Dr. Bob Visits Teotihuacan, Mexico

Transcript:

[00:01:40.05] - Dr. Bob

Today we are at the Quetzalcoatl Pyramid in Teotihuacan, just outside of Mexico City in Mexico. As you can see, it's an amazing site. This particular pyramid, which exists in the same archeological zone and connected by the avenue with the pyramid of the Sun, the pyramid of the Moon, is particularly interesting to us because of some of its unique characteristics. You'll notice behind me on these statues that you'll see a figure coming out of the steps and the sides of the pyramid that is a serpent with a fringe of feathers around its head. That is representation of Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl is an interesting character because he was a prominent God to the people of this area, and It's interesting to us because he represents both the eagle or the bird flying, so the God of the air, as well as the serpent on the Earth, so the God of the Earth. It's a uniting of this concept of the God of the sky and the God of the Earth. It's a very popular site, as you can hear, but this particular pyramid has gone through a number of generations, a number of iterations. It's interesting to us because many see a connection between Quetzal and Jesus Christ.

[00:03:03.12] - Dr. Bob

There are some good reasons why they see this connection, but as we can see as we go a little bit further, there also are some complications. What are some of the similarities? Well, first off, Quetzalcoatl was seen as a creator God. He was responsible for the creation of this Earth and the world and of people. In addition, he was seen as a kind God, particularly early He was also seen as a God who taught and who gave them the tools they needed to be successful in this area. He taught them about maize, and he taught them to build, and he taught them all the skills that they needed to actually have a culture and a civilization. He's really, of course, revered then within the culture. He's pretty broadly included in the legends and the stories of the people of Mesoamerica, everything from the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Teotihuacan, and the other cultures that lived in this area. So very important to the people of this area of the world. So we'll see that he has these prominent characteristics which seem to liken him unto a Christ figure. There also are some problems. As I mentioned, this is just the latest iteration of this temple.

[00:04:23.29] - Dr. Bob

It has gone through between five and seven. I think that five is a pretty confirmable number, but there may be others where on a cycle, they would rebuild or enhance the temple. Their cycle was about 52 years for this period. It's interesting because when we look at the Jewish history and we see the concept of the Jubilees, a Jubilee of Jubilees, which was 49 years, so the 50th year would be a special Jubilee. Here, every 52 years, they would rebuild this temple. In itself, that's not much of a concern. But as a part of that rededication of the new temple, as they were building it, they would sacrifice young men. The DNA evidence suggests that many of them were born elsewhere, but spent a considerable amount of time here before their death. But they were sacrificed to the God at the time that the temple was reconstructed. We found these burials, and the men were actually… They would have their hands tied as they were being killed and their blood spilt to dedicate this new temple. So obviously a major distinction from Christian teaching. But we do see enough in the stories that like the epic of Gilgamesh and what we see on the Nippur flood tablet, there are connections that may reflect an echo of a previous truth that had been corrupted by Satan to cause confusion and even to corrupt whole generations of people.

[00:06:03.15] - Dr. Bob

The Quetzalcoatl temple, alongside its companions of the Sun God and the Moon Goddess, and the temples built to them, are important. These were unique because while the Egyptian pyramids remained somewhat enigmatic as to their actual purpose. The temples here and the pyramids here were actually that temple. At the top of the pyramid would have been a temple specifically for the worship of the God. The Spanish, one of the first things they did when they came to these areas was to destroy these temples, and often, as you'll see later, then build Catholic churches on top of them. It's also interesting that some of the major historical records we use to discern the stories of this area are from codices that likely came to us as transcriptions by Catholic priests, the Spanish priests that came initially during the colonial period and copied these codices. Many of them were burned because they were seen as a worship of a false God, or even worse, a worship of Satan himself. Do likely due to the serpent nature of Quetzalcoatl l and the animal nature of many of the other gods. So they were destroyed, but several were retained. And so we see these stories which have a lot of Christian parallels.

[00:07:33.29] - Dr. Bob

What we're not sure is if those were written in by the Catholic priests who transcribed them, or if they actually are an accurate reflection of the stories that were told by the Teotihuacanos and the others that lived in this area. At the very least, it's an echo. We see that through the nature of the Mesoamerican calendar, this cyclical nature of time, and these repeating of events, the Teotihuacan reflects that as well through this renewal of all these pyramid structures on a periodic basis. We also see through the extended Mayan calendar, the repeating of history. So these figures will come up again. There actually was a Quetzalcoatl, a human figure that existed much later. And there's some question of how much of the stories regarding the sacrifice and things like that are the result of his influence of naming himself as Quetzalcoatl and corrupting the beliefs of the people. It's hard to know because of the corrupted nature of the historical record as well. We see a lot of parallels. We have a lot of things to be concerned about. But the cyclical nature of the calendar brings to mind this concept of types and shadows and how God does use specific dates to reflect specific events, not because he's bound, but to teach us to look for the signs of the events that he has foretold and he has warned us about.

[00:09:10.10] - Dr. Bob

We are to be the watchers who look for these patterns and these parallels. So once again, it's Dr. Bob, and we will see you again here at Teotihuacan.