Hiram Abiff is a character who figures prominently in an
allegoricalAllegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
play that is presented during the third degree of Craft
FreemasonryFreemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
. In this play, Hiram is presented as being the chief
architectAn architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
of
King Solomon's TempleSolomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, was the main temple in ancient Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount , before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar II after the Siege of Jerusalem of 587 BCE....
, who is murdered by three ruffians during an unsuccessful attempt to force him to divulge the Master Masons' secret password. It is explained in the lecture that follows this play that the story is a lesson in fidelity to one's word, and in the brevity of life.
Numerous scholars, both Masonic and non-Masonic, have speculated that the character may have been based upon one or more Hirams that appear in the
BibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
.
Hirams in the Bible
The name "Hiram Abiff" does not appear as such in the
BibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, but there are three references to people named Hiram that are present:
- Hiram
Hiram I , according to the Hebrew Bible, was the Phoenician king of Tyre. He reigned from 980 to 947 BC, succeeding his father, Abibaal. Hiram was succeeded as king of Tyre by his son Baal-Eser I...
, King of Tyre, is credited in 2 SamuelThe Books of Samuel in the Jewish bible are part of the Former Prophets, , a theological history of the Israelites affirming and explaining the Torah under the guidance of the prophets.Samuel begins by telling how the prophet Samuel is chosen by...
5:11 and 1 Kings 5:1-10 for having sent building materials and men for the original construction of the Temple in Jerusalem; the Masonic drama separate character named "Hiram, King of Tyre" is not likely an alias of "Hiram Abiff" as the former is clearly a king and the latter clearly a master craftsman, but they are often confused.
- In 1 Kings 7:13–14, Hiram is described as the son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali
According to the Book of Genesis, Naphtali was the second son of Jacob with Bilhah. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Naphtali. However, some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the...
who was the son of a Tyrian bronze worker, contracted by Solomon to cast the bronze furnishings and ornate decorations for the new temple. From this reference, Freemasons often refer to Hiram (with the added Abiff) as "the widow's son." Hiram lived or at least temporarily worked in clay banks (1 Kings 7:46-47) in the plain of the Jordan between SuccothThe name Sukkot appears in a number of places in the Hebrew Bible as a location:* An Egyptian Sukkot is the second of the stations of the Exodus. Pharaoh orders the Israelites to leave Egypt, and they journey from their starting point at Rameses to Succoth...
and Zarethan/ZeredathahZaretan is a city mentioned in the Bible, as the location where the Hebrews crossed the Jordan...
.
- Hiram (often spelled Huram), a craftsman of great skill sent from Tyre. 2 Chronicles
The Books of Chronicles are part of the Hebrew Bible. In the Masoretic Text, it appears as the first or last book of the Ketuvim . Chronicles largely parallels the Davidic narratives in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings...
2:13-14 relates a formal request from King Solomon of Jerusalem to King Hiram I of Tyre, for workers and for materials to build a new temple; King Hiram responds "And now I have sent a skillful man, endowed with understanding, Huram my master craftsman (the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre), skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, purple and blue, fine linen and crimson, and to make any engraving and to accomplish any plan which may be given to him, with your skillful men and with the skillful men of my lord David your father." In the original Hebrew version of 2 Chronicles 2:13, the phrase translated above as "Huram my master craftsman" is "ḤWRM 'BY" Ḥiram 'abi.
Note that the translation "Hiram my master craftsman" occurs only in the
New King James VersionThe New King James Version is a modern translation of the Bible published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. The New Testament was published in 1979. The Psalms in 1980. The full Bible was published in 1982. It took a total of 7 years to complete...
. In other versions, "abi" is translated most often as "father", sometimes "master," or else "Hiram Abi" is left untranslated as a proper name.
Peake's Commentary on the BiblePeake's Commentary on the Bible is a one-volume commentary on the Bible that gives special attention to Biblical archaeology and the then-recent discoveries of biblical manuscripts.-First edition:...
, referring to Chronicles II-13, simply states "Huram-abi: RSV correctly reads this as the full name," and the
English Standard VersionThe English Standard Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible. It is a revision of the 1971 edition of the Revised Standard Version...
gives the same translation "Huram-Abi" rather than "Huram my master...". Some say that the word "Abiff" may have arisen by misunderstanding Hebrew אָבׅו
'āvīw = "his father".
Other accounts of a Biblical Hiram
Flavius JosephusTitus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
in his
Antiquities of the JewsAntiquities of the Jews is a twenty volume historiographical work composed by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the thirteenth year of the reign of Roman emperor Flavius Domitian which was around 93 or 94 AD. Antiquities of the Jews contains an account of history of the Jewish people,...
(Chapter 3:76) refers to Hiram as an Artificer. "Now Solomon sent for an artificer out of Tyre, whose name was Hiram: he was by birth of the tribe of
NaphtaliAccording to the Book of Genesis, Naphtali was the second son of Jacob with Bilhah. He was the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Naphtali. However, some Biblical scholars view this as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the...
, on his mother's side (for she was of that tribe); but his father was Ur, of the stock of the Israelites."
Other theories
According to authors
Robert LomasRoberto Lomas is a British writer and business studies academic. He writes primarily about the history of Freemasonry as well as the Neolithic period, ancient engineering and archaeoastronomy...
and
Christopher KnightChristopher Knight is an author who has written several pseudoarcaeological and pseudohistorical books dealing with theories such as 366-degree geometry and the origins of Freemasonry...
, Hiram Abiff would have been Egyptian king Seqenenre Tao II, who met an extremely similar death. This idea is dismissed by most Masonic scholars.
In his book The Sufis, the Afghan scholar Idries Shah suggested that
Mansur al-HallajMansur al-Hallaj was a Persian mystic, revolutionary writer and pious teacher of Sufism most famous for his poetry, accusation of heresy and for his execution at the orders of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir after a long, drawn-out investigation.-Early life:Al-Hallaj was born around 858 in Fars...
might have been the origin of the character Hiram Abiff in the Freemasonic Master Mason ritual. The link, he believes, was through the Sufi sect Al-Banna ("The Builders") who built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. This fraternity could have influenced some early masonic guilds which borrowed heavily from the Oriental architecture in the creation of the Gothic style.}