From the publisher Starting with the study of Freemasonry ceremonies that have long lost their meaning, researchers of the history of Freemasonry Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, authors of the world bestseller “The Second Messiah,” conducted a historical investigation unique in its scope. After a painstaking search, they were able to establish the identity of the man whom descendants eventually began to call Hiram Abif, the legendary architect of the Jerusalem Temple and the founder of the Brotherhood of Freemasons. Based on historical documents and physical evidence that have survived to our time, the creators of this book claim: the myth of the murder of the architect Hiram is based on very real sinister events that occurred several thousand years ago and left their mark on Masonic rituals. Tracing a sacred tradition stretching through centuries, Knight and Lomas determined that the true teachings of Jesus Christ, based on the secrets of Hiram, were distorted during the times of early Christianity, but returned to the world again after the first Crusades along with the Knights of the Temple, giving rise to a number of heresies and secret societies. The authors are confident that the religious geopolitical thriller, which unfolded for centuries in the Old and New Worlds, has not lost its dynamism in our days.