Bearers of Burden.
Bearers of Burden. II Chronicles 2:18 enumerates the bearers of burden at the building of King Solomon’s Temple, but whoever translated that into the Masonic ritual as 70,000 Entered Apprentices was wide of the mark in understating the place an Entered Apprentice occupied among the Medieval Freemasons. An Entered Apprentice might be not only a skillful stone squarer but also an artistic carver of freestone to make the mouldings, borders, ogees, ribs, volutes, and decorations of all kinds, or even a sculptor providing human and other figures to fill niches and other places in a cathedral. At the other extreme, he might be a practical engineer who was able to estimate the comparative thrusts of stresses exerted by two counterbalancing forces, or the strength of an arch. He was simply less skilled than a Fellow of Craft.
