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| Introduction |
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The great deeds and wondrous acts of Topiltzin, his heroic acts, are famed among the Indians. These deeds are of such renown and remind one so much of miracles that I dare not make any statement or write of them. In all I subject myself to the correction of the Holy Catholic Church. But even though I wish to adhere to the Holy Gospel of Saint Mark, who states that God sent the Holy Apostles to all parts of the world to preach the gospel to His creatures, promising eternal life to all baptized believers, I would not dare affirm that Topiltzin was one of the blessed Apostles. Nevertheless, the story of his life has impressed me greatly and has led me and others to believe that, since the natives were also God's creatures, rational and capable of salvation, He cannot have left them without a preacher of the Gospel. And if this is true, that preacher was Topiltzin, who came to this land.(1) (Diego de Durán, Book of the Gods and Rites and The Ancient Calendar. Translated and edited by Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971, p. 59.) A similar wonder for the deeds of Quetzalcoatl, and a similar theological desire to have had the gospel preached to the Indians, has led many Mormon authors to make a similar claim. In the Mormon version of the Quetzalcoatl material, Quetzalcoatl is associated with Jesus Christ. Who was Quetzalcoatl? Was he Christ, or any other Christian preacher? John L. Sorenson highlights the nature of the historical problem: I have an example here of a bit of evidence that is enough to make Latter-day Saints' mouths water. This is from a book by Laurette Sejourné on Quetzalcoatl, the ancient god figure of central Mexico. On this sheet I have pulled out some statements from the book Burning Water which when chosen and lined up as I have done, definitely show, at least to those who want to have it shown, that this Quetzalcoatl is Jesus Christ. What I have not shown on this sheet is that there are other statements in the book about Quetzalcoatl and if I lined those up, they would say some things that you certainly would not want associated with Jesus Christ. So it's a two-edged sword, a matter of evidences. You can pick and choose. The major concern in a debate situation or a courtroom situation is, what kind of evidence, how much evidence, how convincing is it? ( John L. Sorenson, "The Book of Mormon and Ancient America." Script of the video of the same name. Provo: The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1995.) The task of this examination is to provide an answer to Sorenson's question on the nature of the evidence for a correlation between Quetzalcoatl and Christ. 1. Although Durán does not name the Apostle in this paragraph, neither he nor others hesitated to do so. Quetzalcoatl was declared to be a remembrance of St. Thomas Didymus. The St. Thomas theme was picked up by several authors. It reached its pinnacle in the work of Manuel Duarte, whose Historia de Quetzalcoatl is an unpublished manuscript in the William E. Gates Collection, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. It was written in 1682. An excellent discussion of the Quetzalcoatl/St. Thomas literature is found in Jacques LaFaye, Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe, tr. Benjamin Keen (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), 177-206. |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
Quetzalcoatl has
held a special place in the Western imagination every since Cortés reported that he had been mistaken for
a Mexica deity. While Cortés did not mention that deity by name, the tradition rapidly became established
that he had been mistaken for Quetzalcoatl. From that tantalizing and fortuitous connection in 1520 until the present,
Quetzalcoatl has become the most widely reported Mesoamerican myth. The speculation that Quetzalcoatl might have
been a foreigner who preached Christianity to the natives also began quite early. Less than sixty years after the
Conquest, the connections and arguments for Quetzalcoatl as a Christian proselyter were well established. Durán
speaks of Topiltzin, one of the names associated with Quetzalcoatl:|
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