Umpteenth ID this science fiction story thread

Cafe Society
1

Some time ago I read a science fiction novel dealing with time travel to the time of Jesus, in order to shoot video pictures of the Nazarene. One of the novel’s protagonists is reported to remember having read an unnamed SF story that ends with the discovery that virtually everybody who was present at the Crucifixion - soldiers, scribes, spectators and whatnot - was a time travelling tourist from a future period who wanted to witness the event.

I found this idea interesting, but the writer does not give any details about author, title or anything of that story. Has someone heard of that plot twist?

2

I wonder if maybe it was another story by the same writer? That would explain why the author wasn’t named.

Or maybe a fictional story, i.e. one that that hadn’t been written (yet) or published.

3

Arthur C Clarke’s The Light Of Other Days has a similar incident. But, it involves viewing through a space/time wormhole, not actually being there. The life of Jesus is chronicalled but the actual crucifixtion is hard to see because of all the distortion from multiple viewers.

The book is from 2000 or so.

4

Actually what Schnitte said rang a bell with me. It could, however, be that I read the same novel instead of the putative original story. And no, I don’t recall specifics, unfortunately. Haven’t read SF for a long time.

5

Just for the records, the novel I read is by a German SF writer, Andreas Eschbach. The title was The Jesus Video, I don’t know if there are translations of it (after a visit at amazon.com, I guess there aren’t).

6

Gary Kilworth’s “Let’s go to Golgotha”?

7

That sounds familiar to me, too, and I wanted to suggest Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch, but I know that’s not it.

8

Wasn’t there a scene like that in “UP THE LINE” by Robert Silverberg?

I seem to remember a scene where some famous personage trips over something on his way to (what would become) an historic occasion, and as he trips he scolds the servants for not keeping the way clear. The protagonist of the story, watching and listening via audio and video “bugs”, wonders if a time will come when there are so many time travelers listening in that the words spoken in relative privacy will echo out across the public square, carried by thousands of tiny personal listening devices.

Or am I thinking of some other story?

9

Silverberg’s book certainly talks about this phenomenom, but I don’t think that any of it actually takes place at the Crucifixion.

But everybody and his sister has done time travel to 30 C.E. In addition to those already mentioned, I can add Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man; John Kessel’s Corrupting Dr. Nice; and Gore Vidal’s Live from Golgotha just among novels.