14 a foreigner: Foreigners aroused both curiosity and suspicion in Soviet Russia, representing both the glamour of ’abroad’ and the possibility of espionage.
15 Adonis: Greek version of the Syro-Phoenician demi-god Tammuz.
16 Attis: Phrygian god, companion to Cybele. He was castrated and bled to death.
17 Mithras: God of light in ancient Persian Mazdaism.
18 Magi: The three wise men from the east (a magus was a member of the Persian priestly caste) who visited the newborn Jesus (Matt. 2:1-12).
19 restless old Immanuel: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German idealist philosopher, thought that the moral law innate in man implied freedom, immortality and the existence of God.
20 Schiller: Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), German poet and playwright, a liberal idealist.
21 Strauss: David Strauss (1808-74), German theologian, author of a Life of Jesus, considered the Gospel story as belonging to the category of myth.
22 Solovki: A casual name for the ‘Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps’ located on the site of a former monastery on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. They were of especially terrible renown during the thirties. The last prisoners were loaded on a barge and drowned in the White Sea in 1939.
23 Enemies? Intementionists?: There was constant talk in the early Soviet period of ’enemies of the revolution’ and ‘foreign interventionists’ seeking to subvert the new workers’ state.
24 Komsomol: Contraction of the Union of Communist Youth, which all good Soviet young people were expected to join.
25 A Russian émigré: Many Russians opposed to the revolution emigrated abroad, forming important ’colonies’ in various capitals – Berlin, Paris, Prague, Harbin, Shanghai — where they remained potential spies and interventionists.
26 Gerbert of Aurillac: (938-1003), theologian and mathematician, popularly taken to be a magician and alchemist. He became pope in 999 under the name of Sylvester II.
27 Nisan: The seventh month of the Jewish lunar calendar, twenty-nine days in length. The fifteenth day of Nisan (beginning at sundown on the fourteenth) is the start of the feast of Passover, commemorating the exodus of the Jews from Egypt.
Chapter 2: Pontius Pilate
1 Herod the Great: (?73 BC-AD 4), a clever politician whom the Romans rewarded for his services by making king of Judea, an honour he handed on to his son and grandson.
2 Judea: The southern part of Palestine, subject to Rome since 63 BC, named for Judah, fourth son of Jacob. In AD 6 it was made a Roman province with the procurator’s seat at Caesarea.
3 Pontius Pilate: Roman procurator of Judea from about AD 26 to 36. Outside the Gospels, virtually nothing is known of him, though he is mentioned in the passage from Tacitus referred to above. Bulgakov drew details for his portrayal of the procurator from fictional lives of Jesus by F. W. Farrar (1831-1903), Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, and by Ernest Renan (1823-92), French historian and lapsed Catholic, as well as by the previously mentioned David Strauss.
4 Twelfth Lightning legion: Bulgakov translates the actual Latin nickname (fulminata) by which the Twelfth legion was known at least as early as the time of the emperors Nerva and Trajan (late first century AD), and probably earlier.
5 Yershalaim: An alternative transliteration from Hebrew of the name of Jerusalem. In certain other cases as well, Bulgakov has preferred the distancing effect of these alternatives: Yeshua for Jesus, Kaifa for Caiaphas, Kiriath for Iscariot.
6 Galilee: The northern part of Palestine, green and fertile, with its capital at Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinnereth). In Galilee at that time, the tetrarch (ruler of one of the four Roman subdivisions of Palestine) was Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. According to the Gospel of Luke (23:7- 11), Herod Antipas was in Jerusalem at the time of Christ’s crucifixion.
7 Sanhedrin: The highest Jewish legislative and judicial body, headed by the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem. The lower courts of justice were called lesser sanhedrins.
8 Aramaic: Name of the northern branch of Semitic languages, used extensively in south-west Asia, adopted by the Jews after the Babylonian captivity in the late sixth century BC.
9 the temple of Yershalaim: Built by King Solomon (tenth century BC), the first temple was destroyed by the Babylonian invaders in 586 BC. The second temple, built in 537-515 BC, rebuilt and embellished by Herod the Great, was destroyed by Titus in AD 70. No third temple has been built. One of the accusations against Jesus in the Gospels was that he threatened to destroy the temple (see Mark 13:1-2,14:58). It may be well to note here that Bulgakov’s Yeshua is not intended as a faithful depiction of Jesus or as a ‘revisionist’ alternative to the Christ of the Gospels, though he does borrow a number of details from the Gospels in portraying him.
10 Hegemon: Greek for ’leader’ or ‘governor’.
11 Yeshua: Aramaic for ‘the lord is salvation’. Ha-Nozri means ‘of Nazareth’, the town in Galilee where Jesus lived before beginning his public ministry.
12 Gamala: A town north-east of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, not traditionally connected with Jesus.
13 Matthew Levi: Compare the Matthew Levi of the Gospels, a former tax collector, one of the twelve disciples (Matt. 9:9, Mark 2:14, Luke 5:27), author of the first Gospel. Again, Bulgakov’s character is not meant as an accurate portrayal of Christ’s disciple (about whom virtually nothing is known) but is a free variation on the theme of discipleship.
14 Bethphage: Hebrew for ‘house of figs’, the name of a village near Jerusalem which Jesus passed through on his final journey to the city.
15 What is truth?: Pilate’s question to Christ in the Gospel of John (18:38).
16 the Mount of Olives: A hill to the east of Jerusalem. At the foot of this hill is Gethsemane (‘the olive press’), just across the stream of Kedron. It was here that Christ was arrested (Matt. 26:36, Mark 14:32, Luke 22:39, John 18:1). These places will be important later in the novel.
17 the Susa gate Also known as the Golden gate, on the east side of Jerusalem, facing the Mount of Olives.
18 riding on an ass: The Gospels are unanimous in describing Christ’s entry into Jerusalem riding on an ass (Matt. 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28- 38, John 12:12-19).
19 Dysmas … Gestas … Bar-Rabban: The first two are the thieves crucified with Christ; not given in the canonical Gospels, the names here come from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (part of which is known as ‘the Acts of Pilate’), one of Bulgakov’s references during the writing of the novel. The third is a variant on the Barabbas of the Gospels.
20 Idistaviso: Mentioned in Tacitus’s Annals (2:16) as the site of a battle between the Romans and the Germani in AD 16, on the right bank of the Weser, in which the Roman general Germanicus defeated the army of Arminius.
21 another appeared in its place: Pilate’s nightmarish vision is of the aged emperor Tiberius (42 BC — AD 37), who spent many years in seclusion on the island of Capri, where he succumbed to all sorts of vicious passions. The law of lese-majesty (offence against the sovereign people or authority) existed in Rome under the republic; it was revived by Augustus and given wide application by Tiberius.
22 Judas from Kiriath: Bulgakov’s variant of Judas Iscariot is developed quite differently from the Judas of the Gospel accounts, though they have in common their betrayal and the reward they get for it from the high priest.
23 Lit the lamps: According to B. V. Sokolov’s commentary to the Vysshaya Shkola edition of the novel (Leningrad, 1989), the law demanded that lights be lit so that the concealed witnesses for the accusation could see the face of the criminal. This would explain Pilate’s unexpected knowledge.
24 Bald Mountain: Also referred to in the novel as Bald Hill and Bald Skull, the site corresponds to the Golgotha Cplace of the skull‘) of the Gospels, where Christ was crucified, though topographically Bulgakov’s hill is higher and farther from the city. There is also a Bald Mountain near Kiev, Bulgakov’s native city.
25 Kaifa: Bulgakov’s variant of the name of the high priest Caiaphas, mentioned in the Gospels and in historical records.
26 Kaifa politely apologized: Going under the roof of a gentile would have made the high priest unclean and therefore unable to celebrate the coming feast.
27 Bar-Rabban or Ha-Nozri?: The same choice is offered in the Gospel accounts (see Matt. 27:15-23, Mark 15:6-15, John 19:39-40).
28 there floated some purple mass: According to B. V. Sokolov, there existed a legend according to which Pilate died by drowning himself. That may be what Bulgakov has in mind here.
29 equestrian of the Golden Spear: The equestrian order of Roman nobility was next in importance to the Senate. Augustus reformed the order, after which it supplied occupants for many administrative posts. The name Pilate (Pilatus) may derive from pilum, Latin for ’spear‘.
Chapter 3: The Seventh Proof
1 Metropol: A luxury hotel in Moscow, built at the turn of the century, decorated with mosaics by the artist Vrubel. Used mainly by foreigners during the Soviet period, it still exists and has recently been renovated.
Chapter 4: The Chase
1 about a dozen extinguished primuses: The shortage of living space after the revolution led to the typically Soviet phenomenon of the communal apartment, in which several families would have one or two private rooms and share kitchen and toilet facilities. This led to special psychological conditions among people and to a specific literary genre (the communal-apartment story, which still flourishes in Russia). The primus stove, a portable one-burner stove fuelled with pressurized benzene, made its appearance at the same time and became a symbol of communal-apartment
