I've been mulling this over for a few years, and got as far as a couple of article published elsewhere. One time I called it "Mithraic Freemasonry", another time I called it "Mithraic Guardians of Christianity". Either way, the relevant sections are as follows:
IntroductionI will be suggesting something that may come as a surprise to many Masonic Brethren. It might also be perceived as a challenge to some of the most fundamental masonic legends. So, in advance, I am asking you (dear reader) to bear with me, while I try to put the origins of masonic ritual on a foundation that is stronger, both figuratively and literally.
Much of our masonic legend and ritual starts with King Solomon as the patron and founder of the Temple in Jerusalem. But what if this is an innocent mistake? What if the founder of the Temple was not King Solomon?
I will propose (a) that the Temple in Jerusalem was real (so brethren can rest assured there is still great substance to masonic legends and ritual) but (b) the founder of the Temple was the real Roman Emperor Hadrian, not a legendary King Solomon.
I further propose this corrects a series of real historical misunderstandings, where Middle Eastern legends have taken the place of known and documented Roman history.
It does not require a great deal of foresight to anticipate that any meddling with Jewish history might be perceived by some as an anti-Semitic exercise. For that very reason, I have taken great care to base my opinions on the substantial and authoritative work produced by recent Israeli and Jewish archaeologists.
Then a bit of preamble and early chapters1st Jewish War (66-70 A.D.)
Herod's Temple in Jerusalem
Temple of Capitoline Jupiter
With some notes on of Vespasian. (Who, like Hadrian, did a tour of duty in Britain at the opposite end of the Roman Empire)
Wars, and the Temples lost
Jewish uprising
Destruction of Temple of Hadrian
Dura-Europos ("the Pompeii of the Syrian desert")
Dura was dominated by the presence of a Roman garrison but unlike Aelia the city had a polyglot population, patronizing a variety of cults. Mithra and the Romano-Greek deities competed with Syrian, Palmyrian, Mesopotamian, Jewish and Christian gods.
In 256, with a Persian assault imminent, the city's western wall was strengthened by a defensive rampart thrown up by hastily in-filling peripheral buildings. Entombed by the soil were the city's Mithraeum, synagogue and "house-church".
Also
Temple of Jupiter in Damascus, built in the 2nd century and parts of which were incorporated into the Byzantine Church of St John the Baptist and later, into the Omayyad mosque.
The Great Revolt
Using the old adage “follow the money”, we find a lot of the history of the period is preserved in the coinage.
The first of many uprisings by the Jews against the Romans, the Great Revolt began in A.D. 66 and was ultimately unsuccessful. The Romans eventually took Jerusalem back from the Jews, destroying much of the city and its Second Temple in the process.
Stamped on one side of the coins are a chalice and Hebrew inscription that translates to "To the Redemption of Zion." On the other side, the coins bear a motif with a bundle of lulav (palm branch) between two etrogs(a type of yellow citron) and the Hebrew inscription "Year Four," referring to the fourth year of the Great Revolt, around the year 69 or 70.
OK, that's the end of the waffle and preamble.
Chapter Three : Middle Eastern history inventedDespite all the great myths and legends of King David and King Solomon, it's always seemed strange how in just one generation, we went from a lowly shepherd boy (David) throwing stones at the enemy to a son (Solomon) with huge wealth, palaces, fables mines etc. With almost no explanation of what happened in between.
What if, as seems more likely, Middle Eastern propaganda was at work?
From Ha’aretz Magazine, Friday, October 29, 1999
“Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary stories, we did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, we did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon. Those who take an interest have known these facts for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and doesn’t want to hear about it”
Prof. Ze’ev Herzog, head of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University.
In “The Bible Unearthed“ by Israel Finkelstein & Neil Asher Silberman, the authors suggest that the tribes of Israel and Judah came from Canaan and not from Egypt. They say:
The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan—they emerged from within it.
Ref
www.bibleandscience.com/bible/reviews/unearthed.htm(skipping some irrelevant parts)Chapter Four : The Temples rediscovered and confusion createdA couple of centuries later, it was the turn of the local Jewish population to be ousted by a new set of Arab invaders, who made the mistake of thinking the ruins they found were Jewish temples. Perhaps that’s what the locals told them, to diminish the role of the Romans, and not offer them up to the new invaders as a model of how to oppress the locals?
As often happens with historians, what one historian has merely hypothesised as one possibility without any evidence can rapidly become repeated and accepted as fact, often over generations.
Eventually though, a historian will come along and apply some evidence-based medicine. I quote now from the extensive article by Tugia Sagiv.
Could the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa Mosque be built on top of the remains of a Roman temple?
These two structures were built during the Omaric Period during the development of Islam and its expansion outside of Saudi Arabia. It is relatively surprising to see such refined technological abilities already at the beginning of the Arab conquest. Also, the character of the structures from an architectural standpoint is not typical of the Arabic culture and there are no other Arab monuments similar to the Dome of the Rock. Generally, mosques are built from an arrangement of fields of pillars so that the length of the fields stand uniformly in each section of the structure. In the Al-Aksa Mosque, the central field is wider then the fields in the other sections.
Ref :
www.templemount.org/mtmoriah.html