Live from Golgotha is a novel by Gore Vidal, an irreverent spoof of the New Testament. Told from the perspective of Saint Timothy as he travels with Saint Paul, the 1992 novel's narrative shifts in time as Timothy and Paul combat a mysterious hacker from the future who is deleting all traces of Christianity.
The title of the novel alludes to the fact that the author "made sport of the notion of television coverage of the Crucifixion, as the kind of thing that would happen only in contemporary America". The author has been called a "blasphemer" for portraying "Saint Paul as a huckster and pederast and Jesus a buffoon". John Rechy reviewing the novel for the Los Angeles Times wrote that "If God exists and Jesus is His son, then Gore Vidal is going to hell". Christopher Hitchens described the book as a "masterpiece of blasphemous vulgarity".
The book is Vidal's twenty-second novel and a fifth novel focused on the topic of religion, the others being Messiah (1954), Julian (1964), Kalki (1978), and Creation (1981), and the second of Vidal's novels that fit in the fifth gospel genre.
Development
In Vidal's memoir, Point to Point Navigation, he says that the book was originally titled Live from Golgotha and that the subtitle, "The Gospel According to Gore Vidal", was added by the book cover's designer without Vidal's permission.
The book was published by Random House in 1992.
Plot
In the year 96 of the Common Era, the bishop of Ephesus, Timothy, is visited in a dream by his ancient teacher Saint Paul, who foretells him that he has been chosen by the men of the future to write the story of Jesus after the other gospels of the New Testament have been deleted from existence by a mysterious hacker. As a gift he also receives a large-screen television, on which he picks up the programs of the future.
Timothy embarks on his work, starting his story with the admission that since at the age of 15 he became aide (and lover) of Paul of Tarsus, who took him with him on his proselytizing journeys. In each city they visited they managed to found a community of "Christians" and unlike the apostles, Paul had taken on the task of bringing the good news to non-Jews.
Arriving in Philippi, they contact a couple of local proselytes, Priscilla and her husband Aquila, convincing them to go with them to the city of Ephesus, one of the largest in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Here Paul, Timothy and Priscilla work well to steal faithful and economic income from the temple of Artemis.
While at work to write his gospel, the elder Timothy occasionally receives visits from travelers from the future, which in the novel is called Tivulandia. He is promised that he will be the anchorman of the planned direct TV broadcast from Golgotha dedicated to the crucifixion.
Timothy's account picks up on Ephesus and his attempt to free himself from his relationship with Paul. In fact, he fell in love with Stefania, one of the priestesses of the temple. The growth of the church in Ephesus is so whirlwind that it is arousing the ire of traditional religion. Timothy and Paul then go to Jerusalem, where an almost incurable conflict is underway with the Jewish followers of Jesus, led by James, the younger brother of Christ. James' faction has little interest in the spread of preaching among non-Jews. However, all take for literal Jesus' words about his forthcoming return to earth and the universal judgment; James and his followers, however, believe that Christ is the Messiah announced by the holy scriptures, not the son of God.
The Orthodox Jews provoke a fight, Paul is involved; accused of inciting sedition against Rome, he appeals invoking his citizenship and asks to be judged in the city rather than by the governor of Palestine, Felix. In reality, for him it is a way of scrounging a passage by sea to Italy at the expense of the state. Timothy and Paul therefore leave together. Meanwhile, Timothy continues to receive visits from travelers from the future, and in Tivulandia there are several factions interested in rewriting the past. In particular, technological progress is expected to allow not only the holographic projection of the image back in time, but also the physical journey itself.