These two chapters solidify the idea that the stranger might be the devil because there are several parallels and antiparallels between him and Yeshua (Jesus). For example, both have no wife and always travel alone. Both have superhuman capabilities: the stranger seems to know everything about a person and has a very sharp sense of hearing, and Yeshua has a heightened sense of compassion, able to understand a person's emotions based on their body language. However, in sharp contrast, the stranger uses his superhuman qualities to predict the end other people's lives, whereas Yeshua uses them to predict the end of other people's suffering. Both are mistaken for madmen when conversing with others, although the stranger is taken for a sardonic madman (in the negative sense) and Yeshua is pitied as an idealistic madman (in the positive sense). Lastly, Yeshua is mortal; the stranger (as far the reader knows) is immortal and has lived through the death of Yeshua to the present. Bulgakov suggests, though, that perhaps as powerful as the immortality of the stranger's (devil's) immortality, is the immortality of Yeshua's ideas, which have survived almost two thousands years despite his death. Pilate is haunted by the idea that " 'Immortality...immortality has come....' " and I believe this immortality is of Christianity.
When looking at it from that angle, it is very interesting that Bulgakov chooses to begin the novel with the questioning of Christianity, which suggests that it may not be perfectly immortal. And, are we to assume the stranger is the devil, Bulgakov further twists the hierarchy of God, Jesus, and the devil, by placing the devil up top with the most influence and power. The devil is the one that relays to Berlioz and the poet the existence of God and Jesus, which gives him control of what kind of story is passed on. What does Bulgakov thus imply?
-Black Poodle
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