The Mormon Temple and the Freemasons
No. The temple ordinances were developing six years before Joseph entered a Masonic lodge. Washing and anointing began in the Kirtland Temple in 1836, and an 1841 revelation had already promised that God would reveal temple ordinances. The endowment’s purpose, content, and source differ from Freemasonry at the root; the Church teaches that Masonry was a catalyst for revelation, not its source.
From medieval guilds, the early-1700s lodge, and the Bible. Freemasonry’s structure descends from medieval stonemasons’ guilds; its central Hiram Abiff drama was composed in England between about 1717 and 1738; and its temple imagery was drawn from the Bible’s account of Solomon’s Temple.
No. Organized Freemasonry dates to 1717, and the ceremonies most often compared to the endowment were assembled in the 1720s and 1730s. Masonry’s claimed descent from Solomon’s Temple is allegory, not documented history.
No. Temple washing and anointing began in the Kirtland Temple in 1836, and the plan to reveal temple ordinances was recorded in January 1841 (Doctrine and Covenants 124) — both before Joseph Smith became a Freemason in March 1842.
Because both trace back to the same source — God — by different roads. Solomon built his Temple by revelation (1 Chronicles 28:11–19), and Joseph Smith said the endowment was revealed to him by God, restoring that ancient ordinance. Freemasonry makes no claim to revelation at all; by its own account its ritual is a moral allegory that borrowed the imagery of Solomon’s Temple in the 1700s. So the ceremonies rhyme not because Joseph copied the Masons, but because both temple traditions descend from a pattern God revealed — one restored firsthand, the other borrowed secondhand.
What to Know – The Short Version
- The overlap is real. Joseph became a Freemason in March 1842 and introduced the endowment seven weeks later; both use signs, tokens, special clothing, and staged instruction.
- The timeline rules out simple copying. Temple washing and anointing began in the Kirtland Temple in 1836, and an 1841 revelation had already promised temple ordinances.
- Masonic ritual is younger than it looks. The Master Mason degree and its Hiram Abiff legend were composed in the early 1700s — not handed down intact from antiquity.
- Masonry’s temple content is biblical. Its central drama is set at Solomon’s Temple and built on the biblical Hiram of Tyre — though the murder story is not in the Bible.
- Both roads lead back to God. God revealed the Temple pattern to Solomon and, Latter-day Saints believe, to Joseph Smith; Freemasonry borrowed it from Solomon’s Temple, as allegory.
- The Saints’ own reading. Early Latter-day Saint Masons called Masonry a “degenerated” remnant — a faded echo, not the source.
On This Page
- 01 What the Two Ceremonies Actually Share
- 02 Where did the Freemasons Get their Rituals?
- 03 One Timeline: Temples, Masonry & Joseph Smith
- 04 Both Roads Lead back to God
- 05 The Rough Stone Made Complete: Same Source, Same Goal
- 06 Came from God, Not the Lodge: the Evidence
- 07 Did Joseph Smith Copy It? The Chronology
- 08 Form vs. Substance, Compared
- 09 The Strongest Objection
- 10 The Verdict
- 11 Frequently Asked Questions
- 12 From the DM’s
There are really two questions hiding inside the Masonry debate, and almost everyone asks only the first. The famous one: did Joseph Smith copy the temple endowment from the Freemasons? Joseph became a Mason in the spring of 1842 and introduced the endowment seven weeks later, and the two share some outward features — so the charge writes itself.
The second question is rarely asked, and it is far more interesting: if the two ceremonies resemble each other, where did the Masons get theirs? Trace that thread and the “copy” story changes shape. The Masonic ritual Joseph encountered was not an ancient secret handed down from Solomon’s builders; in its developed form it was barely a century old, and its temple imagery came straight out of the Bible. This is the same pattern as the broader question of whether Mormons are Christians: the answer turns on a definition — here, on what you mean by the word copy.
Some teaching methods, gestures, signs, and the dramatic structure resemble Freemasonry. By this measure there is real overlap — and the Saints who received both said so openly.
The covenants, doctrine, and content draw on revelation and restored scripture — while Masonry’s own script was written in the 1700s. By this measure it was not copied.
Same surface, two different histories. Almost every argument here is really an argument about which one counts.
What the Two Ceremonies Actually Share
Concede What is True
An honest answer starts by naming the overlap plainly rather than minimizing it. The temple endowment and the Masonic degrees share a family of ritual devices: modes of recognition such as signs and grips; an obligation of confidentiality; ceremonial clothing; a candidate who advances through staged instruction; a guarded word; and teaching by symbolic drama rather than by lecture. The first Latter-day Saints to receive the endowment were practicing Masons, and they recognized the resemblance immediately. None of that is in dispute, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
But shared vocabulary is not shared source. Two buildings can use the same kind of brick and be raised by different architects to different plans. To find out whether the endowment was lifted from the lodge, you have to ask where each ceremony got its script — and that means asking a question critics almost never pose: where did Freemasonry get its ritual in the first place?
Where did the Freemasons Get Their Rituals?
The Question Nobody Asks
Freemasonry tells one story about its own origins; the documentary record tells another. Keeping the two apart is the whole key to this section.
1
THE STORY MASONS TELL (ALLEGORY)
“Our craft descends from the builders of Solomon’s Temple.”
Masonic tradition traces the fraternity to the construction of Solomon’s Temple and to its legendary master craftsman, Hiram Abiff, and sometimes further still to ancient mystery schools. By the trade’s own account this lineage is symbolic — a myth adopted to dramatize moral aims, not a documented genealogy. Reputable Masonic historians treat the Solomonic and “ancient mysteries” pedigrees as allegory, not history.
2
WHAT THE DOCUMENTS SHOW (HISTORY)
From medieval guilds to a ritual written in the 1700s
The documented trail runs through the stonemasons’ guilds of medieval Britain. The oldest Masonic manuscript, the Regius Poem, dates to about 1390 and contains craft rules and a legendary history — but nothing resembling the modern ceremonies. Across the 1600s, lodges began admitting “accepted” gentlemen who were not working masons; the antiquary Elias Ashmole recorded his own initiation in 1646.
Organized modern Freemasonry begins in 1717, when four London lodges formed the first Grand Lodge. Its rulebook, Anderson’s Constitutions of 1723, contains no Hiram Abiff tragedy; the third — Master Mason — degree is first recorded only in the mid-1720s, and the murdered-architect legend appears in print by the 1738 edition. The resemblant ceremony, in other words, was assembled in the early eighteenth century.
3
WHERE THE CONTENT CAME FROM (THE BIBLE)
A biblical temple, dramatized into allegory
The raw material of the Hiramic legend is scriptural. The Bible describes Hiram (or Huram) of Tyre, a skilled bronze-worker and “a widow’s son,” sent to help build Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 7; 2 Chronicles 2–4). What the Bible does not contain is his murder, his refusal to surrender a secret word, or his symbolic raising — those are an eighteenth-century allegory built onto the biblical frame to teach fidelity and the certainty of death.
So the honest answer is layered: Masonry took its structure from the medieval building trade, its central drama from the early-1700s lodge, and its temple imagery from the Bible. It did not invent temple worship; it staged a moral play against the backdrop of the most famous temple in scripture.
The Masonry question is really a question about time — which tradition is older, and what came from where. The timeline below runs all four streams down a single axis, so you can read the gap between events and see where they overlap. Three of the streams — Old and New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith’s own ministry — trace one continuous tradition of temple worship reaching back to Moses. The fourth, Freemasonry, is the latecomer: its ritual was assembled in eighteenth-century England, and only converges with the story in 1842.
God commands the Tabernacle, a portable sanctuary built to a pattern shown Moses “in the mount” — with washing, anointing, a veil, and a Holy of Holies (Exodus 25–40).
Solomon dedicates the first Temple in Jerusalem, built with Hiram of Tyre’s craftsmen — the temple Freemasonry would later borrow for its stage (1 Kings 5–8).
Babylon destroys Solomon’s Temple and carries Judah into exile.
In the promised land, Nephi builds a temple “after the manner of the temple of Solomon,” carrying the pattern to the New World (2 Nephi 5:16).
The returning exiles complete the Second Temple on the same site (Ezra 6).
King Benjamin gathers his people at the temple and delivers his great address; they covenant and take upon them the name of Christ (Mosiah 2–5).
Herod the Great begins a vast expansion of the Second Temple — the temple standing in Jesus’s lifetime.
Jesus teaches in the temple, drives out the money-changers, and foretells its fall; at His death the veil is torn in two (Matthew 27:51).
The resurrected Jesus Christ descends to the Nephites gathered at the temple in Bountiful — the climax of Book of Mormon temple worship (3 Nephi 11).
Rome destroys the Second Temple, exactly as Christ had prophesied.
The Regius Poem, the oldest Masonic document, sets down craft rules and a legendary history — but nothing resembling the later ceremonies.
Elias Ashmole records his initiation into a lodge of no working masons — an early sign of the shift to “speculative” Masonry.
Four London lodges form the first Grand Lodge of England, and organized modern Freemasonry begins.
Anderson’s first Book of Constitutions standardizes the craft — and contains no account of a murdered master architect.
The Master Mason degree — which carries the death-and-raising drama most often compared to the endowment — is first recorded.
The second Constitutions references the slain architect, fixing the Hiram Abiff legend’s entry into the ritual to roughly 1723–1738.
Thomas Smith Webb’s monitor systematizes the American lodge “work” — the form of Masonry Joseph would later encounter.
Joseph Smith’s First Vision — the founding claim of revelation that frames everything after it.
The Book of Mormon, translated and published before any Masonic involvement, already describes Nephite temples and Christ’s appearance at one.
Joseph’s inspired revision of the Bible carries temple themes — washing, heavenly ascent, and cosmic vision.
Joseph introduces washing and anointing in the Kirtland Temple — six years before he becomes a Freemason.
The Kirtland Temple is dedicated; Joseph offers the dedicatory prayer (D&C 109), which he said he received by revelation.
In the temple, Christ appears, followed by Moses, Elias, and Elijah, who restores the sealing keys (D&C 110).
A revelation commands the Nauvoo Temple so God can “reveal mine ordinances therein” (D&C 124) — more than a year before Joseph’s Masonry.
The Freemasonry Joseph is initiated into at Nauvoo is this matured eighteenth-century system — not an ancient relic.
Joseph publishes the Book of Abraham, a scriptural prelude to the endowment — and is initiated a Freemason on March 15–16.
Joseph gives the full endowment to nine men, expanding the 1836 Kirtland rite.
The endowment is extended to women — an access Masonry denied — and the sealing of families is taught (D&C 132).
Read the spine top to bottom. The temple tradition runs unbroken for millennia; Freemasonry appears only in the modern era and meets the story in 1842 — after Joseph’s temple ordinances were already under way.
Lay the four side by side. Temple worship runs unbroken from Moses through Solomon, into the Book of Mormon, and into Joseph Smith’s Kirtland Temple in 1836. The Masonic ritual being compared was assembled in England between 1717 and 1738. The endowment’s foundation predates Joseph’s Masonry by six years — and the tradition it claims to restore predates Freemasonry by millennia.
Both Roads Lead Back to God
The Synthesis
Here is why the two ceremonies resemble each other at all — and it is not what either side usually assumes. Strip the Masonic ritual to its frame and you find Solomon’s Temple: the setting, the master builder, the sacred work, the guarded word. Strip the endowment to its frame and you find the temple too — washing, anointing, sacred clothing, and a progression toward the presence of God. The resemblance is real. But the road does not end at Solomon.
Solomon did not invent his Temple. Scripture is explicit that its design was given by revelation: David received “the pattern” for the house “by the Spirit,” wrote it down, and handed it to Solomon — “the LORD,” he said, “made me understand in writing” (1 Chronicles 28:11–19). Solomon’s Temple was itself a revealed thing. And this is a principle, not a one-time exception: the New Testament states it plainly, that God’s house is to be built “according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount” (Hebrews 8:5). What God revealed to Solomon, Latter-day Saints believe He restored to Joseph Smith the same way — by revelation, commanding a temple in which He would “reveal mine ordinances” (Doctrine and Covenants 124:40). So when the two ceremonies are traced to their headwater, we do not arrive at a building; we arrive at God — and the two traditions reach Him by very different roads.
This is also the most precise way to state the Latter-day Saint reading. Heber C. Kimball, a Mason of nearly two decades, wrote of “a similarity of priesthood in masonry” and described it as taken from priesthood but degenerated; Joseph Fielding called Masonry “a Stepping Stone or Preparation for something else.” Notice what they did not claim: not that Masonry preserved an intact ancient liturgy, but that it carried scattered vestiges — faint echoes of a temple pattern whose meaning had been lost.
An honest writer has to grant that the history here is genuinely double-edged. A secular historian explains the shared temple motifs simply: both Freemasonry and the endowment borrowed imagery from the widely-read Bible, so of course they rhyme. A Latter-day Saint reads the same recurring motifs — sacred space, ritual washing, a guarded name, a progression into God’s presence — as echoes of a real and ancient ordinance. The data under both readings is identical; what differs is the frame. What the data does not support is the simplest charge of all: that Joseph lifted an ancient Masonic secret, when the Masonic “secret” was an eighteenth-century composition drawn from his own Bible.
The two roads do not meet at Solomon — they meet at God. He revealed the Temple pattern to Solomon, and, Latter-day Saints believe, restored it by revelation to Joseph Smith: two direct roads from one source. Freemasonry took a third road, borrowing the imagery of Solomon’s Temple as allegory long after. Same source — but only one of the three ever claimed to be drinking straight from the spring.
Same Source, Same Goal
The Rough Stone Made Complete
Follow both traditions past their shared setting and they share something deeper: a single symbol, inherited from the Temple, that turns the building of Solomon’s house into a blueprint for the building of a person. In Freemasonry it is called the ashlar — a block of stone that stands for a human life. Both traditions take a rough stone and make it complete. But they mean very different things by “complete,” and they disagree about whose hand does the work. Here are the two views, side by side.
What the Lodge Teaches: the Rough Ashlar Made Perfect
The lesson begins on a Mason’s first night. In the first degree, the Entered Apprentice is shown two stones and told they picture his own soul. The rough ashlar is a block as it comes from the quarry — rude, irregular, unpolished; it represents man in his natural, uncultivated state. The perfect ashlar is that same stone once the craftsman has squared and smoothed it true, fit to be tested by the square and set into the wall — man refined into usefulness.
Stone straight from the quarry — a man in his “rude and imperfect state by nature,” full of rough edges and untrained habits.
Stone squared, smoothed, and true — a man refined by education and virtue into a good and useful member of society.
How is the rough stone made perfect? By work — the Mason’s own — carried out with the lodge’s working tools, each read as a moral instrument. The transformation unfolds across the three degrees: the Entered Apprentice is handed the tools of rough shaping; the Fellowcraft studies the liberal arts and sciences that furnish the mind; the Master Mason confronts mortality itself in the drama of Hiram Abiff. At every stage the stone is worked by hand.
The Masonic ashlar: a rough stone shaped, by the man’s own labor and virtue, into a finished block fit for the builder’s use.
The first-degree lecture names the goal exactly: the perfect ashlar pictures the state a Mason hopes to reach “by a virtuous education, his own endeavors, and the blessing of Deity.” It is a noble aim — and a modest one. Masonry is explicit that its object is to make a man useful and upright, not to make him flawless, and not to save him. The stone, in the end, is polished by the man himself.
The Temple • The Restoration
What the Temple Teaches: the Natural Man Made Complete
The image, though, is older than any lodge — it is biblical. Peter calls believers “lively stones… built up a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5); Paul, a temple “fitly framed together” (Ephesians 2:21). The Restoration takes that same rough stone and calls it by its scriptural name — the “natural man” (Mosiah 3:19) — but reads the shaping very differently. Here the stone is not polished by the man alone. It is shaped by a path of covenants, and the finisher is Christ. Baptism is the gate: there a person is “born again,” takes upon them the name of Christ, and becomes a “new creature” (Mosiah 27:25–26). The temple covenants then carry that new life upward, one law at a time, toward a destination Paul names plainly:
The Destination
“Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” — Ephesians 4:13.
The covenant path: the natural man, shaped step by step — from baptism through the temple — into the image of Christ. The goal is not flawlessness but completeness; not a useful man, but a Christlike one.
Each covenant, a Beatitude — and a trait of Christ
Read the covenant path beside the Sermon on the Mount and a pattern emerges. The Beatitudes are not a scattered list of blessings; read in order they describe the very character each covenant is meant to build — a ladder of dispositions rising toward the promise that the pure in heart “shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). The chart below is offered as an illustrative teaching framework, not a formula — one way Latter-day Saints connect the covenants they make with the character Jesus described.
Perfect means complete — and complete means Christ
The climb ends where the Sermon ends: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And that final word is the hinge of the whole matter. The Greek behind “perfect” there — and behind Ephesians 4:13’s “perfect man” — is teleios, which means whole, finished, brought to its intended end far more than it means without flaw. To be made teleios is to be completed the way a stone is completed: shaped to its full purpose and set into its place. The rough ashlar does not become flawless; it becomes finished — and it is finished in Christ.
This is why Latter-day Saints describe the gospel as a plan not merely to do good things but to become a certain kind of person — so that the Final Judgment is less a tally of deeds than a recognition of what a life has become. The Savior set the standard among the Nephites: “What manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am” (3 Nephi 27:27). And John promised the outcome: “When he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
Same stone, two hands
Set the two views together and the parallel is exact — and the difference is everything. Both begin with a rough stone; both end with it made complete. But the lodge and the temple disagree about the means, the finisher, and the end.
The Bottom Line
Same stone — the rough ashlar, the natural man. Same source — a pattern that traces, through Solomon’s Temple, to God. The one difference is who does the finishing. Masonry answers: the man, by his own endeavors, that he may become useful. The endowment answers: the man and the grace of Christ, together — until he is not merely improved, but made like the Savior he covenants to follow.
Came From God, Not the Lodge: the Evidence
The Affirmative Case
So far the argument has mostly cleared away a charge. But Latter-day Saints make a positive claim too — that the endowment came by revelation — and it is worth setting out the actual evidence offered for it, drawn from scripture and from the historical record rather than from assertion. None of it “proves” a divine origin, which is a matter of faith; together it shows why the revelation account, not the Masonic one, fits the documents.
Chronology
The ordinances predate the lodge.
Temple washing and anointing began in the Kirtland Temple in 1836, and the revelation commanding a temple “that I may reveal mine ordinances therein” was recorded in January 1841 — both before Joseph became a Freemason in March 1842.
Scripture
The 1836 endowment is described as God’s gift.
In the Kirtland Temple the Lord declared He had accepted the house and spoke of the endowment with which His servants had been “endowed in this house” (D&C 110:9) — given amid the appearance of Christ, Moses, Elias, and Elijah.
Scripture
The plan was framed as revealed and ancient.
The Lord promised to reveal “things which have been kept hid from before the foundation of the world” (D&C 124:41) — presenting the ordinances as recovered ancient truth, not a borrowed fraternal ceremony.
Pattern
The model is the tabernacle, not the lodge.
Israel’s sanctuary was built to a pattern God showed Moses “in the mount” (Exodus 25–40); Latter-day Saints place the endowment in that biblical temple lineage, which runs back millennia before Freemasonry.
Insiders
The first recipients were Masons — and said it wasn’t Masonic.
Heber C. Kimball wrote of “a similarity of priesthood in masonry” but described Masonry as degenerated; Joseph Fielding called it “a Stepping Stone or Preparation for something else.”
Witness
A scribe’s verdict.
Recording the new ordinance, Willard Richards described the endowment as “governed by the principle of Revelation” — the language of those administering it, not of a lodge.
Official
The Church’s own conclusion.
Its history materials state the endowment did not merely imitate Freemasonry; Joseph’s encounter with Masonry served as a “catalyst for revelation” — a trigger, not a template.
Scholarship
The closest match is the Bible.
The major academic study reviewed by Scripture Central concludes that the Nauvoo ordinances sit closer to the Bible and other ancient sources than to Freemasonry.
Notice how the pieces converge. The dated record, the scriptural language of revelation, the testimony of insiders who knew Masonry firsthand, and the scholarly verdict all point the same direction. A critic can still argue that revelation is unprovable — and that is true — but the documents do not read like the record of a man copying a lodge ceremony. They read like the record of a man who believed he was restoring a temple.
Did Joseph Smith Copy It? The Chronology
Return now to the original charge with both timelines in view. The Masonic events of 1842 are real, but they sit on top of a decade of temple development on the Latter-day Saint side — and on top of a century of ritual-building on the Masonic side. Read the two columns together:
The famous “seven weeks” between the lodge and the endowment is genuine — but it is the tail of the story, not the head. On the Latter-day Saint side, the ordinances were taking shape six years earlier in Kirtland, with the plan to reveal them on record in 1841. On the Masonic side, the ritual being compared was itself only a century old. Scripture Central, reviewing the major scholarly study of the question, notes that the covenants of temple worship were revealed to Joseph more than a decade before Nauvoo, and that the Nauvoo ordinances sit closer to the Bible than to Freemasonry.
Form vs. Substance: Masonry and the Endowment Compared
Where the Two Diverge
Similar outward methods can carry completely different meaning. The teaching devices overlap; the purpose, content, source, age, and access do not.
The Question
Freemasonry
The Temple Endowment
The Question
Its purpose
Freemasonry
Self-improvement, brotherhood, charity — making better men who build a better society.
The Temple Endowment
Covenants with God to gain exaltation through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
The Question
Its content
Freemasonry
A drama of the slain architect Hiram, set at Solomon’s Temple.
The Temple Endowment
The plan of salvation — creation, fall, redemption — drawn from revelation and restored scripture.
The Question
Its source
Freemasonry
An eighteenth-century lodge ritual built on biblical and guild materials.
The Temple Endowment
Presented by participants as divine revelation restoring an ancient ordinance.
The Question
How old is it?
Freemasonry
The resemblant ceremony was assembled c. 1717–1738.
The Temple Endowment
Introduced 1836–1842, on a pattern the Saints trace to the ancient temple.
The Question
Who may receive it
Freemasonry
Strictly limited; most lodges of the era excluded women entirely.
The Temple Endowment
Intended “even to the weakest of the Saints” — and women receive it as fully as men.
The access difference is especially telling, because it is not a detail of form but of theology. Most Masonic lodges of the era barred women on principle; Joseph Smith taught that women must receive the endowment, and prepared them for it through the Relief Society. A ceremony built to be given to everyone, women included, is not the same institution as a men’s fraternity that guards its membership. They share a grammar; they speak about different things.
The Strongest Objection
Steelmanning the Other Side
A credible answer names what critics get right. The resemblances are not imaginary, the timing of 1842 is genuinely close, and early Utah architecture even borrowed Masonic-style symbols. The strongest version of the objection is philosophical: “restoration” can look unfalsifiable, because any borrowed element can be relabeled a recovered ancient truth, so the theory seems able to absorb any evidence of influence without ever being disproven. That is a fair challenge, and it deserves to be stated rather than dodged — and in fairness it cuts at the Latter-day Saint side too: history cannot prove the endowment is ancient. That remains a claim of faith.
What history can establish is narrower, and still decisive for the specific charge of copying. First, the chronology is dated and public: the Kirtland ordinances of 1836 and the 1841 revelation precede Nauvoo Masonry. Second, the Masonic material being compared is itself a recent, Bible-derived composition — not an ancient rite Joseph could have plagiarized. Even a scholar who grants that Masonry influenced a few outward elements can still conclude that the Nauvoo ordinances sit closer to the Bible and other ancient sources than to Freemasonry. “Influenced in form” and “copied wholesale” are very different claims, and only the weaker one survives the evidence.
So — Did Joseph Smith Copy the Temple Ceremony from the Masons?
The Honest Answer
By the narrow meaning of copy — lifting an existing ritual and renaming it — no. The temple ordinances were developing six years before Joseph entered a lodge, the plan to reveal them was on record in 1841, and the content, purpose, and access of the endowment differ from Masonry at the root. By the looser meaning — did Masonry’s forms influence how the endowment was presented? — some outward elements show a resemblance the Saints acknowledged and explained rather than hid.
And the second question reframes the first. The Masonic ceremony was not an ancient vault Joseph cracked; it was an eighteenth-century moral drama staged at Solomon’s Temple and drawn from the Bible. Both the endowment and the lodge point back to that same temple — one claiming to restore it, the other borrowing it as allegory. Borrowed forms, revealed substance: and the borrowed forms turn out to be far younger than the headline assumes.
Quick Answers
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Joseph Smith copy the Mormon temple ceremony from the Masons?
No, not in the sense of lifting a ritual. Joseph became a Freemason in March 1842 and introduced the endowment seven weeks later, and the two share some outward forms. But the temple’s washing and anointing began in Kirtland in 1836, and an 1841 revelation had already commanded a temple where God would reveal His ordinances. The Church teaches that Masonry was a catalyst for revelation, not the source of the endowment’s content.
Where did the Freemasons get their rituals?
From three places. The organizational form — lodges, oaths, working tools as symbols — descends from medieval stonemasons’ guilds. The central ceremonies, including the Hiram Abiff legend and the Master Mason degree, were composed in England in the early 1700s. And the temple imagery in those ceremonies was drawn from the Bible’s account of Solomon’s Temple.
Is Freemasonry ancient?
Organized Freemasonry dates to the founding of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717, with documented craft roots back to about 1390. Masonic tradition claims descent from Solomon’s Temple and ancient mystery schools, but mainstream Masonic historians treat those pedigrees as allegory rather than documented history.
Was Hiram Abiff a real person?
The Bible describes Hiram (or Huram) of Tyre, a skilled bronze-worker who helped build Solomon’s Temple. The Masonic story of his murder by three workmen and his symbolic raising is not in scripture; it is an eighteenth-century allegory built onto the biblical figure to teach fidelity and the certainty of death.
Why are Mormon temple ceremonies similar to Masonic rituals?
Both use staged instruction, symbolic gestures, and special clothing, and both are set against the imagery of Solomon’s Temple, which each drew from the Bible. The difference is the claim: Joseph Smith said the endowment came by revelation, through the power of God, while Freemasonry makes no claim to revelation and traces its ritual to the builders of Solomon’s Temple as allegory. Latter-day Saints who experienced both understood Masonry as a degenerated remnant of ancient temple worship, so a resemblance was expected.
Was Joseph Smith a Freemason?
Yes. He was initiated and raised in the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge in March 1842. Several early Latter-day Saint leaders, including his brother Hyrum, had been Masons years earlier.
Are Mormon temple ceremonies secret?
The Church describes them as sacred rather than secret. Members do not discuss the specifics outside the temple because the ordinances are meant to be experienced reverently, not because the temple’s purpose is hidden.
If both ceremonies trace to Solomon’s Temple, do they share the same source?
In a sense, yes — but not each other. Solomon did not invent his Temple; scripture says its pattern was given by revelation (1 Chronicles 28:11–19). Freemasonry borrowed that Temple’s imagery secondhand, as a moral allegory; Joseph Smith said the ordinances were revealed to him directly by God, the same source Solomon drew from. The shared imagery is a common inheritance, not one tradition copying the other.
What does it mean to become “perfect” in the temple?
The word translated “perfect” in Matthew 5:48 and Ephesians 4:13 is the Greek teleios, meaning complete, whole, or brought to full purpose — not flawless. The covenants made from baptism through the temple shape a person, step by step, into the image of Jesus Christ, so that the “natural man” is made complete in Him — the way a rough stone is finished and fitted into its place.
The Harder Questions, Answered
The first nine recipients were experienced Masons — which is exactly why their testimony matters. Men who knew Masonry from the inside described the endowment as something Masonry pointed toward, not something drawn from it. Kimball called Masonry a degenerated form of priesthood; Fielding called it a “stepping stone.” Insiders are harder to fool than outsiders.
Freemasonry’s structure descends from medieval stonemasons’ guilds, but the ceremonies most often compared to the endowment — the Master Mason degree and the Hiram Abiff drama — were composed in England between roughly 1717 and 1738. Their temple setting comes straight from the biblical account of Solomon’s Temple. It is not an ancient secret; it is an early-modern moral play.
The seven weeks is real, but the endowment was not built in seven weeks: its washing and anointing date to Kirtland in 1836, and the 1841 revelation already promised temple ordinances. And the Masonic ritual being compared was itself a century-old, Bible-derived composition. The 1842 date marks a public unveiling, not a moment of invention — on either side.
Both ceremonies are staged at Solomon’s Temple because both drew that imagery from the same Bible. Masonry adopted the Temple as moral allegory; the endowment presents itself as the Temple’s ordinances restored. A resemblance between two things drinking from one well is expected — and it does not establish that one copied the other.
Whether the endowment restores a literal ancient rite is a question of faith, not something a document can settle. What the record establishes is narrower and still decisive for the “copy” charge: the ordinances predate Nauvoo Masonry, the Masonic ritual is itself recent, and the strongest scholarship places the endowment closer to the Bible than to the lodge.
Whether the endowment restores a literal ancient rite is a question of faith, not something a document can settle. What the record establishes is narrower and still decisive for the “copy” charge: the ordinances predate Nauvoo Masonry, the Masonic ritual is itself recent, and the strongest scholarship places the endowment closer to the Bible than to the lodge.