Portal:Catholic Church/Patron Archive/August 2007

Nicodemus (Greek: Νικόδημος) was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, who, according to the Gospel of John, showed favour to Jesus. He appears three times in the Gospel: the first is when he visits Jesus one night to listen to his teachings (3:1-21); the second is when he states the law concerning the arrest of Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles (7:45-51); and the last follows the Crucifixion, when he assists Joseph of Arimathea in preparing the corpse of Jesus for burial (19:39-42).

The discussion with Jesus is the source of several common expressions of contemporary Christianity, specifically, the descriptive phrase born again used to describe the experience of believing in Jesus as Saviour, and John 3:16, a commonly quoted verse used to describe God's plan of salvation.

An apocryphal work under his name &mdash; the Gospel of Nicodemus &mdash; was produced at some point in the medieval era, and is mostly a reworking of the earlier Acts of Pilate, which recounts the harrowing of Hell.

Though there is no clear source of information about this Nicodemus outside the Gospel of John, the Jewish Encyclopedia and many Biblical historians have theorised that he is identical to Nicodemus ben Gurion, mentioned in the Talmud as a wealthy and popular holy man reputed to have had miraculous powers. Christian tradition asserts that Nicodemus was martyred sometime in the first century.

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