Thread: Russian TV Shows

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.

This has nothing to do with Bulgakov, but I know there's been a scientific argument about whether it was actually possible for someone to be held at a cross with the nails through his palms. I believe the conclusion was that the body weight would reap the palms and the only way to do this using nails was to drive them through the wrists, which contradics most if not all of the depictions of the event.

Back to Bulgakov. I don't think he was trying to tell the Bible story precisely as in the Bilble itself. Why I don't know, but there is a couple of things worth mentioning:
The story is actually told from Master, so it's Master's book we are discussing, not Bulgakov's own. Of course it is written by Bulgakov, but I trust you understand what I mean.
In Russian tradition Jesus is always referred as Иисус, Jerusalem is Иерусалим. In the book they are Иешуа and Ершалаим...

Also, take a look at this link (about paradoxes in Master and Margarita):
http://menippea.narod.ru/