Baphomet (Holy Name)

"While modern scholars and the Oxford English Dictionary state that the origin of the name Baphomet was a probable Old French version of "Mahomet", alternative etymologies have also been proposed.
In the 18th century, speculative theories arose that sought to tie the Knights Templar with the origins ofFreemasonry.[32] Bookseller, Freemason and Illuminist[33] Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811), inVersuch über die Beschuldigungen welche dem Tempelherrenorden gemacht worden, und über dessen Geheimniß (1782), was the first to claim that the Templars were Gnostics, and that "Baphomet" was formed from the Greek words βαφη μητȢς, baphe metous, to mean Taufe der Weisheit, "Baptism of Wisdom".Nicolai "attached to it the idea of the image of the supreme God, in the state of quietude attributed to him by the Manichaean Gnostics", according to F. J. M. Raynouard, and "supposed that the Templars had a secret doctrine and initiations of several grades" which "the Saracens had communicated ... to them." He further connected the figura Baffometi with the pentagram of Pythagoras:
Émile Littré (1801–1881) in Dictionnaire de la langue francaise asserted that the word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab, an abbreviation of templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, 'abbot' or 'father of the temple of peace of all men.' His source is the "Abbé Constant", which is to say, Alphonse-Louis Constant, the real name of Eliphas Levi.
Arkon Daraul proposed that "Baphomet" may derive from the Arabic word أبو فهمة Abu fihama(t), meaning "The Father of Understanding". "Arkon Daraul" is widely thought to be a pseudonym of Idries Shah (1924–1996).
Hugh J. Schonfield (1901–1988), one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, argued in his book The Essene Odysseythat the word "Baphomet" was created with knowledge of the Atbash substitution cipher, which substitutes the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet for the last, the second for the second last, and so on. "Baphomet" rendered in Hebrew is בפומת; interpreted using Atbash, it becomes שופיא, which can be interpreted as the Greek word "Sophia", meaning wisdom. This theory is an important part of the plot of the novel The Da Vinci Code."
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Category:Templar