{"id":85888,"date":"2020-06-15T12:29:54","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T18:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=85888"},"modified":"2020-06-15T12:29:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T18:29:54","slug":"the-sacred-embrace-and-the-sacred-handclasp-in-ancient-mediterranean-religions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/06\/the-sacred-embrace-and-the-sacred-handclasp-in-ancient-mediterranean-religions.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Edfu<\/a>
The pylon of the Temple of Horus at Edfu in Upper Egypt, which we have visited several times recently.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, from my longtime friend and onetime missionary companion in the onetime Switzerland Z\u00fcrich Mission, Professor Stephen D. Ricks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Abstract:<\/strong> This article describes examples of the sacred embrace and the sacred handclasp in the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms of ancient Egypt, in ancient Mediterranean regions, and in the classical and early Christian world. It argues that these actions are an invitation and promise of entrance into the celestial realms. The sacred embrace may well have been a preparation, the sacred handclasp the culminating act of entrance into the divine presence.<\/em><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

[Editor\u2019s Note: <\/strong>Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.<\/span><\/p>\n

See Stephen D. Ricks, \u201cThe Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions,\u201d in Ancient Temple Worship: Proceedings of The Expound Symposium 14 May 2011,<\/em> ed. Matthew B. Brown, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Stephen D. Ricks, and John S. Thompson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 159\u201370. Further information at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/books\/ancient-temple-worship\/<\/a>.]<\/span><\/p>\n

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Also up on the Interpreter Foundation website:<\/p>\n

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\u201cBook of Moses Insights\u00a0#007: Enoch\u2019s Teaching Mission: Could Joseph Smith Have Borrowed \u201cMahijah\/Mahujah\u201d from the Book of Giants?\u00a0(Moses 6:40)\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cHealing Rifts among the Nephites (Alma 16)\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

A Video Supplement forCome, Follow Me<\/em> Book of Mormon Lesson 24\u00a0\u201cEnter into the Rest of the Lord\u201d (Alma 8-12)<\/span><\/p>\n

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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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These items are made available to you and to the public at no charge. \u00a0The work is done overwhelmingly by volunteers, the authors receive no royalties or commissions, the leadership of the Interpreter Foundation draws no salary, no wages. \u00a0For the expenses that we cannot avoid, and for the workers whom we cannot fail to pay or are unwilling to seek to exploit for free, we depend almost entirely upon donations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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One of the things that worried me during my longtime involvement with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and its (in a sense, temporary) successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, was its relatively limited reach. \u00a0Even our best selling books would typically sell in the range of only three to five thousand copies. \u00a0We had a couple of titles that sold ten thousand or so. \u00a0And now they\u2019re out of print. \u00a0Having been conceived and born from the outset as an online venture, however, the Interpreter Foundation has a potentially much greater reach than that, and its audience is unlimited by oceans, customs duties, and national borders. \u00a0(I don\u2019t have the statistics at my fingertips right now for our current actual reach, but we have long been doing considerably better in many ways than our old FARMS\/Maxwell books and journals used to do.)<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, from my longtime friend and onetime missionary companion in the onetime Switzerland Z\u00fcrich Mission, Professor Stephen D. Ricks: \u00a0 \u201cThe Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions\u201d Abstract: This article describes examples of the sacred embrace and the sacred handclasp in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    New on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, from my longtime friend and onetime missionary companion in the onetime Switzerland Z\u00fcrich\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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