Nicodemus

Nicodemus (/nɪkəˈdiːməs/; Greek: Νικόδημος, translit. Nikódēmos) was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin mentioned in three places in the Gospel of John:

For other uses, see Nicodemus (disambiguation).

Saint

Nicodemus
Nicodemus helping to take down Jesus' body from the cross (The Deposition, by Michelangelo)
Defender of Christ
BornGalilee
DiedJudea
Venerated in
CanonizedPre-Congregation
Feast
AttributesPharisee
PatronageCuriosity

An apocryphal work under his name—the Gospel of Nicodemus—was produced in the mid-4th century, and is mostly a reworking of the earlier Acts of Pilate, which recounts the Harrowing of Hell.

Although there is no clear source of information about Nicodemus outside the Gospel of John, Ochser and Kohler, writing in The Jewish Encyclopedia in 1905,[1] identify him with Nicodemus ben Gurion, mentioned in the Talmud as a wealthy and popular holy man reputed to have had miraculous powers. Some 21st-century historians make the same connection.[2] Other scholars reject this identification, arguing that the biblical Nicodemus is likely an older man at the time of his conversation with Jesus, while Nicodemus ben Gurion was on the scene forty years later, at the time of the First Jewish-Roman War.[3][4] Nicodemus is considered by both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches to have secretly been a disciple of Jesus; there is no explicit mention of his discipleship in the Gospel of John.

Gospel narrative
Nicodemus (left) talking to Jesus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner
Christus und Nicodemus, by Fritz von Uhde (1848–1911)

As is the case with Lazarus, Nicodemus is not part of the tradition of the synoptic Gospels, and is mentioned only by John,[5] who devotes more than half of Chapter 3 of his gospel and a few verses of Chapter 7 to Nicodemus, and lastly mentions him in Chapter 19.

The first time Nicodemus is mentioned, he is identified as a Pharisee who comes to see Jesus at night. According to the scripture, Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. While in Jerusalem he chased the moneychangers from the temple and overturned their tables. His disciples remembered then the words of Psalm 69: "Zeal for your house will consume me." After these events "many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing".[lower-alpha 4] When Nicodemus visits Jesus he makes reference to these events: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him".[lower-alpha 5]

Jesus replies: "Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Then follows a conversation with Nicodemus about the meaning of being "born again" or "born from above" (Greek: ἄνωθεν): Nicodemus explores the notion of being literally born again from one's mother's womb, but most theologians recognise that Nicodemus knew Jesus was not speaking of literal rebirth. Theologian Charles Ellicott wrote that "after the method of Rabbinic dialogue, [Nicodemus] presses the impossible meaning of the words in order to exclude it, and to draw forth the true meaning. 'You cannot mean that a man is to enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born. What is it, then, that you do mean?'"[6] In this instance, Nicodemus chooses the literal (rather than the figurative) meaning of anōthen and assumes that that meaning exhausts the significance of the word.

Jesus expresses surprise, perhaps ironically, that "a teacher of Israel" does not understand the concept of spiritual rebirth:[lower-alpha 6]

Jesus answered him, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony."

— John 3:10–11

In Chapter 7, Nicodemus advises his colleagues among "the chief priests and the Pharisees", to hear and investigate before making a judgment concerning Jesus, reminding them that Jewish law requires that a person must be heard before they can be condemned. Their mocking response argues that no prophet comes from Galilee. Nonetheless, it is probable that he wielded a certain influence in the Sanhedrin.[5]

Finally, when Jesus is buried, Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes—about 100 Roman pounds (33 kilograms, or 73 lb).[lower-alpha 7] Nicodemus must have been a man of means; in his book Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, Pope Benedict XVI observes that, "The quantity of the balm is extraordinary and exceeds all normal proportions. This is a royal burial."[7]

Veneration and liturgical commemoration

Nicodemus is venerated as a saint in Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy and in the Catholic Churches. The Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches commemorate Nicodemus on the Sunday of the Holy Myrrhbearers, celebrated on the Third Sunday of Pascha (i.e., the second Sunday after Easter) as well as 2 August, the date when sacred tradition holds that his relics were found, along with those of Stephen the Protomartyr, Gamaliel, and Abibas (Gamaliel's second son). The traditional Roman-rite Catholic liturgical calendar lists the same feast of the finding of their relics on the following day, 3 August.

In the current Roman Martyrology of the Catholic Church, Nicodemus is commemorated along with Saint Joseph of Arimathea on 31 August. The Franciscan Order erected a church under the patronage of Saints Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea in Ramla.

Legacy

Art
Entombment, by Titian

Nicodemus figures prominently in medieval depictions of the Deposition or Descent from the Cross in which he and Joseph of Arimathea are shown removing the dead Christ from the cross, often with the aid of a ladder.[8]

Like Joseph, Nicodemus became the object of various pious legends during the Middle Ages, particularly in connection with monumental crosses. He was reputed to have carved both the Holy Face of Lucca and the Batlló Crucifix, receiving angelic assistance with the face in particular and thus rendering the works instances of acheiropoieta.[8]

Both of these sculptures date from at least a millennium after Nicodemus' life, but the ascriptions attest to the contemporary interest in Nicodemus as a character in medieval Europe.[8]

Literature

Persuaded: The Story of Nicodemus by author David Harder is a historical fictional account on the life of Nicodemus.[9] Harder used events and timetables for his novel found within the pages of the Passion Translation version of the Bible[10] and brought biblical characters to life in a realistic story with the goal of keeping his book historically and scripturally accurate.

In Henry Vaughan's "The Night," Nicodemus is significant to the poem's theme: he serves as the departure point and illustration of its meditation on night's relationship with experience of God.[11]

Music

In 18th-century Lutheranism, prescribed readings were assigned throughout the year; the gospel text of the meeting of Jesus and Nicodemus at night was assigned to Trinity Sunday. Johann Sebastian Bach composed several cantatas for the occasion, of which O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad, BWV 165, composed in 1715, stays close to the gospel based on a libretto by the court poet in Weimar, Salomo Franck.

In popular music, Nicodemus' name was figuratively used in Henry Clay Work's 1864 American Civil War-era piece "Wake Nicodemus",[12] which at that time was popular in minstrel shows. In 1978 Tim Curry covered the song on his debut album Read My Lips.

Ernst Pepping composed an Evangelienmotette (motet on gospel text) Jesus und Nikodemus in 1937. In 1941, The Golden Gate Quartet, sang the Gospel "God Told Nicodemus", in the African-American Jubilee style. The song "Help Yourself" by The Devil Makes Three contains a very informal retelling of the relationship between Nicodemus and Jesus.[13]

Film and television

Nicodemus is portrayed by Diego Matamoros in the 2003 film The Gospel of John.

The figure of Nicodemus appears in several television productions:

Social influence

The Reformation and religious conflict
Main article: Nicodemite
Further information: Reformation

During the struggle between Protestants and Catholics in Europe, from the 16th century to the 18th, a person professing a creed different from the locally approved one often risked severe penalties—in many cases, capital punishment. There developed the use of "Nicodemite", usually a term of disparagement, referring to a person who is suspected of public misrepresentation of their actual religious beliefs.[14]: 117–118 [15] The term is recorded from at least 1529 (in, at first, a slightly different sense, although still related to religious concealment or reticence). It is a reference to the clandestine night visit of Nicodemus to Jesus, suggesting an analogy between the undeclared belief of Nicodemus and the reluctance of some dissenters from Catholicism to risk being open about their true creed. To John Calvin, who opposed all veneration of saints, the fact of Nicodemus becoming a Catholic saint in no way exonerated this "duplicity". Calvin used the word in his 1544 Excuse à messieurs les Nicodemites refering to religious dissemblers in France—outwardly, conforming Catholics; inwardly, adherents of Protestantism. He was apparently not completely comfortable with the term's allusion to Nicodemus, however; subsequent editions of the work reduced the label's use and later French editions replaced the word with "faux ('false') Nicodemus" instead.[16] While the epithet initially applied to crypto-protestants, it later came to be used broadly for anyone suspected of exhibiting a false appearance of their religious adherence and concealing their genuine beliefs.[15]

United States

The discussion with Jesus is the source of several common expressions of contemporary American Christianity, specifically, the descriptive phrase "born again" used to describe salvation or baptism by some groups, and John 3:16, a commonly quoted verse used to describe God's plan of salvation.

Daniel Burke notes that, "To blacks after the Civil War, he was a model of rebirth as they sought to cast off their old identity as slaves".[7] Rosamond Rodman asserts that freed slaves who moved to Nicodemus, Kansas, after the Civil War named their town after him.[7] However, the National Park Service indicates that it was more likely based on an 1864 song, "Wake Nicodemus" by Henry Clay Work, used to promote settlement in the area.[17]

The Nicodemus National Historic Site, commemorating the only remaining western town established by African Americans during the Reconstruction Period following the American Civil War, is in Kansas.

On 16 August 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Nicodemus as a metaphor concerning the need for the United States to be "born again" in order to effectively address social and economic inequality. The speech was called "Where Do We Go From Here?", and delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention in Atlanta, Georgia.[18]

See also

Notes

Biblical verses
  1. John 3:1–21
  2. John 7:50–51
  3. John 19:39–42; Verse 40: "They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews."
  4. John 2:23–25
  5. John 3:2
  6. John 3:10–11
  7. John 19:39

Citations
  1. Public Domain Ochser, Schulim; Kohler, Kaufmann (1905). "Nicodemus". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. pp. 299–300.
  2. See, for instance:
  3. Carson, D. A. (1991). The Gospel according to John. Leicester: InterVarsity. p. 186.
  4. Bauckham, Richard (1996). "Nicodemus and the Gurion Family". The Journal of Theological Studies. 47 (1): 1–37. ISSN 0022-5185.
  5. Driscoll, James F. (1911). "Nicodemus". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
  6. Watkins, H. W., Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers on John 3, accessed 10 February 2016
  7. Burke, Daniel (17 March 2013). "Nicodemus, The Mystery Man of Holy Week". The Washington Post. Religious News Service. Archived from the original on 14 May 2023.
  8. Schiller, Gertrud, Iconography of Christian Art. Volume 2. The Passion of Jesus Christ. Janet Seligman (translator), Greenwich, CT, USA: New York Graphic Society, 1972: 144–145, 472–473.
  9. Persuaded: The Story of Nicodemus by David Harder.
  10. Passion Translation
  11. Durr, R. A. (1960). "Vaughan's 'The Night'". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 59 (1): 34–40. ISSN 0363-6941.
  12. "Henry Clay Work Biography". notablebiographies.com.
  13. "The Devil Makes Three – 'Help Yourself' Lyrics". Genius. Archived from the original on 5 July 2022. Retrieved 4 July 2022.
  14. Overell, M. Anne (2004). "A Nicodemite in England and Italy: Edward Courtenay, 1548-46". In David M. Loades (ed.). John Foxe at Home and Abroad. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate. pp. 117–135. ISBN 978-0-7546-3239-9.
  15. Livingstone, Elizabeth A., ed. (2006). "Nicodemism". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian church. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. p. 411. ISBN 978-0-19-861442-5. Calvin applied it to those converts to Protestantism in Catholic France who outwardly continued RC practices. In modern times Nicodemism covers all forms of religious simulation.
  16. Eire, Carlos M. N. (1986). "Calvin against the Nicodemites". War against the idols: The reformation of worship from Erasmus to Calvin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 234–275. ISBN 978-0-521-30685-0. p. 243: Calvin argues that since the cowardly Nicodemus changed into an honorable and courageous Christian, it is not right to use his name as a defense for timid simulation.
  17. "Nicodemus National Historic Site", National Park Service.
  18. King, Martin Luther Jr. (16 August 1967). ""Where Do We Go From Here?," Address Delivered at the Eleventh Annual SCLC Convention". The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University. Retrieved 30 November 2018.

Further reading
  • "St. Nicodemus" in Butler's Lives of the Saints
  • Cornel Heinsdorff: Christus, Nikodemus und die Samaritanerin bei Juvencus. Mit einem Anhang zur lateinischen Evangelienvorlage (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Bd.67), Berlin/New York, 2003.
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