Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In 1843, Joseph Smith said he had a vision of the resurrection of the dead that included handclasps. Latter Day Saints who attend the temple know that there's a lot of sacred significance that's part of handclasps. And Spencer Krause here has done some really interesting work tracing the hand clasp through ancient Christian, ancient biblical connections with ritual resurrection. So welcome to Informed Saints. I'm Jasmine Rapley. We've got Neil Rapley, Steven Smoot, and today Spencer Krause is joining us. Welcome.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Hey, thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: I remember you from the Lady Eclect Day episode. Weren't you on that one, Spencer?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: You look familiar to me. Yeah, yeah, I look familiar to myself as well.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay. I thought I saw you somewhere. Yeah. Glad to have you.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Spencer's been on our show before with Lincoln Blue Mel, talking about a new discovery in the New Testament. And this time we're here to talk about a paper Spencer's done in the Temple Searship, Craftsmanship and Fellowship, which is a volume of the Temple on Mount Zion series. And he's done a paper on all about ritual hand clasps. God hath shown unto me a vision, the sacred hand clasp and the resurrection of the dead. So other scholars have talked about how hand clasps have been used in ritual settings, but I liked that this paper talks specifically about how it connects to resurrection. So I mentioned at the beginning that Joseph Smith gave this vision of the dead in 1843. Can you walk us through a little bit, what's going on with Joseph Smith and his conception of handclaps at this time?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. So Joseph Smith had been focused on building the temple at Nauvoo at this time. And in April, he actually gives this sermon on the temple grounds. So they're outside the temple, they're all gathered together. And Joseph had been asked to give a lot of funeral, funeral sermons at this time. He just couldn't have time to do all of them. So he basically did a one stop shop where he gave this big sermon on the resurrection of the dead. And part of the. The reason that he had done this is he just heard that Elder Lorenzo Barnes, a missionary serving in Great Britain, had recently passed away. He just got a letter about this from Parley P. Pratt. And this kind of underscores a lot of what he had seen.
And at one point in this, in this sermon he's recorded as saying, God hath shown unto me a vision of the resurrection of the dead. And he saw the dead, as they were rising, take each other by the hand and embrace each other, saying, you know, my father and my brother, my mother and my sister.
And it became this moment of reuniting families.
Now, in other sermons that Joseph Smith would give, DNC129 is probably the most famous one. You have other instances of a hand clasp being used.
He starts talking about this as early as 1839, in having come out of Missouri and the persecutions there, in which a hand clasp, he says, is one of the key signs that God has given to us so that we can tell a true messenger of God from a false messenger. And repeatedly, Joseph kept saying that the full meaning of this can only be revealed in the temple of God.
And it is only in the temple that you can fully know God, because in order to fully know something, you have to handle him. And this can only be done in the holy of holies.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: And so for a refresher D&C129, you've got, like, different ways that you can detect whether this is a messenger of light, a messenger of darkness. If it's Satan, you're going to reach for his hand and nothing's going to be there. But if it's, you know, a resurrected being, you can shake his hand, essentially, and there's going to be something tangibly there.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Okay. So he talks about this in D&C129, about how you can clasp someone's hand to detect true messengers from false messengers.
But you also have talked about Joseph Smith using handclasps in the process of resurrection. Is there a connection between those two things?
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I believe there is.
In another sermon, Joseph said that in the resurrection, some are raised to be angels and others are raised to be gods. This can only be revealed in the holy temple. So Joseph is connecting the process of resurrection to something that's only revealed in the temple and through this and through his vision. The hand clasp is one of the key aspects of the ritual resurrection, as you called it, that ties in well with early Christian and Jewish belief, if you will. It's something that appears in the Bible in the Old and New Testaments. It's something that appears in early Christian texts and traditions and even early Christian artwork.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Okay, walk us through some of that. In the Bible, where do we see this resurrection and handclasp motif show up?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: So in the New Testament, we see three instances.
One is when Jesus raises Jairus daughter. You know, this is in the Gospel of, well, all the synoptic gospels, I believe. But I quoted from the Gospel of Luke in my paper.
And Jairus comes to Jesus says, hey, my daughter is sick, please heal her. When they arrive, the daughter had died. And instead of just saying, oh, well, too late, it says Jesus took her by the hand and raised her up. And so you have, you know, this hand clasp and raising her up and she's alive again. She's.
[00:05:33] Speaker D: And if I'm remembering the language of scripture correctly, I think he takes her by the hand and he also commands her to arise.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:41] Speaker C: Talitha Kumi, right? Yeah, yeah. Which in my Aramaic class we talked about that because we don't have that phrase attested anywhere else in Palestinian Aramaic from the time.
[00:05:50] Speaker D: Oh, really?
[00:05:50] Speaker C: It's our only attestation is here. And so we're trying to, you know, I think Talitha is like young woman or whatever is one of our only instances of it. So. But yeah, the idea of like a, A command of some kind, a verbal, dare I say, a key word of some kind, a, you know, a verbal expression you give while taking the right hand and. Yeah, lifting them up.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: And it even ties in with another aspect of Joseph's sermons is he said when the voice calls. So there, there is this verbal action as well as the ritual hand clasp that Joseph saw in this vision.
[00:06:21] Speaker D: Now, I do think it is important from like a do doctrinal or theological perspective to clarify that this is not strictly speaking a resurrection. Right, right. Someone is being raised from the dead. And so there's maybe a typological connection to resurrection. Yes, but we don't believe that she was resurrected to immortal to immortality.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: That's precisely right. And early Christian writers such as Clement of Alexandria at one point, and also you see this in the Acts of Peter, do liken the rising from the dead of the miraculous, healing from the dead to the resurrection. And they even say, like, this is how the resurrection is going to happen in some places. So you do see this. You know, even though the Jairus's daughter is still mortal, she's still going to die. She did die eventually. This is 2,000 years ago.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: You know, she was wig getting
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Jesus likes swig here first.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: So where else does this show up in scripture?
[00:07:25] Speaker B: There's a second similar one in Acts, chapter nine. There's this woman named Dorcas, and she's living in Joppa, and Peter is in a nearby town and he hears that Dorcas, or Tabitha, as she's also called, died. So he goes to visit and he takes her by the hand and. And raises her back up to life.
You have another instance in the book of Acts, chapter 20, which involves not a sacred hand clasp, but a sacred embrace.
Paul is preaching, and there's this guy named Eutychus who is listening to Paul, and he falls out of a tree and dies.
[00:08:06] Speaker C: That's a great story.
[00:08:07] Speaker D: Paul literally bores the guy to death.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Okay, good stuff.
[00:08:14] Speaker D: I feel like this was like he had to do this out of guilt, right?
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah. No, it's really a funny story. It could even prefigure many episodes of Informed Saint. I'm kidding.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: I'm sorry.
What a good show.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: No, no, we'll cut that out.
No, we got in.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Spencer.
[00:08:37] Speaker D: Our audience primarily uses us as like an asmr to go to sleep.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: So. So Eutychus is. Is dead. And it's. Paul goes down and it says that. Well, he says, don't be distressed for he's still alive. Afterwards, he. He puts his arms around him and embraces Eutychus, and Eutychus is brought back to life.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: That reminds me of like Old Testament stories too. Right?
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah. In fact, Elijah and Elisha both raised a widow's son from the dead using a sacred embrace. And Elijah raised the widow of Zareptah's son. It says he stretched himself on the child three times before the child was restored to life. Elisha similarly embraced the dead child and he's brought back to life. You even have in some rabbinic texts, one of them is called Seder el Yahoora Ba, which talks about this and says that these actions by Elisha and Elijah prefigure the resurrection that the Messiah will herald in. In the world to come.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: And yeah, at one point it even connects this with the Messiah will take the dead, lift them up on his throne between his knees and embrace them and thus usher them into the world to come.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: So I mean, when you hear like, okay, he stretched himself over the lad three times, like, that is very distinctive, a little strange. And so you get the sense that it is something like maybe ritual, sacred. But you've called this like a sacred hand clasp when you're lifting someone up from raising from the dead or resurrect. And so my question is like, is there anything like distinctly sacred or ritual about this, or is it just practical? Like, my first thought is like, well, if someone's on the floor and I want to lift them up, like, I just grabbed my hand. So, like, is there anything that can hint that there's might be something deeper here?
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I use the term sacred handclass because that's something that scholars often refer to in temple worship.
You have other instances of the sacred hand clasp. Throughout the Old Testament, scholars such as David M. Calabro and Stephen Ricks, Brent Schmidt have all written about this.
In the ancient temple, there was this ritual handclasp that was performed. And I'm using that phrase here because
[00:10:59] Speaker D: it's something that, if I'm not mistaken, Nibley talked about it too. And it's something that actually shows up in Egyptian coffin texts.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Indeed.
[00:11:08] Speaker D: Yeah. Steven might know a bit about that.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: It's even in facsimile 3, where the figure is being led into Osiris and is being held by the hands. Yeah.
[00:11:16] Speaker D: Right.
We've been talking about the hand clasp, but some of these have also been like, more of an embrace. Right. And there's very much ritual embraces in the ancient world.
In Egypt, like, the pharaoh would have a ritual embrace with one of the gods.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: There's the obelisk of. I think it's Sanwasret ii. We'll show a picture here that I took. It's in the Cairo Museum. And, yeah, it shows them with four different gods. Amun, Ptah and some others. And each one, he's, like, almost cheek to cheek with them. Yeah, they've got their arms around him and everything.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: So what function is that serving? What does it mean?
[00:11:51] Speaker C: It's basically a sense of, like, bringing them into the divine presence to, like, make them one with deity. Right. Like, it's also tokens of, like, familiarity or with, you know, kinship or fraternity, things like that. Right. So I mean, it's very natural. Like just a basic human function is to hug people that you like. And so you can kind of extrapolate that sort of human emotion that comes with that kind of. And the affection that comes with that. And then you can project it onto the ritual sphere.
[00:12:18] Speaker D: It's basically. Yeah, it's this natural thing that's been ritualized.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:12:22] Speaker D: To bring you into the presence of deity, to bring you close, to bring you into a.
[00:12:25] Speaker C: It's a big welcome home hug from the deity. Right. That you give your kids coming home from school. I'm being trivializing a little bit, but that's the sense of it. Yeah.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: And so, in theory, is there any connection of resurrection with the idea of the sacred embrace in Egyptian?
[00:12:39] Speaker C: There is, yeah. Like, one of the phrases is the arms extending the west, like, meaning the grave, the necropolis. The west extends her arms over the deceased being brought into the necropolis. Right. So, yeah, there seems to be some sense of, like, resurrection or afterlife imagery. And. Yeah. David Calabro has a great article on this kind of summarizing that evidence. So I think it's his dissertation, so certainly it's unmistakable.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: So, going back to hand clasps more, does this show up in other cultures outside of the Bible?
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Yes, it does.
In fact, throughout the Mediterranean world. You have that. Brent J. Schmidt has another great article in the same volume, in fact, about that same thing in his book Relational Faith, he talks about it.
And you especially have this in connection with the resurrection and funerary stelae and monuments.
One of the instances is Greek funerary monuments were often depicted as a nice go or a small temple. And sometimes you have people in there and they're giving each other a hand clasp as a token of recognition of family members and this ritual that's happening literally inside a small temple.
[00:13:55] Speaker D: Well, and even beyond that, you talk about in your paper some accounts of early Christian beliefs where they actually have stories and accounts of Jesus or angels going to the underworld to sheol and taking people by the hand and pulling them out of the grave for resurrection. Can you maybe share some of those with us?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: So there are three primary ways that the handclasp appears in early Christian texts with this one is raising the dead. Like we've seen in the New Testament and Old Testament, there's sometimes they take a disciple by the hand as they instruct them how they can then raise the dead. And oftentimes the hand clasp is implied in the following account. And the third is the actual resurrection where Jesus or a divine being takes the dead by the hand and lifts them up into life and glory and exaltation.
You know, Latter Day Saints, when we think of, like Christians will call it, the harrowing of hell. It's the three days between Jesus's crucifixion and his resurrection. We have DNC 138, which is this great vision by Joseph F. Smith where he saw Jesus go down to the realm of the dead and organize the missionary force. Right.
For early Christians, they had a similar text that documented this. It's called the Gospel of Nicodemus or the Acts of Pilate. It goes by either name. And it says there, you know, the King of Glory stretched out his right hand and took hold of our forefather Adam and raised him up. Then he turned also to the rest and said, come with me, all of you who have suffered death through the tree which this man touched. For behold, I raise you all up through the tree of the cross. Thus he went into paradise, holding our forefather Adam by the Hand and he handed him over and all the righteous to Michael the Archangel.
[00:16:00] Speaker C: Sounds a little familiar.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah, a little. Just a little bit, you know, but you even. This was such a compelling story and account for early Christians that even well into the Middle Ages, you have artwork depicting this, especially in Byzantine chapels. In fact, you would see Jesus taking Adam and Eve by the hand with either hand as they're coming up out of their graves. He's standing on the gates of hell, which have been torn down, and Satan is bound beneath them.
He's wounded, he's bruised, he can't do anything. And all of the Old Testament prophets and saints are following behind them. And some of these Byzantine artwork even label this he Anastasis, which speak for the resurrection.
So you have this. This clear view in early Christians mind that the resurrection literally involves taking the dead by the hand and lifting them up to glory and paradise.
There's another fun account called the Gospel of Peter, which talks about Jesus's own resurrection. And in this account, it tells this story from the guards perspectives, as Pilate had these two guards by Jesus's tomb to make sure that no Christian came in and stole the body.
And the angels come, they roll the stone away. The guards are shaking in their boots
[00:17:30] Speaker D: with their sandals, as may be.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: And the angels, it says, go into the tomb. And they walk out supporting a third person and leading him by the hand.
So in this text, you have angels go into the tomb, take Jesus by the hand and lead him out.
And then even there's an early Christian text called 5th Ezra, which it does not explicitly.
[00:17:58] Speaker D: There are so many Ezra, so many Enoch, so many Maccabees.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: Just have one, guys, come on.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: This is more implicit. It does not explicitly talk about a hand clasp, but the Lord says, when I find your dead, I will raise them. I will watch for signs. I will give your dead a place of honor in my resurrection. So this would be implicit, but just keeping in mind that Joseph Smith called the handclasp one of the great signs that can only be taught in the temple. You know, it's possible that the author of 5th Ezra saw this wider Judeo Christian tradition of handclasp in the resurrection and may have been influenced by that as he's writing this.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: So with all these threads of handclasps into these different cultures, how does this connect to Joseph Smith's teachings about the resurrection and handclasps?
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, if we go back to what Joseph Smith taught, he said that the dead would, you know, one take each other by the hand before or while getting up.
Two, embrace their family members and be embraced by them.
And three, through the resurrection, we could be raised up as gods and enter the divine presence.
And you see pretty much all of that throughout these. These texts and these ancient Near Eastern traditions.
You know, the reuniting of families was a big aspect to this. It's one of the reasons that, you know, Mediterranean funerary seal depicted fathers and sons taking each other by the hand, because, you know, it was expected that when you died, you'd be able to, in the heavenly temple, be reunited with your family.
It's a reason that we have, you know, these sources that talk about entering the presence of the gods through. Through such an embrace. Even in Psalm 73, you have that.
You know, it's one of the reasons that this handclasp is such a big deal in the Resurrection to begin with. You know, pretty much everything that Joseph Smith taught about this, maybe without even realizing it, ties back neatly to the ancient world, ancient Jewish and Christian traditions, and even ancient Near Eastern traditions as a whole.
[00:20:18] Speaker C: Yeah. It's abundantly attested, almost to the point of being a cliche. Right. Sacred handclaps and divine embrace. I know. Jasmine, you've touched on your. On your podcast or on your Instagram, your social media several times. I think it's interesting, however, connecting this with funerary culture.
Sam Brown has a really interesting book on the early Mormon conquest of death. Right. One of his big. One of his early monographs he produced, which is kind of interesting. And Sam Brown points out the fact that, like, we are very desensitized to death today. Like, when grandma dies, hopefully in her bed at home with all the family, you get rushed out. The kids, okay, we gotta go. You know, the kids are kind of
[00:20:55] Speaker D: pushed out or maybe in a sterile hospital or something.
[00:20:58] Speaker C: And then, okay, you go.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: And then the food is packaged at the grocery store. And we don't actually have to slaughter animals.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: Yeah, we don't have slaughter animals. But then, so when grandma dies, like, a couple days later, you just show up at the funeral home and she's there in the casket, and she looks very nice. And then you put her in the ground. Right. Like in 19th century funerary culture that Joseph Smith is living in, like, death is, like, very in your face. Right. Like, your family are dying in your home, and you have to be the one to bury them and all this kind of stuff.
[00:21:22] Speaker D: So you prepare them for burying themselves.
[00:21:25] Speaker C: Absolutely.
Stapley has his great new book on the temple, how, like, the Relief Society Was helping with funerary preparations and things like that.
[00:21:32] Speaker D: And I think, like, this isn't just 19th century. Like, we're talking about ancient world stuff. Like that is the. That is the status quo of humanity until, like. Like 100 years ago.
[00:21:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:44] Speaker D: 50 years ago. Like.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Like dealing with death.
[00:21:46] Speaker D: Dealing with death.
[00:21:47] Speaker C: Not professionalizing and having others do it for you.
[00:21:49] Speaker D: And I think that sometimes in our modern world, obviously, like, religion means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
We all get meaning out of religion for a variety of different ways. And I'm not trying to invalidate, however you may connect with religion and God and the truths that the church and the gospel offer, but for the vast majority of human history, religion's primary purpose was to help people cope with death. This conquest of death as.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Make sense of it.
[00:22:23] Speaker D: Help them make sense of it.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
[00:22:25] Speaker D: And when someone does pass away, especially if it's unexpected, that comes right back. Right. I think as much as we like to feel like we have so much more control and we isolate ourselves, insulate ourselves from it a lot more today, at the end of the day, like, this is. This is not about, you know, these intellectual propositions or whatever. Right. This is about, like, what's going to happen when we die.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Right. Am I ever going to see this loved one of mine again in any meaningful sense? Or are they just going to become worm food?
[00:22:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:58] Speaker C: And so, you know, the reason I mentioned this point is because it might be kind of morbid for some people to be connecting sacred hand class with death or whatever, but, like, really it's about eternal life. I would say ultimately that's what, you know, relationships. Yeah.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: That's between you and God or your loved ones and family.
[00:23:14] Speaker C: Yeah. That's a misnomer that people have about the ancient Egyptians. Oh, they were obsessed with death. Right. Mummies and embalming and. Well, no, not really. They were really concerned about ensuring resurrection.
[00:23:24] Speaker D: Preserving life.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Yeah, Preserving it in the eternities. And I feel like we should approach it with that same kind of context.
So even though we might have these somewhat morbid associations with it, ultimately, I think it's a beautiful scene signal towards us. Neil is saying, are we gonna see these people again and have them in a meaningful sense? Is it that same sermon, Spencer, where Joseph Smith also says the thought of annihilation is worse to me than the idea? You know, he says if I. If I can never see my family again, my heart would burst asunder in the moment. Right. Like, he has some very effusive feelings yeah.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: For Joseph, who himself, you know, has had to bury children and his. His father and brothers and he. Death is very in his face. He's very aware with it even before he receives the gold plates. For him to not be able to ever see his family or friends again is a worse thought than just ceasing to exist entirely. He'd rather just cease to be than to think that there's no chance of ever seeing the people he cares about again.
And even in the ancient world, that's probably why temples are so important and connected with this as well.
John Lundquist said that tombs can be, and in Egypt and elsewhere are essentially temples. The unifying principle behind between temple and tomb is resurrection. And they are sacred places and sites of resurrection. And it's also noteworthy that Joseph Smith even said the place where a man is buried is sacred to me, specifically in the ability of the saints to arise, to take each other and even the Savior by the hand and be reunited together.
So tombs and temples really are this place where we're able to be resurrected, essentially.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Even when I think about even the more mundane contexts of handclasps, like, it can signal just intimacy between friends. I mean, a more distant gesture of recognition would be like you wave to someone and then you get closer. Maybe you give them a high five. But if it's in a professional setting or you're friend, you might give him a handshake. But if you're a really good friend or your family, you're probably going to give him a hug. And there's like a progression or hierarchy of intimacy that you can develop with someone. And so I love seeing that the temple provides us with kind of a hierarchy or progression where as we make covenants with God, we start to become more intimate with him, we start to have greater communion with Him. And ultimately it's about giving us this hope that one day we'll approach our Maker. One day we'll be able to see our Maker at the end of our lives and hopefully be embraced by a loving father and enter his presence, have communion with him and have the hope of having that for all of our loved ones. It's really quite beautiful.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know John D. Levinson, he's a Jewish scholar. He wrote this great book called Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, who he also put it, I think, quite beautifully. He said the temple is the antipode of Sheol, as life is the opposite of death and praise is the opposite of oblivion. And the temple offers petitioners what he calls intimations of immortality. That is the striking perception of the higher and better world than what we now inhabit and what has been promised to the faithful. And so I would say, you know, through the temple, we learn and we essentially experience a resurrection in micro, microcosm
[00:26:54] Speaker C: for our birth, our life, our death, passing through the veil, as it were. Right. And then resurrection, eternal life at the end of it.
[00:27:01] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, the temple is fundamentally about providing you the things you need, the tools and the opportunities to open the gate literally for you to go into the resurrection.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah. As Brigham Young families famously said, it's about learning everything that you need to pass by the sentinels in spite of earth and hell.
[00:27:27] Speaker D: You know, based Brigham Young.
[00:27:30] Speaker C: Yeah, great quote.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
And so it's essentially through the resurrection, we'll essentially do what we've already done in ritual, if you will.
[00:27:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Do you have any final thoughts from your research?
[00:27:45] Speaker B: I would just say that, you know, Joseph Smith truly was a prophet of God. And, you know, even when making a passing statement in a funerary sermon that he saw this vision that oftentimes we don't talk enough about, in my opinion, as Latter Day Saints, he is able to restore things that were so clear and prevalent in the ancient world and bring them into a Latter Day Saints understanding and, you know, essentially restore all of these things that had been lost.
It truly is remarkable.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: You heard it here. Joseph speaks a prophet. Church is true. And remember, guys, you can study deeply, believe boldly. If you want to learn more about the hand clasp, we will link this book in the description below. And we'll see you next time.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Sam.
