Quote Originally Posted by TATY

Bulgakov grew up before the revolution, and religious supression didn;t come until later in the history of the Soviet Union.

In the book Satan appears in Moscow. Are you saying Bulgakov and the filmaker thought it was true? Matthew appears in Moscow. It doens't say that in the Bible. Is Bulgakov misinformed?

As someone else said it isn't fact that Jesus was nailed to the cross.
Of course he was not stating those as a factual historical occurences. It was a literary device, pure and simple. Obviously, there was a purpose in having the different characters and periods converge. I wasn't clear on whether there was or not that was also the case with cross, nor whether Orthodox tradition was different on this matter, which is why I posed the question in the first place. And as I said before, I'm not debating theology or religious doctrine -- I don't care whether or not you think he was literally nailed to the cross in that sense. The whole point, was that traditional Western Christian tradition holds that his hands were punctured and thus the whole "doubting Thomas" passage, as was earlier mentioned. And thus, logically, I was wondering what was up with it. That's it.