I’m sure we’ve all heard the earth-shattering news by now, that Dan Brown’s sequel to The DaVinci Code (hereafter DVC) is due out on September 15. I’m relieved that he got it to us before 2012.

Brown’s sequel is now entitled, The Lost Symbol.  It was going to be titled The Solomon Key, or so his website told us in the wake of DVC’s success.  His website informed readers that the sequel had something to do with freemasonry in America, but that it was also tied to the material in DVC.

I’m quite certain Brown will say something about how Solomon’s temple was created to somehow transmit some lost Egypto-Gnostic secret knowledge, and about how that knowledge was brought to America via freemasonry.  While Brown made people wait years for the sequel confirmation, PaleoBabble is far more responsive. Let’s get the debunking started right away. If you’re a freemason or a Dan Brown sycophant, you may want to stop reading now.

One of the things I’m sure Brown’s “meticulous research” (his phrase in the DVC, which was subsequently hacked to bits by scholars of all religious persuasions all over the world) will have overlooked (since it doesn’t further the Gnostic idea) is the fact that Solomon’s temple was not modeled after Egyptian temples.  It is distinctly Syro-Palestinian, with a dash of Phoenician elements (the Bible tells us Hiram of Tyre sent Solomon help in the construction). Toward making that point, here’s an article from BAR about a non-biblical temple that is the closest in design to the Bible’s description of Solomon’s temple ever found.