've restructured the controversy section to reduce the POV aspects and articulate the issues a little clearer.ALR 12:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Links expired/changed
The links under "Reviews of the work are commonly critical..." don't work. I'm not sure what they should be...

List of chapters
I have to ask, why is there an extensive list of of chapter titles? Is someone planning to add any further info? (say a synopsis of the main points in each chapter) If not, I would recommend that this chapter list be deleted. It really does not add any useful information to the article. Even with the list, the article is little more than a glorified stub! Blueboar 19:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You're right, the list of chapters did nothing except bulking out the article. I was bold and removed it when I was putting fact tags in. WegianWarrior 12:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Already cited?
I have removed two "citation needed" tags from the "Book summary" section of the article: one following the words "as most historians believe" and the other following the words "Jewish esoteric at the time." The section containing the tags is a summary of what the book says. The citation, in each case, is therefore given in the title and lede. My guess is that the editors who inserted the tags were questioning the assertions of the books authors, but did not realize that they were reading a book summary. If I am mistaken, and the tags were inserted from disbelief that the book authors had made these assertions, the tags should be restored. — Jay L09 (talk) 22:47, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Confusion in the book summary
Under the heading "Book summary", it states "They claim that the stonemason origin theory was wrong because it had so many obvious fallacies. Why would powerful and rich people have been attracted to join a fraternity that came from simple poor stonemasons' guilds? The theory of Freemasonry originating in London in 1717 was also unlikely, because there were much earlier mentions of Freemasonry." Without getting into WP:OR, I see two serious problems with this claim, if it reflects the theses of the book (which I have not read). First, because the phrase "...simple poor stonemasons' guilds..." is ahistorical. Members of stonemasons guilds would not have been "simple" or "poor"; they would've spanned the range from skilled craftsmen to master architects, and economically, between the modern equivalent of middle-class and upper-middle-class. And second, because no one that I'm aware of who is knowledgeable about the history of Freemasonry, asserts that the Craft "originated in London in 1717"; that was merely the year of the establishment of the first Grand Lodge (a body to which each individual Lodge belongs). There is absolutely no ambiguity in this; all Masonic historians agree that speculative Masonry dates back to at least the early-17th century. (For example, the original documentation of Elias Ashmole being made a speculative Mason in 1646 still survives.) Lomax, being a Mason, would know this, so I suspect that the Wiki editor who thus summarized the book is mistaken in their summary. Can anyone who has read the book (particularly a Freemason) comment on this? Bricology (talk) 21:53, 11 May 2013 (UTC)