Dr.
Christenson is LDS. Some of the comments in his preface might be
especially interesting to LDS audiences, though they should be
interesting to all readers.
The preface and introduction are
beautifully written. I especially enjoyed his personal account of how
the elderly Quiché people he encountered one night showed deep
respect for sacred written words of their ancestors (p. 6):
Before
the others left for the night, I asked if they would like to hear the
words of their fathers. This was greeted with indulgent smiles of
disbelief, since few of their parents were alive and they were sure
that I couldn’t have known them. But I told them that it wasn’t
their fathers’ words that I carried with me, but rather those
of their fathers’ fathers’ (repeated many times) fathers,
dating back nearly five hundred years. I happened to have with me a
copy of the Popol
Vuh
manuscript, a book that was compiled in the mid-sixteenth century at
a town that still exists less than thirty miles from where we sat. I
began to read from the first page of the book:
THIS
IS THE ACCOUNT of when all is still silent and placid. All is silent
and calm.
Hushed and empty is the womb of the sky.
THESE,
then, are the first words, the first speech. There is not yet one
person, one animal, bird, fish, crab, tree, rock, hollow, canyon,
meadow, or forest. All alone the sky exists. The face of the earth
has not yet appeared. Alone lies the expanse of the sea, along with
the womb of all the sky. There is not yet anything gathered together.
All is at rest. Nothing stirs. All is languid, at rest in the sky.
There is not yet anything standing erect. Only the expanse of the
water, only the tranquil sea lies alone. There is not yet anything
that might exist. All lies placid and silent in the darkness, in the
night. All alone are the Framer and the Shaper, Sovereign and Quetzal
Serpent, They Who Have Borne Children and They Who Have Begotten
Sons. Luminous they are in the water, wrapped in quetzal feathers and
cotinga feathers. (Popol
Vuh,
pp. 67-69)
After
I had read a page or two from the account of the creation of the
earth, I stopped and waited for their reaction. No one spoke for some
time. Finally, the elderly man with the sick boy asked if he might
hold the unbound pages of the manuscript copy for a moment. He gently
took it from my hands and with great care turned its pages.
“These
are the words of my ancient fathers?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do
you know what you have done for them?” I wasn’t quite
sure what he meant, so I didn’t answer at first. “You
make them live again by speaking their words.”
I
love that. I read it before I realized that the translator was an LDS
scholar, but sensed through his respect for the ancients and in
sharing this story that he "got it." Ancient scripture is a
treasure to be cherished. It turns the hearts of the children to the
fathers.
The Popol
Vuh
has often been of interest to LDS people if only for the fact that it
reminds us that some ancient Native Americans prized the written word
and kept texts that described the Creation and other important
events. It also reminds us that traditions not just of writing
but of sacred scripture and prophecy were had in Mesoamerica.
In
considering where in the Americas The Book of Mormon might have taken
place, one of the many factors pointing to Mesoamerica is the
existence of ancient writing there. Established traditions of
advanced writing systems flourished anciently in that region.
Christensen (p. 23) observes that the Mayans had an advanced writing
system combining phonetic and logographic elements capable of writing
any word that could be spoken (p. 23):
Las
Casas was particularly impressed by the fact that the Maya could
write “everything they desired.” The Maya were, in fact,
the only people in the New World who had a writing system at the time
of the Spanish conquest which had this capability.
The
Mayans apparently had thousands of texts when the Spaniards came. One
of the greatest tragedies of history was the wanton destruction of
Mayan records by the Spanish, wiping out almost all their writings,
including sacred texts (p. 23):
Only
four lowland Maya codices are known to have escaped these purges. We
can only add our own laments to those of the Maya over the
irretrievable loss of a people’s literary heritage. Of the many
hieroglyphic books that once existed in the highlands, including the
Pre-Columbian version of the Popol
Vuh,
not a single one is known to have survived.
A
Sacred Book from Across the Sea?
A
few things of special interest to LDS readers crop up in the Popol
Vuh.
On page 23, Christenson writes:
In
the preamble to the Popol
Vuh,
its Quiché authors wrote that the contents were based on an
ancient book from across the sea (p. 64). In a later passage, the
source of these writings is identified as Tulan, which they located
across the sea to the east (p. 259), apparently a reference to the
Maya lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Quiché
lords held these “writings of Tulan” in great reverence
and consulted them often (p. 287).
I
cannot help but wonder if that land across the sea to the east, the
source of the sacred book that the ancients used to consult often,
might have been a little further east than Yucatan. Say, perhaps,
Jerusalem? Well, that's just hopeful speculation for now, so I'll
have to settle for the Yucatan.
Scripture
and Sacred Stones as Instruments of Vision
Another
interesting little gem, so to speak, comes from pages 24-25:
The
fact that the contents of the original Popol
Vuh
predated the Spanish conquest gave them an aura of mystery and power.
Its authors referred to the ancient book upon which the Popol
Vuh
was based as an ilb'al,
meaning “instrument of sight or vision” (p. 64; lines
51-52).
The
word is used today to refer to the clear quartz crystals that Quiché
priests use in divinatory ceremonies. It may also be used to refer to
magnifying glasses or spectacles, by which things may be seen more
clearly. Thus the rulers of the Quichés consulted the Popol
Vuh
in times of national distress as a means of seeing the future:
They
knew if there would be war. It was clear before their faces. They saw
if there would be death, if there would be hunger. They surely knew
if there would be strife. There was an instrument of sight. There was
a book. Popol
Vuh
was their name for it. (p. 287)
LDS
readers might recall the discourse in Alma 37 (and elsewhere in LDS
scripture) that links the special interpreters, the stone, with the
revelatory gift of seeing or prophecy and with translation of
scripture. Also related is the topic of the Urim and Thummim or also
the seerstone, tools used to help a seer see. Interesting, in my
opinion.
Another
Redundant Text?
One
of the most common complaints against The Book of Mormon can also be
fairly lodged against the Popol
Vuh.
Christenson explains the "problem" with the Popol
Vuh
on page 34:
Yet
the beauty of Quiché poetry may sound awkward and repetitive
when translated into European languages. Some translators in the past
have ignored or failed to recognize the poetic nature of the Popol
Vuh,
particularly its use of parallelism, and have tried to improve its
seemingly purposeless redundancy by eliminating words, phrases, and
even whole sections of text which they deemed unnecessary. While this
unquestionably helps to make the story flow more smoothly, in keeping
with our modern taste for linear plot structure, it detracts from the
character of Quiché high literature. Welch points out that “in
many ancient contexts, repetition and even redundancy appear to
represent the rule rather than the exception” (Welch 1981, 12).
Yes,
he's quoting John Welch of chiasmus fame. And yes, chiasmus is one of
the forms of parallelism found in the Popol
Vuh
(see pp. 37-39 of the Introduction), as in The Book of Mormon, and in
ancient Hebraic poetry. Cool. (Yes, chiasmus is a complex issue and
its presence is not necessarily proof of anything, but deliberate,
artistic chiasmus in sacred texts is noteworthy for several reasons.
See related discussions at Mormanity.org and related content at
JeffLindsay.com.)
I
am grateful for the beautiful translation and respectful introductory
comments that Professor Christenson has offered, and thank him for
his service to the Quiché people. By helping to preserve and
share the words of the ancients, he has helped them to live again for
their descendants and for us.
I
hope you'll read at least some of the Popol
Vuh
and be grateful for the miracle of its preservation. I hope you'll be
even more grateful for the miracle of the preserved text of The Book
of Mormon, a sacred text from ancient writers who saw our day and
speak to us now as a voice from the dust.
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.