Mark Z. Christensen's Books

Translated Christianities

Nahuatl and Maya Religious Texts

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Translated Christianities

Nahuatl and Maya Religious Texts

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Beginning in the sixteenth century, ecclesiastics and others created religious texts written in the native languages of the Nahua and Yucatec Maya. These texts played an important role in the evangelization of central Mexico and Yucatan. Translated Christianities is the first book to provide readers with English translations of a variety of Nahuatl and Maya religious texts. It pulls Nahuatl and Maya sermons, catechisms, and confessional manuals out of relative obscurity and presents them to the reader in a way that illustrates similarities, differences, and trends in religious text production throughout the colonial period. The texts included in this work are diverse. Their authors range from Spanish ecclesiastics to native assistants, from Catholics to Methodists, and from sixteenth-century Nahuas to nineteenth-century Maya. Although translated from its native language into English, each text illustrates the impact of European and native cultures on its content. Medieval tales popular in Europe are transformed to accommodate a New World native audience, biblical figures assume native identities, and texts admonishing Christian behavior are tailored to meet the demands of a colonial native population. Moreover, the book provides the first translation and analysis of a Methodist catechism written in Yucatec Maya to convert the Maya of Belize and Yucatan. Ultimately, readers are offered an uncommon opportunity to read for themselves the translated Christianities that Nahuatl and Maya texts contained.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

154

Publisher

Penn State Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0271065524

ISBN 13

9780271065526

The Teabo Manuscript

Maya Christian Copybooks, Chilam Balams, and Native Text Production in Yucatán

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Teabo Manuscript

Maya Christian Copybooks, Chilam Balams, and Native Text Production in Yucatán

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Among the surviving documents from the colonial period in Mexico are rare Maya-authored manuscript compilations of Christian texts, translated and adapted into the Maya language and worldview, which were used to evangelize the local population. The Morely Manuscript is well known to scholars, and now The Teabo Manuscript introduces an additional example of what Mark Z. Christensen terms a Maya Christian copybook. Recently discovered in the archives of Brigham Young University, the Teabo Manuscript represents a Yucatecan Maya recounting of various aspects of Christian doctrine, including the creation of the world, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the genealogy of Christ. The Teabo Manuscript presents the first English translation and analysis of this late colonial Maya-language document, a facsimile and transcription of which are also included in the book. Working through the manuscript section by section, Christensen makes a strong case for its native authorship, as well as its connections with other European and Maya religious texts, including the Morely Manuscript and the Books of Chilam Balam. He uses the Teabo Manuscript as a platform to explore various topics, such as the evangelization of the Maya, their literary compositions, and the aspects of Christianity that they deemed important enough to write about and preserve. This pioneering research offers important new insights into how the Maya negotiated their precontact intellectual traditions within a Spanish and Catholic colonial world.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

340

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1477310819

ISBN 13

9781477310816

Aztec and Maya Apocalypses

Old World Tales of Doom in a New World Setting

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Aztec and Maya Apocalypses

Old World Tales of Doom in a New World Setting

By: Mark Z. Christensen

The Second Coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the Final Judgment: the Apocalypse is central to Christianity and has evolved throughout Christianity’s long history. Thus, when ecclesiastics brought the Apocalypse to Indigenous audiences in the Americas, both groups adapted it further, reflecting new political and social circumstances. The religious texts in Aztec and Maya Apocalypses, many translated for the first time, provide an intriguing picture of this process—revealing the influence of European, Aztec, and Maya worldviews on portrayals of Doomsday by Spanish priests and Indigenous authors alike. The Apocalypse and Christian eschatology played an important role in the conversion of the Indigenous population and often appeared in the texts and sermons composed for their consumption. Through these writings from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century—priests’ “official” texts and Indigenous authors’ rendering of them—Mark Z. Christensen traces Maya and Nahua influences, both stylistic and substantive, while documenting how extensively Old World content and meaning were absorbed into Indigenous texts. Visions of world endings and beginnings were not new to the Indigenous cultures of America. Christensen shows how and why certain formulations, such as the Fifteen Signs of Doomsday, found receptive audiences among the Maya and the Aztec, with religious ramifications extending to the present day. These translated texts provide the opportunity to see firsthand the negotiations that ecclesiastics and Indigenous people engaged in when composing their eschatological treatises. With their insights into how various ecclesiastics, Nahuas, and Mayas preached, and even understood, Catholicism, they offer a uniquely detailed, deeply informed perspective on the process of forming colonial religion.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

253

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

080619135X

ISBN 13

9780806191355

Return to Ixil

Maya Society in an Eighteenth-Century Yucatec Town

By: Mark Z. Christensen,Matthew Restall

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Return to Ixil

Maya Society in an Eighteenth-Century Yucatec Town

By: Mark Z. Christensen,Matthew Restall

Return to Ixil is an examination of over 100 colonial-era Maya wills from the Yucatec town of Ixil, presented together and studied fully for the first time. These testaments make up the most significant corpus of Maya-language documents from the colonial period. Offering an unprecedented picture of material and spiritual life in Ixil from 1738 to 1779, they are rare and rich sources for the study of Maya culture and history. Supplemented with additional archival research, the wills provide new and detailed descriptions of various aspects of life in eighteenth-century Ixil. In each chapter, authors Mark Christensen and Matthew Restall examine a different dimension of Ixil’s colonial history, including the role of notaries, Maya participation in a coastal militia, economy and modes of production, religious life and records, and the structures and patterns of familial relationships. These details offer insight into the complex network of societies in colonial Yucatan, colonial Mesoamerica, and colonial Latin America. Including an appendix presenting the original Maya texts as well as translations by Christensen and Restall, Return to Ixil not only analyzes the largest body of substantive wills in any Mayan language known today but also provides a rare closeup view of the inner workings of a colonial Maya town and the communal and familial affairs that made up a large part of the Maya colonial experience. It will be of great interest to Mayanists as well as to students and scholars of history, anthropology, ethnohistory, linguistics, and social history. The publication of this book is supported in part byBrigham Young University and Penn State University.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

317

Publisher

University Press of Colorado

Published Date

ISBN 10

1607329220

ISBN 13

9781607329220

Translated Christianities

Nahuatl and Maya Religious Texts

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Translated Christianities

Nahuatl and Maya Religious Texts

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

154

Publisher

Penn State Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0271065516

ISBN 13

9780271065519

Nahua and Maya Catholicisms

Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Nahua and Maya Catholicisms

Texts and Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Christensen examines ecclesiastical texts written in Nahuatl and Yucatec Maya to illustrate their role in conveying and reflecting various Catholic messages - and thus Catholicisms - throughout colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan. He demonstrates how published and unpublished sermons, confessional manuals, catechisms, and other religious texts betray 'official' and 'unofficial' versions of Catholicism, and how these versions changed throughout the colonial period according to indigenous culture, local situations, and broader early modern events.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

318

Published Date

ISBN 10

080478731X

ISBN 13

9780804787314

The Teabo Manuscript

Maya Christian Copybooks, Chilam Balams, and Native Text Production in Yucatán

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Teabo Manuscript

Maya Christian Copybooks, Chilam Balams, and Native Text Production in Yucatán

By: Mark Z. Christensen

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

340

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1477310819

ISBN 13

9781477310816

Book's by Mark Z. Christensen

Translated Christianities

Translated Christianities

The Teabo Manuscript

The Teabo Manuscript

Aztec and Maya Apocalypses

Aztec and Maya Apocalypses

Return to Ixil

Return to Ixil

Translated Christianities

Translated Christianities

Nahua and Maya Catholicisms

Nahua and Maya Catholicisms

The Teabo Manuscript

The Teabo Manuscript

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email