Word: golgotha
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Jesus Christ is coming. The mainstage at the Loeb is soon to be Gethsemane, soon to be Jerusalem, too soon to be Golgotha, steeped in gore. There, the star-hung ceiling lighting his last days, Christ his passion will play...
...Pius' description of a revolutionary in 1919: "a Jew. Pale, dirty, with drugged eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly." The "secret antipathy," writes Cornwell, helped prevent Pius from finding "in the isolation of the Jews a parallel with Christ alone on Golgotha" and thus helped prevent him from finding a voice to defend them...
...Temple. Still, there are many questions that archaeology cannot now answer. Did Pilate pass judgment on Jesus at the Antonia fortress near the Temple site, or at Herod's palace across town? (If the latter, then the famed Via Dolorosa--the route that Jesus followed carrying his cross to Golgotha--is incorrect.) Is the tomb of Jesus beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, as tradition holds, or some place unknown outside the Old City's walls...
...world is becoming both more religious and more secular simultaneously. In the U.S., for example, respect for religion in areas of popular culture like music, books and television is as low as it has ever been (see Madonna, or Gore Vidal's elaborately blasphemous novel called LIVE from Golgotha). At the same time, both religious observance and the press of religious issues (questions of uncertainty, faith, anguish) are rising. Church leaders repeatedly condemn violence done in the name of religious tribalism -- as Orthodox churchmen speak against "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia and as some Muslim leaders criticize the bombing...
Vidal will not give ground, as always determined to follow his instincts. There is a scene in Golgotha in which Timothy and Mark, walking in Rome, hear a noisome humming that they cannot place. "I hear it too," says the author. "It's not supernatural or anything silly like that. It's just a sense that things are going on around you." Armed with TV, the fax and endless phone calls from an international army of well-placed pals, this remorseless observer is picking up every buzz...