Nicode´mus, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrim, who was impressed by what he had heard concerning Jesus; but being unwilling, on account of his station, to commit himself without greater surety than he possessed, repaired by night to the house in which Christ dwelt, and held with him that important discourse which occupies John 3. The effect which was then produced upon his mind may be collected from the fact that subsequently, at one of the sittings of the venerable body to which he belonged, he ventured to let fall a few words in favor of Jesus, whose proceedings were then in question (); and that he took part with his colleague, Joseph of Arimathea, in rendering the last honors to the body of the crucified Redeemer (). Nothing further is known of Nicodemus from Scripture. Tradition, however, adds that after he had thus openly declared himself a follower of Jesus, and had been baptized by Peter, he was displaced from his office, and expelled from Jerusalem (Phot. Cod. p. 171). It is added that he found refuge in a country house of his cousin Gamaliel, and remained there till his death. Too strong an appreciation of the world's good opinion seems to have been the failing of Nicodemus. We do not lay much stress upon what he ventured to say in the Sanhedrim; for he suffered himself to be easily put down, and did not come forward with any bold avowal of his belief. Winer calls attention to the fact, that although he took part in the sepulchral rites of Jesus, he did not join Joseph in his application to Pilate for the body of his crucified Lord; and justly remarks that such characters usually require a strong external impulse to bring them boldly forward, which impulse was probably in this case supplied by the resurrection of Jesus.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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