Word: golgotha
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...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 is also confronting the fact that old friends are dying of AIDS. He does not advertise his homosexuality, but a reader of his fiction, notably Myra, Kalki, Duluth and of course Golgotha, knows that he hates the chains of sexual identity. Throughout his literary career he has played endlessly with the notions of bisexuality or transsexuality. If readers find the new novel repellent, it may be that it is no longer easy to laugh at scenes in which Nero rapes Timothy ("Tighten those beautiful little buns") or to laugh off lewd goings-on along the missionary trail...
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...