In the small Maya town of Teabo, a group of natives trained in the Christian religion and alphabetic writing composed a manuscript relating their views on the creation and eventual destruction of the world. Written in the colonial period and housed today in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, this rare manuscript provides uncommon insights into how the Maya made sense of Christianity according to their own indigenous worldview.

Mark Z. Christensen is an associate professor of history at Assumption College. Christensen’s research interests cover religion in colonial Latin America, Nahua and Maya studies, and Nahuatl and Yucatec Maya colonial texts. His recent publications include the Teabo Manuscript: Maya Christian Copybooks, Chilam Balams, and Maya Text Production (2016) and Native Wills from the Colonial Americas: Dead Giveaways in a New World (co-edited with Jonathan Truitt, 2016).