Teotamachilizti in yiuliliz auh in ymiquiliz Tutemaquizticatzim Iesu Christo quenami in quimpua teotacuiloque itech teomauxti² is a short collection of sermons in Nahuatl, printed in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century in Guatemala (Brasseur de Bourbourg, 1871: 141 ; Medina, 1910: 382). Only one copy of this book has survived until today. In the nineteenth century, it formed part of the collection of the famous pioneer Mesoamericanist, the French prest Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg. Today, it is held at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island (Madajczak and Pharao Hansen, 2016: 226-227). Although various scholars have been aware of the Teotamachilizti’s existence and addressed it in various scholarly publications (e.g., Matthew and Romero 2012: 769-771; Romero 2014; Madajczak and Pharao Hansen 2016; Lara Martínez 2019: 83-84), no one has ever published a complete or partial translation of this text from Nahuatl. However, scans of the complete book are available in several online repositories: Brown Digital Repository,³ archive. org,⁴ Wikimedia Commons,⁵ and Theological Commons.⁶

The Teotamachilizti’s title translates to “A treatise⁷ on the life and death of our Savior Jesus Christ, according to how the evangelists relate it in the Holy Bible”. The book divides the biography of Jesus into six chapters: I. “Where it is revealed who is our Lord God, how he created heaven and the universe, and why he descended on earth” (fols. 1r-4r); II. “Where it is revealed that the son of God descended to earth because of people’s sins, and he took on flesh and was born of Saint Mary, and everything that had happened until he entered in his thirtieth year” (fols. 4r-9v); III. “Where it is revealed how Saint John the Baptist baptized our Lord Jesus Christ and how our Lord Jesus Christ taught in many towns and everything that had passed until the great Passover came” (fols. 9v-15r); IV. “Where it is revealed how the great Passover came and how our Savior Jesus prayed to God his Father” (fols. 15r-19v); V. “Where it is related how the Jews seized our Lord Jesus Christ, and everything that had happened until they whipped him” (fols. 19v-25v); and VI. “Where it is related how the Jews put a crown of thorns on Jesus, and everything that had happened until he died on the cross, revived by himself, ascended to heaven, [and] sat down at the right hand of God his Father” (fols. 26r-32v).

The anonymous author of these sermons - undoubtedly a Spanish friar or priest- preceded them with a brief introduction in Spanish, which he mainly dedicated to classifying Nahua languages in the region. The author’s reasons for putting together his little book seem not to drift far from the Christianization of Nahuatlspeaking people, although he tries to be very secretive about his motivation (Madajczak and Pharao Hansen, 2016: 227-228). In the introduction, he writes:

Thus, the author suspected that his motives for writing a little summary of Jesus’s life in Nahuatl might not receive a warm welcome from the reader. This reader could have only been another priest or a literate Nahuatl-speaking person who, due to their education, would be familiar with at least the basics of the Christian doctrine. What could be so controversial for the late Colonial Guatemalan Christians that the author felt uneasy about exposing it? The Teotamachilizti leaves this question unanswered, but what we know about its historical context may clarify why the anonymous author felt the urge to release this evangelizing work at an advanced stage of the Christianization enterprise. He might have attempted to remedy the alarming situation and an apparent failure of the Spanish clergy in converting the natives to Christianity. Pedro Cortés y Larraz (1958), who, upon his appointment as the archbishop of Guatemala, traveled between 1768 and 1770 through his “dominion” to verify the condition of the archdiocese, testified that the problems were so far-reaching that he faced the need to start the whole process almost from scratch. Not only had the natives resisted and stuck to their traditional religious practices, but also the local ecclesiastics had to overcome issues of their own. Among them, Paola García (2005: 130) indicates the internal tensions between regular and secular clergy, their lack of enthusiasm and proper linguistic and cultural preparation to target the indigenous population efficiently, and their relatively low number. In these challenging circumstances, the brief Teotamachilizti, not charged with tiresome exegesis of Christian doctrine, was a handy evangelization tool.

This paper presents a transcription and translation of Chapter III of the Teotamachilizti. The most salient feature of this text and the remaining five chapters in the collection is the language. The Nahuatl of the Teotamachilizti differs from Central Mexican Nahuatl, evidenced in pieces like Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex. Among others, it sometimes drops the absolutive suffix -li, e.g., taxcal, instead of tlaxcalli (“tortilla”); it uses aiac for negation along with ahmo (here: amu), and nemi for a copula verb along with cah (here: ca); it sometimes adds -c or -qui to class 2 verbs in the preterit, e.g., vtamic (“he finished,” from tlami); it may build reflexive forms based on the prefix mo- only, e.g., ma nimumiquilli (“may I die”). In their analysis of the Teotamachtilizti,Julia Madajczak and Magnus Pharao Hansen (2016: 229-232) concluded that these inconsistent variations arose from the influence of both the Eastern variety of Nahuatl and the Pipil language on the vernacular spoken in the central region of Guatemala, where the author of the Teotamachilizti worked. Another same-period Guatemalan source from Brasseur de Bourbourg’s collection, Arte de la lengua vulgar Mexicana de Guatemala qual se habla en Ezcuintla y otros pueblos deste Reyno (Anonymous ca. 1700b), describes many similar features. Also, Karen Dakin (1996: 179-185) identified some of them in the sixteenth-century corpus of Guatemalan petitions, written in Nahuatl by speakers of a Mayan language. The Teotamachilizti’s author admits that his goal was to compose this text in the local vernacular (fol. Ir), as opposed to the “reverential” Nahuatl of Central Mexico (see Romero 2014 for a comparison of honorific forms in these two subcodes). In Christian Guatemala, the latter must have been a sort of a referential language, in terms of Henri Gobard (after: Brisset 2004: 345), i.e., a language tied to the Nahuatl written tradition, which arose from the sixteenth-century efforts to translate the Christian doctrine. On the lexical level, the author of the Teotamachtilizti recurred to Central Mexican Nahuatl for the “canonical” ecclesiastical or theological vocabulary while using the local vernacular in the terms belonging to everyday speech. Examples of the latter are taxcal (fol. 10r), or the author’s choice to refer to a “dog” with the Nahuatlized Spanish loan pelu (fol. 11v) instead of using one of the Nahuatl terms (chichi, itzcuintli, or xolotl) or perro (Madajczak and Pharao Hansen, 2016: 233).

The author of the Teotamachilizti was by no means a fluent Nahuatl speaker. He struggled to render Spanish idioms, grammar, and syntax word-for-word, creating an extraordinary text that those Nahua who did not know Spanish could hardly understand. In the Teotamachilizti, one of the noticeable traits of this Hispanized Nahuatl is the frequent use of the headword auh as a conjunction y (“and”). In “classical Nahuatl” or colonial Nahuatl from Central Mexico, the most common use of auh was as a guidepost signaling the introduction of a new topic on the sentence level (see Lockhart 2001: 82). However, J. Richard Andrews (2003: 546-547) points out that in some instances attested in the Florentine Codex, auh could also be used as additive conjunction (“and”):

as alternative conjunction (“or”):

or as adversative conjunction (“but”):

In all of these cases,⁹auh is linking the conjoined clauses or sentences. The Teotamachilizti features many examples of such structure, like the following one:

If we assume that the use of auh in the Florentine Codex is an original Nahuatl feature,¹⁰ some of the concurrent Teotamachilizti cases may simply follow this model. However, it must be stressed that the instances where auh functions as a conjunction in the Teotamachilizti enormously exceed those from the Florentine Codex. Moreover, the Teotamachilizti has passages that, in the word-for-word translation, unmistakably use auh as the Spanish conjunction y, “and,” joining either two verbs: ipal in quimatizquia, avh in quiquitazquia (fol. 10r), “so that they would know him and see it” (Sp. para que le conocieran y lo vieran); or two nouns, e.g., in fariceosme, avh in Iudiosme (fol. 12r), “the Pharisees and the Jews” (Sp. los fariseos y los judíos). In the latter example, the particle in works as a definite article.

In another lexico-syntactic calque, the relational words ica and itech correspond with Spanish prepositions por and en, respectively. Thus, we read: ica muchintim altepet (fol. 11r), “to all the towns” (Sp. por todas las ciudades); itech itucatzim tutecuiutzim (fol. 14r), “on behalf of our Lord” (Sp. en nombre de nuestro señor). Also, the author adopts some interesting strategies to render particular forms present in the Spanish language and absent from the pre-contact Nahuatl. To reflect the Spanish subjunctive mode, non-existent in Nahuatl, the author of the Teotamachilizti often (though not consistently) recurs to the conditional form -zquia, introduced by the optative mode particle ma, made equivalent to Spanish que (“that”), or ipal ma, operating as the Spanish para que (“so that,” “in order that”), as in the following examples:

avh in vquitenehuac Apostolosme ipal ma temachtizquia ica muchi talticpac (fol. 10v), “and he named them ‘the apostles’ so that they would preach all over the earth” (Sp. y les llamó ‘apóstoles’ para que prediquen por toda la tierra)

Apart from syntactic calques, the latter example includes lexical calques from the Spanish verbs. Cacahua, originally “to leave, abandon,” is extended to mean “to allow,” just like the Spanish dejar, and pano, “to pass,” earlier used exclusively as the verb of movement, here, just like in other late colonial Nahuatl texts, takes on the entire semantic field of the Spanish pasar, “to pass”. On fol. 13v, the Nahuatl expression cuepa ica is a highly uncommon loan translation of the Spanish volver por, meaning “to defend,” “to support.”. Finally, in the Teotamachilizti, we encounter the calque of Spanish de, “of,” in possessive constructions. This case is even more striking given that there is an easy way to express such a concept in Nahuatl grammar. A possessive prefix added to a noun stem turns it into a possessed noun. Surprisingly, the author of the Guatemalan sermons recurs to this method in an unorthodox way, by adding the possessive prefix not to the noun denoting the possessed object, but to the one denoting the possessor, e.g., Pontifices yfariceov, “the pontiffs of the Pharisees” (fol. 12r) or pasqua yIudivam, “the Passover of the Jews” (fol. 12v). In this way, the 3rd person possessive Nahuatl prefix y- operates like the Spanish preposition de (pontífices de fariseos and pascua de judíos, respectively) (see also Madajczak and Pharao Hansen, 2016: 236). To further stress this shift, the printed Teotamachilizti often separates y- from the following noun as if it were a free-standing preposition (we have not reflected this in our transcription; see below). Finally, a phenomenon that may or may not arise from contact with Spanish is the almost complete absence, throughout Teotamachilizti’s sermons, of the 3rd person plural possessive prefix yn-/ym-. Y- indicates both singular and plural referents, e.g., ytacuicaliz tutume, “the singing of birds” (fol. 11r).

The Spanish influence on early eighteenthcentury Guatemalan Nahuatl, which we can presume based on the contemporary Central Mexican corpus, cannot entirely explain the Hispanization of the Teotamachilizti (see Lockhart 1992: 304-318). The lexico-syntactic analysis of the text suggests that it could be a direct translation from some earlier Spanish treatise on the life of Jesus Christ.¹¹ Alternatively, the author could have first written his Spanish sermons and then painstakingly translated them into the Guatemalan vernacular. For a modern reader of the Teotamachilizti accustomed to a Nahuatl with a significantly smaller Spanish component, the best trick is to first translate this text to Spanish word-for-word, deciphering the author’s substitutions as if working with a Guatemalan Nahuatl Rosetta Stone. We have followed this method when elaborating our translation of Chapter III into English. Although we have not been able to identify the direct Spanish source for the Teotamachilizti, in the footnotes, we have reconstructed some Spanish phrases or sentences from the Nahuatl. We did it in situations where we felt that a given construction could be difficult to understand without reversing the process of translation undoubtedly used by the Teotamachilizti’s author.

Chapter III of the Teotamachilizti, whose translation we present below, embraces the life of Jesus Christ from when he meets Saint John the Baptist until Judas’s betrayal. It is an original collage from the four gospels, with Matthew given clear precedence. Details and passages derived from Mark, John (e.g., fol. 12r, the visit to Lazarus’s house), and Luke (e.g., fol. 13r, the announcement of Jesus’s death) supplement the narrative. The text also includes some fragments absent from the New Testament. One of the author’s comments regarding Jesus, “This is the custom on earth that they hate the one who teaches the truth” (fol. 12v), may be directly or indirectly inspired by Plato’s Apology of Socrates - the only non-Christian text paraphrased in Chapter III. According to Plato, Socrates once said: “I know rather well that I incur hatred by these very things; which is also a proof that I speak the truth”.¹²

Even though the Teotamachilizti is not a classical book of sermons (divided into preaching material for particular days of the liturgical cycle), the different episodes of Jesus’s biography serve the author as a pretext to teach or remind its recipients about the basic precepts of Christian doctrine. In Chapter III, the author’s didactic comments focus on the miracles performed by the Son of God and on the remarkable effect that Jesus’s preaching had on the hearts and minds of sinners and idolaters. Such a focus has a particular significance in the context of Cortés y Larraz’s observations that in the second half of the eighteenth century, the native religious practices in Guatemala were still alive and thriving (see García 2005).

The Teotamachilizti contains some pre-contact Nahuatl vocabulary that could potentially attest to the continuity of the specific elements of the pre-Christian Mesoamerican tradition into the late colonial period. For example, the author describes the “idolaters” with the names of “sorcerers” known from the pre-Hispanic Nahua culture, such as tlachihuiani, texochihuiani (in the document spelled as texuchizivianime, see note 30), and nahualli (see fols. 11r-11v) (see Molina 1565, Olko and Brylak 2018). However, we should approach such data cautiously because they may arise from a different process. The text of the Teotamachilizti was created in Guatemala, with the predominant Maya population whose systems of belief and religious practices, though sharing many concepts with a broader Mesoamerican tradition, were not identical with those of the Central Mexican Nahua. In this sense, it is highly probable that the presence, in the Teotamachilizti, of the terms like tlacatecolotl, “manowl” (a kind of ritual specialist, or “witch” with supernatural powers, later equated with “demon”) or the mentioned above texochihuiani, did not reflect the belief in such beings among the late colonial Guatemalan natives. Instead, it may have arisen from the author’s tendency to recur to the doctrinal Nahuatl vocabulary of sixteenth-century Central Mexico whenever he drifted away from mundane themes. Perhaps the Teotamachilizti’s author relied on his training rather than the inside knowledge of the local situation.

The lessons included in Chapter III stress the contrast between two biblical characters: Mary Magdalene and Judas. Mary Magdalene stands out as an exemplary model of a great sinner who, thanks to Jesus’s teachings, forever abandoned her immoral way of living. New Spain’s evangelists frequently used her story in their Nahuatl doctrinal writings (e.g., Fray Juan de la Anunciación’s 1577 book of sermons, fols. 166r-167r). In the Teotamachilizti, it collates with another recurring motif: Mary Magdalene’s counterexample, a dog that eats its vomit. The comparison of the indigenous people returning to their “idolatries” to vomit-eating dogs is wellrooted in the Old Testamentary educational paradigms. Book of Proverbs 26:11 says, “As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly”. Also, other sections of both the Old and New Testament include quite a few passages equating a sinner with a dog (e.g., Isaias 56:11, Revelation 22:15). Using this antiexample in colonial doctrinal texts and writings dedicated to the status of evangelization project among the native peoples in New Spain was by no means original; it is present, among others, in the acts of the 1585 Third Mexican Provincial Council (Book I, Title 1, in Martínez López-Cano 2004: 16).¹³ Likewise, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1540-1563?: 95) compares those who receive communion without proper sacramental preparation to dogs, pigs, and Judas. The dog’s negative connotations are also visible in other sections of the Teotamachilizti, e.g., Chapter IV describes the Pharisees going after Jesus Christ as hungry dogs that run for the meat (fol. 21r).

The second biblical character explored in Chapter III of the Teotamachilizti is Judas. This classical scapegoat of the Christian literature appears in the scene in which Mary Magdalene (identified by this name only in John 11:2 and referred to as a prostitute in Luke 7:37) washes Jesus’s feet with a precious ointment. In the gospels, a group of people (Mark 14:4) or unnamed apostles (Matthew 26:8-11) criticize this “waste”, pointing out that the money for the ointment could have served the poor. However, the Teotamachilizti puts this argument in the mouth of Judas, who tends to steal alms from Jesus and feels that Mary Magdalene’s act of piety will diminish his dirty income (fols. 13r-13v). The sermon returns to this topic toward the end when it explains Judas’s motivation for betraying Jesus. It stresses that Judas hated his teacher because of the money he lost on the ointment, and it follows by describing how Judas offered to turn Jesus to the Pharisees for 30 “reales” (fols. 14v- 15r). The motif of greedy Judas upset with Mary Magdalene’s “waste” of the ointment appears in other Nahuatl texts: the Biblioteca Nacional de México’s Ms. 1487, the Harold B. Lee Library at the Brigham Young University’s Manuscript on Christian Doctrine, and the Codex Indianorum 7 of the John Carter Brown Library, Providence. The latter manuscript explicitly connects Judas’s inability to profit from the ointment and his later interest in the Pharisees’ 30 “reales,” which the Teotamachilizti only vaguely suggests. According to the Codex Indianorum 7, 30 “reales” was 10 percent of the ointment’s value, which Judas would typically steal as he always took 10 percent of everything. The similarities in details are striking; however, the Teotamachilizti cannot have a direct relationship with these earlier Nahuatl manuscripts. Instead, they all must have drawn from the same tradition: Justyna Olko (2017: 156-7) traced the involvement of Judas in the ointment story to fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Spanish editions of the Flos Sanctorum.

As a late Guatemalan Christian text in Nahuatl, the Teotamachilizti includes material to study numerous cultural and linguistic phenomena. It comes from the region of dominant Mayan languages, yet it retains close ties to Central Mexican doctrinal Nahuatl. It arose from a period of seemingly advanced evangelization, yet it contains basic teachings of the Christian doctrine. It bears witness to both the poor linguistic preparation of the Guatemalan clergy and their good competence in standard didactic tools and tropes. With this partial publication, we would like to contribute to exploring this unique source.

In the transcription of the selected fragment of Teotamachilizti, we tried to reflect all the diacritic signs and abbreviations visible in the printed text. We did not correct the spelling to fit any standard system. In the colonial period, both Spanish and Spanish American writing still lacked fixed orthographic rules, and every scribe used their own measures to render the regional pronunciation-hence the Teotamachilizti’s frequent t instead of the Central Mexican tl, u instead of o, c in place of the glottal stop (Romero 2014: 11; Madajczak and Pharao Hansen 2016: 228, 232), z instead of tz or x, or m instead of n. We did not follow the original word division (sometimes not evident in the original document) but introduced our own, closely corresponding with the translation. In the translation itself, we tried to avoid unnatural English constructions resulting from a purely philological translation and opted for a compromise between staying close to the original and making the text accessible to a modern reader. Also, the author intended to write the text in vernacular Nahuatl, which again favors an easily comprehensible translation based on colloquial vocabulary and simple phrasing. Nevertheless, bearing in mind that the Teotamachilizti paraphrases the gospels (and sometimes offers a word-for-word translation of its passages), we tried to find a balance between adopting the older vocabulary and avoiding too many archaic forms. Finally, the Guatemalan text features many progressive verbal forms, expressed in Nahuatl through the auxiliary verb -catca. We did not consistently reflect this grammatical form in our translation for fluency.

As for the layout of the text, the printed Teotamachilizti indicates a division into chapters which then divide into rather lengthy paragraphs. In the scholarly tradition of publishing Nahuatl sources, there are several ways of making such a “wall of words” more accessible to readers. Some published editions of sources, particularly those of strongly formulaic genres, adopt a descending rather than linear layout, which reflects the internal structure and parallelism proper to Nahuatl (see Montes de Oca 2013, Alcántara Rojas 2008, among others). A similar procedure could also be applied to the Teotamachilizti, for example:

tacuilutuc nemi	in aiac titaieiecuz	muteotzim, mutecuiutzim,
	intacamo in timuteutiz,
	avh in titaiecultiz	(fol. 10v)
“It has been written	that you will not tempt	your God,
		your Lord,
	but instead you will worship him,
	and you will serve him”.

Nevertheless, we focus on assisting the reader in following the Nahuatl text and its English translation rather than the syntactic structure of the sermon. For this reason, we have chosen to present Chapter III in two parallel columns, splitting the text into shorter, more or less sentencelength units.

[9v]YECTEI AMVXXELVLIZTI CAMPA MVNEZTIA QVENAMI San Iuan Baptista vmutaquatequilli in Tutecuio Iesu Christo	[9v] Chapter Three, where it is revealed how Saint John the Baptist baptized our Lord Jesus Christ
avh in quenami Tutecuio Iesu Christo vquitemachti14itech miaquintim altepet,	and how our Lord Jesus Christ taught in many towns
avh inmuchi temvpanulti ixquichcahuit vaçit huei pasqua.	And everything that had passed until the great Passover came.
Vcalaquic Tutecuio Iesu Christo itech çempualli matacti xihuit,	Our Lord Jesus Christ entered his thirtieth year.
Avh in itech nicam cavit temachtiacacatca San Iuan Baptista [10r] inahuac atēcu Iordā.	At this time, Saint John the Baptist was teaching [10r] near the bank of the river Jordan.
Vacic Tutecuio Iesu Christo in apā Iordam,	Our Lord Jesus Christ arrived at the river Jordan,
avh in vmpa vquiacic San Iuan in taquatequicatca,	and there he found Saint John, who was performing the baptism.
Avh in vquilhui Tutecuio Iesu Christo in San Iuan in ma quiquatequizquia, aiac quinequicatca San Iuā.	And our Lord Jesus Christ told Saint John to baptize him, [but] Saint John repeatedly refused it.
Vquilhui Tutecuio Iesu Christo huel munequi in ma tinechtaquatequiz,	Our Lord Jesus Christ said to him, “I really need you to baptize me”.
avh in çan neman in vpehuac San Iuan taquatequiliz Tutecuio Iesu Christo, vmucaquic ilhuicapa tatultzim Dios itatzim,	And as soon as Saint John began the baptism [of] our Lord Jesus Christ, the words of God, his father, were heard from heaven.
avh in quilhuiacatca, inin ca huel nelli nutazoptltzim,15	He told him, “This is my true beloved son”.
avh in vtemuc Spiritu Santo icpac ytzuntecum Tutecuio Iesu Christo ixpam muchintim	And the Holy Spirit descended on the head of our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of everybody
ipal in quimatizquia, avh in quiquitazquia16quenami Tutecuio Iesu Christo huel nelli catca ipiltzim Dios.	so that they would know him and see that our Lord Jesus Christ was the true son of God.
Neman vicaloc Tutecuio Iesu Christo ica Spiritu Santo, in coctam17iztahuacam,	Then our Lord Jesus Christ was taken by the Holy Spirit to the mountains, the desert.
avh in umpa vmuzahuac vmpualli tunalli,	And there, he fasted for forty days.
avh in quenami tacateculut vquiquitac, quenami Tutecuio Iesu Christo in maianacatca, ipampa neçahuahualizti vquichihuaca,	And as the devil saw that our Lord Jesus Christ was hungry because of the fasting he was doing,
vmunezti tacatecvlut ixpantzinco Tutecuio Iesu Christo,	the devil appeared before our Lord Jesus Christ,
avh in vquilhui tacateculut: azu tipiltzim Dios xicuepa tet itech caztilam taxcal ica iexpa tacateculut vtaieiucu Tutecuio Iesu Christo,	and the devil said to him, “If you are the son of God, turn the rock into bread”. Three times the devil tempted our Lord Jesus Christ.
avh in vquinan[10v]quili Tutecuio Iesu Christo in tacateculut:	And our Lord Jesus Christ answered [10v] the devil,
tacuilutuc nemi in aiac titaieiecuz muteotzim, mutecuiutzim, intacamo in timuteutiz, avh in titaiecultiz.	“It has been written that you will not tempt your God, your Lord, but instead you will worship him, and you will serve him”.
Tatultica Tutecuio Iesu Christo vchulu tacateculut,	Because of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the devil fled,
avh in vtemuque miaquintim Angelosme, avh in vtaiecultique Tutecuio Iesu Christo.	and many angels descended, and they served our Lord Jesus Christ.
Vtacencavh Tutecuio Iesu Christo ytemachtiliz,	Our Lord Jesus Christ prepared his teachings
avh in quenami quinezquizquia quitemachtizquia itech cemanahuac in vquichtime18vcti ilhuicapa,	as he wanted to show and teach people19 in the entire world the road to heaven.
avh in ica vni vmucentalili matacti vme icniutim, avh in vquitenehuac20Apostolosme ipal ma temachtizquia ica muchi talticpac.	For this reason21, he gathered twelve friends, and named them “the apostles” so that they would preach all over the earth.
Vquiçac Tutemaquizticatzim Iesus ihuam Aspostolosme in muchintim altepet, avh in chinamit.	Our Savior Jesus and the apostles passed through every town and village.
Vquichivh Tutemaquizticatzim Iesus in campa necnemia miaquintim tamahuizoltim miaquintim iectiliztim in vquichtime,	Wherever he was walking, our Savior Jesus did many miracles, many good things to the men.
ypehualiz ytemachtiliz taquatequicatca ihuam y Apostolhuā miaquintim tacame ica muchintim nepa altepet avh in muchintim chinamit.	At the beginning of his teachings, [he] and the apostles baptized many people in all these towns and villages.
Vquitacencauh Tutecuio Iesu Christo, quenami in iahuiznequi in altepet Ierusalem	When the Passover time was coming, our Lord Jesus Christ decided that he wanted to go to the city of Jerusalem
quiluiquiztiz iluit huei pasqua ihuam ytamachtilhuam vquic hualactca cavit pasqua.	to celebrate the day of the great Passover with his disciples.
Necnemia yu[c]qui vni[11r]quilhui22ica muchintim altepet, in campa quipacticatca cucuxquime23, in quimacacatca tachializti in pupuiume quipacticatca in vquichtime:	Like I said, he was walking [11r] to all the towns, where he was curing the sick, giving sight to the blind, curing people.
avh quiquizticatca in tacatecolome ytenacaioque vquichhvam, quipactia ixicutu, macutu, in huilantime.	And he was taking the devils out of the men’s bodies. He fixed the crippled, the one-handed, the lame.
Vquitaqualti macuilmilli24vquichtim,25avh in yzihuahuam, avh in ypilhuam çan izel ihuam macuil caztilam taxcal, avh in acame mimichtim,	He fed five thousand men and their wives and children with only five pieces of bread and some fish.
miaquintim tactacuanime vquincahcauhque ytactaculhuam,	Many sinners abandoned their sins,
avh in vmuiulcuepacque in Tutecuio Iesu Christo;	and they turned their hearts26 to our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amu huelizi muneztiz in tamahuizoltim in vquichivh Tutecuio Iesu Christo itech muchi talticpac,	It is impossible to show the miracles that our Lord Jesus Christ performed all over the earth.
Tateutucanime in mutevtiacatca in tequacuilme ilihuiz teteo	Idolaters had worshipped idols27, false28 gods;
in taneltucatca itech tet, itech quahuit, itech muzcut29itech ytacuicaliz tutume, itech temiquiliztim.	they believed in rocks, in wood, in fire, in the singing of birds, in dreams.
Muchintim vquichtime tentuque nemia ytactaculhuam,	All the men had been filled up with their sins,
avh in teotamachtiliztica Tutemaquizticatzim Iesu Christo,	and through the sermons of our Savior Jesus Christ,
miaquintim çan neman in vq’uicaquique tenunuzaliz Iesus quincahcahuacatca ilihuiz inemiliz in tateutucani	many of them immediately after they heard the admonitions of Jesus were abandoning the bad habits of idolaters.
vquicahcauh in tequacuiltim, tahchivianime, auh in texuchizivianime30vquicahcavque ytachihuilizvam, avh in texuchizihuilizvam	They abandoned31 idols, sorcerers, and those who bewitch women. They abandoned the practice of sorcery on people and casting spells on women.
vquicahcauque na[11v]hualtim, ipampa muchintim nicam tamantim ilihuiz catca iztacatilizuam tacateculut,	They abandoned the nahualli32 [11v] because all these things are evil; they were devil’s lies.
muchintim vquichtime nemia iztacaviltim ica tacatecolome, muchintim vquichtime nemia ixpupuiuchihualtim,	All the men had been deceived by devils; all the men had been cheated.
avh in Tutecuio Iesu Christo yhualaliztica in çemanahuac vquiquizti, iztacatilizti avh taiuhualot,	And through his coming to the world, our Lord Jesus Christ took out falsehood and darkness,
avh in vtechqualhuicac ilhuicapa taneztilizti	and he brought us the heavenly light.
ichtequinime, ahuilneneq’ vquicahcavq’ ynemiliz ilihuiz,	Thieves, lustful people quit their bad habits,
avh in itzalā tactaquanime in vquicahcauque ytactaculhuā vcatca Santa Maria Magdalena, in vcatca huei tactaquani,	and among those sinners who abandoned their sins was Saint Mary Magdalene, who was a great sinner.
avh in tamachtiliztica tutemaquizticatzim Iesus,	And through the teachings of our Savior Jesus,
vmuiulcuepac in Tutecuio Dios, vmuiulcuiti in muchintim ytactaculhuam manel çe aiac vquinaiac, muchintim vquinezti,	she turned towards our Lord God, confessed all her sins, did not hide a single one; she revealed everything.
avh in çan neman vmuiulcuiti, avh in vchucac ytactacul, aiucac vquicuepac in tactaculli	And right after she confessed and wept over her sins, she no longer returned to sin.
çan cecpa vquicahcavh y inemiliz ilihuiz, aiac vquichihuac iuqui pelu tiquitaz quenami pelu taqua,	She abandoned her bad habits once and for all; she did not do it like a dog.
avh in çan neman taqua in mizuta, neman ten vmizutac occepa in taqua, iuqui quichihua tactaquani, icuac zatepan in vmuiulcuiti mucuepa in tactaculli.	You will see that the dog eats and vomits right after it eats. Then it eats again what it has vomited. This is how the sinner does: they return to sin after confessing.
Santa Maria Magdalena aiac vquichivh vuqui çan cecpa vquicahcauh tactaculli, vquitalli muchi ytazotaliz itech Tutecuio Iesu [12r] Christo,	Saint Mary Magdalene did not do it this way. She abandoned the sin once and for all; she put all her love in our Lord Jesus [12r] Christ,
avh in ipampa vquitapupului Tutecuio Iesu Christo muchintim ytactaculhuam.	and because of this, our Lord Jesus Christ pardoned all her sins.
Aqui huelitiz quipuaz tamahuizoltim in vquichivh tutemaquizticatzim Iesus:	Who will be able to count all the miracles that our Savior Jesus performed?
in miaquintim vqu[i]thcime33mimihque viulitic, itzalam iehuantim vcatca Lazaro teicavh Marta, avh in Māgdalena,	He resuscitated many deceased men, among whom was Lazarus, a younger brother of Martha and Magdalene.
ya nahui tunalli in vmiquica Lazaro, tenacaiot34putunicatca miac,	It has already been four days since Lazarus died, the body was stinking a lot,
avh in çan neman in Tutecuio Iesu Christo vquinuzac Lazaro zactuc nemia itic tatucaloiam, vmuquezac iultuc,	and immediately after our Lord Jesus Christ called Lazarus, who was locked inside a tomb35, he went out alive.
avh in ipampa inim huei tamahuizolli miaquintim tacame vquintepuztucaque, avh in vtaneltucaque itech Tutecuio Iesu Christo	And because of this great miracle, many people followed and believed in our Lord Jesus Christ.
oc cequintim tacame viaque vquiquitaque in fariceosme, avh in Iudiosme, vmucentalique in tepachuanime Pontifices yfariceovā,	Other people went to see the Pharisees and the Jews. The leaders of the Pharisees, the pontiffs, assembled,
avh in quilhuiacatca, ten tichihuazque ihuam inin vquichti, miaquintim nechcautiliztim, miaquintim tamahuizoltim quichihua?	and they talked to each other, “What will we do with this man who performs many signs,36 many miracles?
azu in ticahcahua ma panulti yuqui, in teixpam, muchintim taneltucazque itech yehuat,	If we let it happen this way, before the people, many will believe in him,
avh in quicelizque ica titanituc, ica tatocaiot,	and they will accept him as He Who Has Been Sent, as the king.37
avh in azu in quimati Romanosme altepet hualazque,	And if the Romans know it, they will come to the country,
avh in techquiztizque tualtepet, tuchinamit, avh in quitemictizque tutacavam.	and they will make us leave our cities, our villages, and they will kill our vassals”.
Ce tacat iaxca38ynecen[12v]taliliz in quimutucaiutiacatca Caifaz, in catca tepachuani Pōtifice y nepa xihuit	One man of their assembly, [12v] named Caiaphas, was the chief pontiff that year.
vquilhui. huel munequi ma miqui ce vquichti, ipal muchinti, tacame amuma quimpulihuicam.	He said to them, “It is expedient for one man to die for all the people, so they do not perish”.
Vtacencavhque Iudiosme, avh in fariceosme in ma miquizquia Tutecuio Iesu Christo.	The Jews and the Pharisees arranged that our Lord Jesus Christ should die.
Ya ynemiliz talticpac; in aquin in temachtia melahualizti in quinyhia.	This is the custom on earth that they hate the one who teaches the truth.
San Iuan Baptista vtemachti y melahualizti,	Saint John the Baptist taught the truth,
avh in nemā vquitanahuati Herodes in ma quicutunazquia ytzuntecum, avh in quitemictizquia,	and then Herod ordered that they cut off his head and kill him.
vucqui Iudiosme ipampa temachtia Tutecuio Iesu Christo melahualizti in quiyhiacatca Iudiosme, avh in quitacencahuacatca miquilizti.	The same with the Jews: because our Lord Jesus Christ taught the truth, the Jews hated him and were planning [his] death.
Iudiosme quinequizquia quitemictizquia Tutecuio Iesu Christo,	The Jews wanted to kill our Lord Jesus Christ,
avh in quenami amu vazica tunalli ymiquiliz, vminaiac Tutecuio Iesu Christo ihuam ytamachtilhuam itic ce tepitzim altepet, in mutenehua Efren,	but as the day of his death has not [yet] come, our Lord Jesus Christ hid, together with his disciples, in a small town called Efren.
catca tenahuac pasqua yIudivam, avh in quinchiacatca Iudiosme in ma hualazquia Tutecu Iesu Christo in quiluiquiztizquia in yaltepet Ierusalem.39	The Passover of the Jews was to be held soon,40 and the Jews were waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to come and celebrate it in the city of Jerusalem.
avh in quenami Tutecu Iesu Christo quinequizquia miquizquia iulucupa,	And as our Lord Jesus Christ wanted to die of his own choice,
vtacencavh quenami in iaznequi ihuam ytamachtilhuam iu Ieru[13r]salem in quiluiquiztiliz pasqua ipampa ymiquiliz amu huecca nemia:	he decided to go with his disciples to Jerusalem [13r] to celebrate the Passover because his death was not far away.
miaquintim tacame in tepuztucacatca Tutecuio Iesu Christo, vmicquani ihuam ytamachtilvam ichtaca, avh in vquilhui:	Many people were following our Lord Jesus Christ. He withdrew with his disciples secretly and said to them,
xiquitacam in tictecuzque in Ierusalem, in campa muçumquiztizque muchintim tamantim in nemi tacuiloque ica achtupaituanime ipāpa ipiltzim vquichti	“See that we will go up to Jerusalem, where everything written by the prophets concerning the Son of man will be fulfilled.
quenami in calzaqualoz tahuitecoz, avh in macaloz in tatevtucanime, aquique quintemictizque,	How he will be arrested, whipped, and given to idolaters who will kill him,
avh in munuma izcaliz ieluitica	and he will resuscitate of his own will on the third day”.
Vacic tutemaquizticatzim Iesu Christo in yaltepet Betania in aiamu hualazquia huei pasqua	Before the great Passover came, our Savior Jesus Christ had arrived in the town of Betania.
avh in vmpa in vquitaqualti Simon Leproso,	And there, the one who fed him was Simon the Leper.
avh in Maria Magdalena vquipacac ixitam yaxca Tutecuio Iesu Christo ihuam ixaio,	And Mary Magdalene washed the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ with her tears,
avh in vtevçac ixitā puputucaliztica,41	and she anointed his feet with perfume,
avh in vquipupu tzuncaltica:	and she cleaned them with [her] hair.
vmpa nemia Iudas Apostol iaxca Tutecuio Iesu Christo; quichtequicatca tetavculiliztim in quimmutemaquiliacatca in Tutecuio Iesu Christo,	Judas, the apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ, was there. He was stealing alms that they were giving to our Lord Jesus Christ.
vpehuac Iudas vchicuitu, avh in vquilhui, in nepa puputucalizti catca iecti in ma tanamacazquia, avh in ma temacazquia in mutulinianime in aiac in pulihuizquia	Judas began to criticize42 [her], and he said to her, “This perfume was good for selling and giving to the poor, not for wasting”.
avh in aiac ipāmpa, Iudas quinequisquia in ma munamacaz[13v] quia ipal mutulinianime, intacamo in ma munamacazquia,	And Judas by no means wanted it to be sold [13v] for the poor, but rather to be sold,
avh in neman quinequizquia quichtequizquia tumin, ipāpa Iudas catca huel huei taichtequini,	and then he wanted to steal the money because Judas was a very great thief.
nu zam Simon fariseo vquichicuitu y Magdalena;	Similarly, Simon the Pharisee criticized Magdalene.
vquicuepac Tutecuio Iesu Christo ica Magdalena, ipampa miac quimutazotiliacatca Magdalena in Tutecuio Iesu Christo,	Our Lord Jesus Christ defended43 Magdalene because our Lord Jesus Christ loved Magdalene very much.
avh in yucqui vquilhui Tutecuio Iesu Christo in Iudas:	And this is how our Lord Jesus Christ said to Judas:
xicmati Iudas, in Maria Magdalena tacēcahua puputucalizti tevçalizti ipal nutatucaia, in mutulinianime, cemicac in vmca itech cemanahuac.	“Know, Judas, that Mary Magdalene prepares the perfume, the ointment for my tomb. As for the poor, they will always be in the world”.
Vhualacatca miaquintim tacame y Ierusalem, amu za ixquiz, ipampa Tutecuio Iesu Christo,	Many people were coming from Jerusalem, not only because of our Lord Jesus Christ
intacamo quiquitaz nequia Iudiosme in Lazaro iulituc, avh in ipampa nu zam quinequizquia Iudiosme temictizquia in Tutecuio Iesu Christo	but [because] the Jews wanted to see Lazarus resuscitated and because the Jews likewise wanted to kill our Lord Jesus Christ.
ipampa huei tamahuizolli ica vquimacac iulitizti Lazaro, miaquintim tacame quitaneltucacatca itech Tutecu Iesu Christo.	Because of the great miracle through which he had given life to Lazarus, many people believed in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Occe tunalli vcalaquic Tutecuio Iesus itic altepet Ierusalem,	On the following day, our Lord Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem,
avh in quenami azizquia in coctam olibas, vtatitanic vme ytamachtilvam ipal quihualicazquia y altepet vme bestias, in vquihualicaque bestias.	and as he was to arrive at the Mount44 of Olives, he sent two of his disciples to bring two animals45 from the town. They brought the animals.
Apostolome iu vquita[14r]lique icpac ce bestia ytilmahuam, vtehcu icpac bestia Tutecu Iesus,	The apostles put [14r] their cloaks on one of the animals, our Lord Jesus mounted the animal,
avh in vtaiahualuque miaq’uintim tacame,	and many people went in procession.
avh in icuac ya nemia inahuac tenamit yaltepet Ierusalem, vquizacque vquinamiquique miaquintim tacame,	And when they were already near the walls of the city of Jerusalem, many people came out to meet him.
cequintim tatequicatca ima iquavit, avh zuiate, avh izuate.46	Some of them had cut the branches of trees and palm trees,
avh in quintaxixiniacatca ica vcti, in campa vpanultizquia Tutecu Iesus, oc cequintim quinzuacatca ytilmahuam ipal panultizquia icpac Tutecu Iesus,	and they were scattering them on the road, where our Lord Jesus was to pass. Others were spreading their cloaks so our Lord Jesus would step on them.
miaquintim cucune y altepet Ierusalem nu zam vquizaque vquinamiquique Iesus,	Many children in the city of Jerusalem likewise went out to meet Jesus,
avh in çan neman pipiltotonti vquiquitaque Tutemaquizticatzin Iesus vpehuacque vtacuicaque,	and immediately after the children saw our Savior Jesus, they began to sing,
ma iectenehualo tatitanilli Mesias, ma teuchihualo cemicac in huala itech itucatzim tutecuiutzim,	“May the messenger, Messiah, be praised, forever may be blessed he who comes in the name of our Lord.
xitechmumaquiztili Dios veccapam, tentuc nemi ilhuicac, avh in talticpac mucencahueitepapaquiliz gloria.	Save us, God in the highest! Heaven and earth are full of your very great rejoicing, glory”.
Vacic Tutemaquizticauh Iesus in ytachializ Ierusalem,47	Our Savior Jesus arrived in sight of Jerusalem.
avh in neman in vquiquitac altepet vpehuac vchucac Iesus,	And when Jesus saw the city, he began to cry,
avh in vquilhui in ipampa ytactaculhuam in quichihuaz tehuicpa Tutecuio Dios	and he said to them, “It is because of their sins that our Lord God will do it to the people.
tatzatzaianilosquia, avh in aiac nacaz itech altepet, tet icpac tet	It is going to be torn to pieces, and no stone on another will stay in the city”.
vquilhui Tutecuio Iesu Christo miaquintim tatultzim ytaiucuializ,	Our Lord Jesus Christ told them many words of anguish.
[14v] Vcalaquic itech teupam Ierusalem Tutecuio Iesu Christo,	[14v] Our Lord Jesus Christ entered the temple of Jerusalem.
avh in fariceosme quenami vquicaquiq’ in iectenehualiztim, in quimmacacatca in Tutecuio Iesu Christo, vqualamque miac tehuicpa Iesus,	And when the Pharisees heard the praise [the children] were giving to our Lord Jesus Christ, they became very angry with Jesus.
avh in vquinanquili Iesus, in ica iten y cucunetzitzihuam quiceliacatca Dios in iectenehualiztim,	And Jesus answered them, “It was through the lips of the children that God was receiving praise”.
tetech nemia iluit pasqua vmucentalique tactatuanime yfariceovam, avh in teopixque,	When the day of the Passover was close, the Pharisees’ leaders and the priests assembled,
avh in vquichihuaque necentalilizti itic ycalli atrio Caifaz tehuicpa Iesus,	and they held the assembly against Jesus in the atrium of the house of Caiaphas.
avh in quintemuacatca quenami huelitizquia, in teanazquia, in quilpizquia, avh in temictizquia, vqualāq’ miac, ipampa in teahuacatca ytactaculhuam:	And they were looking for him as they could; they intended to seize, arrest, and kill him; they were very angry because their sins had besotted them.
muchintim vquilhuique in quintemuzquia quenami temictizquia manel ca aiac iluit pialuni,	They said to everybody who was to look for him that they should kill him, although not on a feast day,
ipampa chinamit aiac muçunehuazquia avh in quicuepazquia ipampa iehuat,	so that the townfolks would not get rowdy and so that they would not support him.48
ya vcalaquica tacateculut itic yiulu Iudas iscariote,	The devil had already entered inside the heart of Judas Iscariot,
avh in vcatca ipampa in vquiyhiac miac in Tutecu Iesu Christo,	and it was because he hated our Lord Jesus Christ very much,
ica vquiquitac vquituiahuaca teuçalizti puputucalizti, ihuam in vteuçac Magdalena in Tutecu Iesu Christo,	for he had seen that Magdalene had been pouring ointment, perfume, with which she had anointed our Lord Jesus Christ.
vquimatic Iudas quenami fariceosme quintemuacatca in Tutecu Iesu Christo ipampa quinequizquia temictizquia,	Judas knew that the Pharisees were looking for our Lord Jesus Christ because they wanted to kill him.
avh yucqui Iudas viahuic ixpam yfariceo[15r]vā	And thus Judas went before the Pharisees, [15r]
avh in vquilhui, açu in temacacatca vmpualli matacti tumin in temacazquia in IesuChristo ytemachticavh, vnacacque fariceosme	and he asked them whether they were giving 30 reales49 to the one who would give them Jesus Christ, his teacher.
ihuam inim huel cenca papaquinime ipāpa huel miac quilehuia ymiquiliz Tutecuio Iesu Christo.	The Pharisees agreed to this50 because they very much desired the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.