[278.] Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, p. 185 (1910).
[279.] Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, p. 8 (1910).
[280.] Ibid., p. 7. The German Freemason Findel disagrees with both the Roman Collegia and the Egypt theory, and, like the Abbé Grandidier, indicates the Steinmetzen of the fifteenth century as the real progenitors of the Order: "All attempts to trace the history of Freemasonry farther back than the Middle Ages have been ... failures, and placing the origin of the Fraternity in the mysteries of Egypt ... must be rejected as a wild and untenable hypothesis."--History of Freemasonry (Eng. trans.), p. 25.
[281.] Dr. Oliver and Dr. Mackey thus refer to true and spurious Masonry, the former descending from Noah, through Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses to Solomon--hence the appellation of Noachites sometimes applied to Freemasons--the latter from Cain and the Gymnosophists of India to Egypt and Greece. They add that a union between the two took place at the time of the building of the Temple of Solomon through Hiram Abiff, who was a member of both, being by birth a Jew and artificer of Tyre, and from this union Freemasonry descends. According to Mackey, therefore, Jewish Masonry is the true form.--A Lexicon of Freemasonry, pp. 323-5; Oliver's Historical Landmarks of Freemasonry, I. 60.
[282.] Rev. G. Oliver, The Historical Landmarks of Freemasonry, pp. 55, 57 (1845).
[283.] The Jewish Encyclopaædia (article on Freemasonry) characterizes the name Hiram Abifi as a misunderstanding of 2 Chron. ii. 13
[284.] Clavel, Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie, p. 340; Matter, Histoire du Gnosticisme, I. 145.
[285.] Quoted in A.Q.C., XXXII. Part I. p. 36.
[286.] Article on Freemasonry, giving reference to Pesik, R.V. 25a (ed. Friedmann).
[287.] Clavel, op. cit., 364, 365; Lecouteulx de Canteleu, Les Sectes et Sociétés Secrétes, p. 120.