The novel Live from Golgotha: the Gospel according to Gore Vidal is an irreverent spoof of the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 written by Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

. Told from the perspective of Saint Timothy as he travels with Saint Paul

Paul of Tarsus

Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...

, the 1992 novel shifts in time as Timothy and Paul combat a mysterious hacker from the future who is deleting all traces of Christianity.

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.

Memorable

St. Paul freely improvises his tales as he evangelizes. "All things are contained within the single mind of One True God in His three aspects." Saint Paul could dispense this sort of smooth bullshit while taking apart and reassembling a Holy Rolodex machine," Timothy relates as he witnesses St. Paul in action. Paul speaks in "ye olde" when he quotes the voluminous Christ. Timothy remarks that when Saul of Tarsus meets the Christ ghost, he converts to a religion that Saul/Paul himself had not yet founded. People are consistently disappointed to learn that Christ weighed 400 lbs. and spoke with a lisp. "Why doth thou persecute-eth me-th?" There is an interesting plot twist when Judas is mistaken for Christ and almost crucified. It seems that the "real Christ" was a militant Zionist, and Paul's golden-rule Christianity an improvisation. Paul journeys from town to town raising money and founding churches, adding to his Holy rolodex, and tap-dancing. Cameos from celebrities such as Nero

Nero

Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....

, Petronius

Petronius

Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...

, and Shirley MacLaine

Shirley MacLaine

Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...

are interspersed throughout Timothy's odyssey from A.D. 33 to A.D 96.