But Terrasson knew the Greek and Latin writers well. Terrasson had no access to Egyptian sources and he would be long dead before Egyptian hieroglyphics could be deciphered. The Masons in turn derived their misconceptions about Egyptian mystery and initiation rites from the eighteenth century work of fiction Sethos (1731) by the Abbe Jean Terrasson (1670-1750), a professor of Greek. James's principal sources were Masonic, especially The Ancient Mysteries and Modern Masonry (1909) by the Rev. Fritze and philosopher Robert Todd Carroll all call the book and its claims pseudohistorical. Moses, Albert Gelpi, Mary Lefkowitz, Ronald H. Stolen Legacy and its thesis have generally been considered pseudohistory by historians. The book draws on the writings of freemasonry to support its claim that the Greco-Roman mysteries originate from an 'Egyptian Mystery System', although as historians point out, James does not cite these sources accurately. He also mentions prominent Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato who are said to have studied in Egypt. James also cites earlier Ancient Greek sources such as Herodotus who describe the cultural debt of Greece to Egypt. In this book, James claims that the ancient Greeks were not the original authors of Greek philosophy, but that ideas and concepts were stolen from the Ancient Egyptians when Alexander the Great 'invaded Egypt and captured the Royal Library at Alexandria and plundered it', and that Aristotle's ideas came from these stolen books and that he established his school within the library. James was the author of Stolen Legacy: The Greeks Were Not the Authors of Greek Philosophy, But the People of North Africa, Commonly Called the Egyptians (also known as Stolen Legacy: Greek Philosophy is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy), first published in 1954. James was a freemason and was associated with Prince Hall Freemasonry. James died two years after publishing Stolen Legacy in 1954. He was Professor of Logic and Greek at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, before working at Arkansas AM&N College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

James earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Durham University in England and gained his doctorate at Columbia University in New York. George Granville Monah James (Novem– June 30, 1956) was a Guyanese-American historian and author, known for his 1954 book Stolen Legacy, which argues that Greek philosophy and religion originated in ancient Egypt.

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