On Dec 20, 8:15Â*pm, Chuck Gould wrote:
On Dec 20, 3:39�pm, John H. wrote:

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.

Masons often claim to be the philosophical descendants of the Knights
Templar. During the Crusades, the Templars literally guarded the
Temple in Jerusalem, and were additionally responsible for the safety
of pilgrims and, believe it or not, banking. People who wanted to
travel from Europe to Jerusalem on pilgrimage were often reluctant to
carry large sums of money on their person en route. There were too
many Â*opportunities to be waylaid by bandits, etc. So if the Herring
family wanted to travel from Paris to Jerusalem, for example, you
could go to the local office of the Templars and desposit, let's say,
a chest of 2000 gold coins. You would be given a receipt and you would
carry that with you to the Holy Land. Upon arrival in Jerusalem, you
would turn the receipt into the Templars and receive 2000 gold from
the Templars depository there, less of course a "carrying charge" of
perhaps 20 percent. Between the interest charged for banking services
and the number of people who simply died or were murdered along the
road to Jerusalem and never showed up to collect anything, the
Templars eventually got so rich that they were loaning money to
European kings.

Anyway, while hanging around Jerusalem and guarding the temple the
Knights Templar became aware of an entire school of Christianity that
had been fairly well stamped out in Europe. Gnosticism. Gnosticism was
one of two predominate forms of Christianity in the first couple of
centuries AD. Sometime around the year 300 or so, the 20-30 Christian
"gospels" were examined by a committee and four were deemed worthy to
be included in an official collection of religious documents that
would thereafter be called The Bible. None of the gnostic texts were
included, and before long gnostic groups were being
persecuted as "heretics" by the othodox church. Several attempts were
made to locate and burn every copy of the gnostic gospels, but there
were successful attempts made to hide some of them away. (see "The
Dead Sea Scrolls" as one example). Some of the gnostic texts were
found in Jerusalem during the Crusades.

Many of the Knights Templar adopted gnostic Christianity, and some of
the Masonic traditions were supposedly inspired by gnostic literature.

Hmmm.....


I always thought they traced their roots back to the master builder of
Solomans Temple, by a guy named Huram (Hiram) [1 kings chapt. 5-7]

Where he supposedly got the name 'Hiram Abiff' I don't have a clue.
And actually the biblical acct of "Hiram" is a bit confusing. King
Hiram of Tyre, that sent Solomon the materials for the temple? or
Hiram the master builder who was from Tyre and was the son of a widow?

Now I don't really know but, When Julia Howe was visiting a Union army
camp, and was inspired to write the words to the Battle Hymn of the
Republic, I sincerely doubt if Freemasonry was really on her mind.