THE YEAR OF LIGHT



THE YEAR OF LIGHT

Every Mason is familiar with the Craft's practice of dating its documents both in the present era and in an era dated four thousand years earlier. These eras are read and abbreviated "A.D." and "A.L." "A.D. is the abbreviation of the Latin Anno Domini, meaning "the year of our Lord," while "A.L." is the abbreviation of the Latin Anno Lucis, meaning "the year of Light." This "year of Light" refers to the present year with reference to the Creation, and thus at least implies that Masonry dates from that time. When early Christian scholars endeavoured to construct a history of the world, their chief source was the Old Testament. In arriving at the date of Creation the task seemed simple enough, for one only had to read the genealogies of Genesis, correlate them with the genealogy in the Gospel According to Matthew, assign some term of years to each generation, and then do the appropriate arithmetic. Or, even simpler, one had only to accept the fact that God labored in His creation for six days and that, according to the Psalmist, a thousand years are but a day in the sight of God. Each idea had its disciples, and learned men spent lifetimes in "proving" their theories. The church father, Jerome, and the church historian, Eusebius, followed the genealogies, concluded that Creation had occurred no more than four thousand years before Christ. Centuries later, however, Martin Luther, in his Commentary on Genesis, said, "We know, on authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist". It remained for yet another man to fix a date of Creation that would be accepted by most English-speaking people for two hundred years or more. James Ussher, or Ussher, was born in Dublin in 1581, and was educated for the church. In time he became a bishop of the Church of England and the author of weighty books now long since forgotten. His only interest for us is in the fact of his computations of the Creation. In the book published about 1650, Ussher demonstrated that the date of Creation was 4004 years before Christ. In view of the fact that both Jerome and Eusebius had arrived at substantially the same conclusion, there was nothing in Ussher's finding that was new, and, but for one fact, they would have been forgotten. An enterprising publisher inserted Ussher's chronology in the margin of certain reference editions of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible, which had first appeared in 1611. Like many a marginal note in history, it was soon invested with almost as much sanctity as the text itself, and it was to omitted until the publication of the Revised Version in England in 1881. We may suppose that the ordinary people - the people whose lives and speech and thinking were so profoundly shaped by the King James Version of the Bible - readily accepted Ussher's date of the Creation as authoritative fact and accepted it uncritically. We may suppose, too, that modern Speculative Masonry, which began to appear in organized form within fifty years of so of Ussher's figures appeared in the Bible, just as readily accepted the authority of Ussher's date and applied it for their own purposes. Not many people today will seriously argue that Ussher's calculations were correct. Why then, you may ask, do we bother in this enlightened day to include in our Masonic practices a date which is at best archaic and at worst wholly erroneous? This is a reasonable question, but one to which the answer is reasonably apparent. Very little in Masonic lore is based on historical fact. Masonry never set itself up to be the guardian of history. Its teaching, it has been said, are veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. Around the bare bones of the Biblical story of Solomon and his Temple, Masonry has constructed an elaborate myth by means of which it teaches its philosophy of life and death.

How old Masonry is depends upon whether one considers the age of the institution or the age of its ideas. If God created man - and this we cannot doubt - may we not suppose that God planted in the mind of His creature the ideas of Brotherly Love and of Truth and of Justice? And if Masonry chooses to date itself from the inception of its ideas rather than its form, who can argue against it? So, each year is for Masonry, Anno Lucis, the year of light.

This article, Published in Masonic Bulletin, Grand Lodge of British Columbia, January, 1971 was written by L. L. Walker, Jnr., and originally published in the Texas Freemason.

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