There is a single line tucked into the Old Testament that feels easy to read past until you really stop and think about it. Solomon’s Temple, one of the most ambitious construction projects in ancient history, was built without the sound of a hammer, axe or iron tool at the site. The stones arrived already cut. Already shaped. Already perfect.
That detail alone is strange enough. But once you start asking how, things get weird fast.
That is exactly where Josh Hooper, Andy DeNoon and Lily Hooper take listeners in a recent episode of the Ninjas Are Butterflies. What begins as a casual Bible observation quickly spirals into one of the strangest conspiracies tied to a biblical event most people think they already understand.
Hooper points straight to the verse in 1 Kings 6:7. No iron tools on the Temple Mount. None. Not during construction. Not even the sound of them. The stones were shaped elsewhere using a method the Bible never explains.
That silence is where the conspiracy lives.
To fill the gap, the hosts turn to Jewish tradition, specifically stories preserved in the Talmud. They are careful to flag this as extra-biblical material, written long after the events of Scripture and not authoritative for Christians. Still, it is the place where ancient Jewish thinkers tried to answer the same question modern readers ask today.
Their answer? Something called the Shamir.
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According to those traditions, Solomon didn’t rely on chisels or blades. He used a mysterious object or entity capable of cutting stone without touching it. The descriptions sound less like craftsmanship and more like science fiction. A green ray that splits rock effortlessly. A force that causes stone to part the way a flower opens. Sometimes it is described as a worm-like creature. Other times as a stone. Other times as something closer to raw energy.
Lily notes how quickly the language moves from practical to supernatural. Whatever the Shamir was supposed to be, it did not behave like a tool. It behaved like a power.
In the Talmudic account, Solomon is forbidden from using iron because it is associated with warfare and bloodshed. God’s house, the tradition says, should not be built with instruments of death. That leaves Solomon with an impossible problem until he is told the Shamir exists and can be obtained from Ashmedai, a figure described as a king of demons. Or perhaps better known as a principality (rulers of darkness, etc.)
According to the story, Ashmedai is captured through deception, questioned and forced to reveal the Shamir’s location. It turns out the Shamir is guarded by a mythical bird, described as a rooster-like mountain creature that uses the Shamir to cut stone for its nest. Solomon’s men trick the bird, steal the Shamir and use it to build the Temple without iron.
If this sounds like a fever dream, that is part of the appeal. The hosts are not presenting this as hidden Scripture. They are walking listeners through an ancient conspiracy that sits alongside the biblical text, not inside it.
They then connect the Shamir legend to ancient stone structures around the world. Massive blocks in Peru and elsewhere fit together so precisely that they look melted into place. Some tunnels appear glassy, as if they had been exposed to intense heat. In many cases, the building techniques appear suddenly in history and then vanish just as suddenly.
What if ancient civilizations had access to something we no longer understand? What if the Shamir story is a distorted memory of a lost technology? The tradition that the Shamir could only be contained in lead adds fuel to the fire, since lead is used today to shield radiation. That detail alone has led some to speculate about energy-based tools or forces far beyond primitive assumptions about the ancient world.
The story gets even stranger. Some Jewish traditions claim that the Shamir existed before Adam and Eve, alongside objects such as Moses’ staff. In that framework, the Shamir is not an invention at all. It is a relic of creation itself, later handled by beings both divine and rebellious.
At this point, the hosts do something important. They slow down.
None of this, they stress, comes from the Bible. These are not scriptural accounts. They are traditions, legends and speculative explanations layered around a real biblical event. And that distinction matters. Scripture stands on its own, and the Bible explicitly instructs believers to test everything rather than accept claims uncritically.
But there is also room for wonder. The Bible is not shy about the supernatural. It records miracles, divine interventions and events that defy natural explanation. Exploring wild traditions like the Shamir does not rewrite our faith. It simply reminds us that history may be stranger than modern categories allow.
This is a conspiracy wrapped in biblical history, not because it replaces Scripture, but because it orbits it. A reminder that one unexplained verse can open the door to centuries of speculation, myth and unanswered questions.
Whether the Shamir was fiction, metaphor or something else entirely, the fact that people have been trying to explain Solomon’s Temple for thousands of years says something profound.
James Lasher, a seasoned writer and editor at Charisma Media, combines faith and storytelling with a background in journalism from Otterbein University and ministry experience in Guatemala and the LA Dream Center. A Marine Corps and Air Force veteran, he is the author of The Revelation of Jesus: A Common Man’s Commentary and a contributor to Charisma magazine.
