Popol Vuh: Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya - Mesoweb

have been a compilation of oral traditions based to one degree or another on mythic and
historical details outlined in a Precolumbian codex with their associated painted illustrations.
Authors of the Popol Vuh:
The authors of the Popol Vuh were anonymous. In the text they refer to themselves only as
“we” (p. 64), indicating that there were more than one who contributed to its compilation.
The anonymity of the authors is unusual since most Colonial period highland Maya
documents were prepared for some official purpose, and were duly signed by their authors as
testimony of their veracity. For whatever reason, those who were responsible for compiling
the Popol Vuh did not wish their identities to be known.
The authors were traditionalists, in the sense that they recorded the history and theology
of the ancient highland Maya people without adding material from European sources. The
Popol Vuh thus contains very little direct Christian influence. By its own account it is a
faithful record of the contents of the ancient Popol Vuh text which could no longer be seen (p.
64). Although the traditions of the book were compiled after the Conquest, “under the law of
God and Christianity” (ibid.), its Quiché authors venerated their traditional Maya gods as
luminous, wise beings who brought life and light to the world through their creative works.
The statement that the Popol Vuh was composed within Christianity immediately follows a
declaration that the Maya gods “accomplished their purpose in purity of being and in truth”
long before the arrival of the Christian God (p. 63). Thus the Popol Vuh contrasts its “ancient
word” (pp. 59, 64) which contains light and life, with that of the more recent voice of
Christianity. In highland Maya society, antiquity denotes authority. A modern priest-shaman
in Momostenango once told me that the Maya “Earth God” is greater than Christ and the
saints because he was worshiped by his people for centuries before the arrival of the
Europeans.
Such unapologetic reverence for the ancient gods would have been offensive to the Spanish
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