16. The Execution

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Bald Mountain

Bald Mountain is Golgotha, which is the Armenian word for place of the skull. The Hebrew word gulgôlet means skull. Another name for Golgotha is Calvary. In the bible is written that this place, where the executions hap-pened, was situated outside Jerusalem, but without an exact location des-cription.

In Kiev, Bulgakov’s native town, there is a Bald Mountain too. It is told that witches gathered there to affirm Satan's rule over the world.

The cavalry ala

Ala is Latin, and means wing - both wing of a bird and wing of an army. Alaand its derivatives, Alares and Alarii were used in different or at least modi-fied senses at different periods. In the time of the Pilate story the terms alarii and cohortes alariae were transferred to the foreign troops serving along with the Roman armies, both infantery and cavalry, and they were referred to as dextera ala (right wing) and sinistra ala (left wing).

The Hebron gate

The main entrance gate to Jerusalem is the Jaffa gate. The Arab name of this gate is Bab el-Halil or Hebron gate. It means the Beloved which refers to Abraham, God’s beloved one who was buried in Hebron. The gate is at the west side of the city leading to the islamic and Armenian quarters.

Bulgakov introduces an anachronism here, because in reality this gate did not yet exist in the time of the crucifixion of Jesus. The gate was only built in 1538 under the 10th Sultan of the House of Osman, Suleiman the Magnifi-cent (1494-1566).

In the city of Jerusalem, the rule of Suleiman and the following Ottoman Sultans brought an age of religious peace; Jews, Christians and Muslims enjoyed the freedom of religion that the Ottomans granted them.

The Cappadocian cohort

Cappadocia was an extensive inland district of Asia Minor, in Turkey. Cap-padocia used to be the most powerful province of Anatolia. The province was bounded in the south by the chain of Mount Taurus, to the east by the Euphrates, north by Pontus at the Black Sea, and west vaguely by the great central salt lake. Today Cappadocia is much smaller: now it is a piece of land between Kayseri and the three big lakes in the neighbourhood, on which the vulcanos Erciyas and the smaller Hassan Dagi poured out huge quantities of ashes, mud and lava during the big eruptions in history.

A long, razor-sharp bread knife

After the Hebron gate this is the second anachronism in this chapter, since bread was not cut with knives at the time, it was broken by the hand.

"I curse you, God!"

When Matthew Levi curses God and is convinced of God's injustice, it bears a striking resemblance to a part of the work of the Russian writer Vladimir Zazubrin (1895-1937). In his novel Два мира (Dva mira) or Two worlds (1921) he writes about an officer of the White Army during the civil war who kneels before an icon and curses God: "You see? You see our tor-ments, evil old man? How stupid I was when I believed in your wisdom and goodness. Your joy is the suffering of men. No, I don't believe in you. You are the god of lies, violence, deception. You are the gd of inquisitors, sa-dists, executioners, robbers, murderers! You are their patron and defen-der."

Zazubrin was, like Bulgakov, one of Stalin’s favourite writers, but it didn’t stop him to expose, like he did in 1926 with a controversial speech, the de-struction of the natural environment by the ambitious industrialization poli-cy.

The sun had disappeared

According to the Gospels, Jesus' death was followed by an earthquake and darkness. According to Luke the darkness was caused by a solar eclipse. Luke 23:44 - “And it was almost the sixth hour: and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.” Bulgakov writes that the darkness was due to “a storm cloud having swallowed the sun”. Bulgakov made a note from The Life of Christ Critically Examined by David Strauss to the effect that Luke's claim that the darkness was caused by a solar eclipse can't be correct, since the execution took place at the time of the Passover full moon.

The meagre Hinnom valley

The Hinnom valley is a deep narrow valley right outside the walls of Jerusa-lem. In the time of king Solomon it was the place where the Israelites wor-shipped the pagan gods Moloch and Baal with horrible sacrifices like the burning of their own first-born children (known as "going through the fire"), mentioned in the Book of Kings 16:3 - “He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites” and 23:10 - “The king also defiled Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, so that there would no longer be an immolation of sons or daughters by fire in honor of Molech.”

Jesus used the image of the fires in Hinnom valley as an allegorical phra-se for the fire that God will use for the eternal punishment.

A bucket and a sponge

According to the Gospels, Christ was given vinegar mixed with gall on a stick, not a spear.

He gently pricked Yeshua in the heart

In Bulgakov's text Yeshua dies from the spear, while in the Gospel accor-ding to John 19:34 Christ is pierced after he is already dead.



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