John Edwards books: Josephus (1812) and Holy Week (1763)

About This Document

Two rare volumes that researcher John Edwards bought in 2019 and first showed the team in Season 11: The Whole Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus, published in 1812, and Holy Week, published in 1763. Edwards believes they belong to a five-volume series and that both carry Masonic ciphers. A page he thinks was added later is signed by member number 137, which he links to Masonic numerology, and underlined letters spell out names and phrases, among them Daniel Dyson and John Easson, two of the first Freemasons in Nova Scotia. Edwards reads the books as information passed from the Templars to the Rosicrucians and into the Masonic tradition, alongside the Royal Arch Ode, a 19th-century text recited in Masonic ceremonies, and he presented a sketch he interprets as the Ark of the Covenant next to a map of Oak Island.

In Season 12, Edwards and author Scott Clarke took the War Room through the books again. Edwards pointed to a square structure on the map that he believes corresponds to the northern end of the swamp, and to drawings of a menorah and an eight-pointed cross, the symbol of the Knights of Malta, placed beside references to the Temple of Solomon and the Temple of Jerusalem. John Easson belonged to the lodge at Annapolis Royal, the oldest in Canada, which met at the Sinclair Inn beneath murals that include a Crusader tent. Scott Clarke concluded that the books describe a multigenerational effort linking Biblical treasures to Oak Island; Judi Rudebusch and Doug Crowell later drew on the same volumes for the Knights of Malta research that led the team to Malta and to Isaac de Razilly.

A third book has never been examined by anyone on the team. Edwards showed a photograph of a page from an 1824 French edition of Instructions générales en forme de catéchisme, a catechism instruction manual, with a drawing of what looks like Oak Island and what could be the vault later uncovered in the swamp. In March 2024 Rick Lagina asked fans in a public video appeal to help find the original, tomes I, II and IV of that edition. Until a copy is found and the page checked, the drawing rests on the photograph alone.

At Fort Point in LaHave in Season 13, local historian and author Joan Dawson recognized the Josephus volume, noted a Maltese cross and the word Malta on its pages and what appears to be a code in a margin, and said it is the kind of book a Knight of Malta such as Isaac de Razilly would have kept in his library.