Nicodemus

• Eastern Christianity (including Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy and Eastern-rite Catholics):
  • Discovery of the saint's relics: 2 August
  • As a Holy Myrrhbearer: Third Sunday of Pascha (Easter)
• Roman-rite Catholicism:
  • Translation of the saint's relics: 3 August
  • Feast day: 31 August

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.[17]

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.[17]

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.[17]

Persuaded: The Story of Nicodemus by David Harder is a fictionalized account of the life of Nicodemus. According to the author, he used episodes and timetables sourced from all four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles to develop his novel's timeline of events and extensively researched the culture, politics and history of the period. He consulted the Passion Translation[lower-alpha 8] version of the Bible to do so; scripture quoted within the novel is taken from there.[18] Harder has spoken of his attempts to bring biblical characters to life in a relatable way, while maintaining overall historical and scriptural accuracy.[19]

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.[20]

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.[21]

In popular music, Nicodemus' name was used figuratively in Henry Clay Work's 1864 American Civil War-era piece "Wake Nicodemus", an abolitionist song hailing the end of slavery,[22] which at that time was popular in minstrel shows. In 1978 Tim Curry covered the song on his debut album Read My Lips. The song's layered connotations gave it an association with the anti-slavery—and by extension, the civil rights—movement in the § United States.

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, from their 2009 Do Wrong Right album, contains a very informal retelling of the relationship between Nicodemus and Jesus.[23]

Nicodemus is portrayed by Diego Matamoros in the 2003 film The Gospel of John.[24]

The figure of Nicodemus appears in several television productions:

• In the 1952 series, The Living Bible, Forrest Taylor depicts the character of Nicodemus[25]
• Sir Laurence Olivier has the Nicodemus role in Franco Zeffirelli's 1977 series, Jesus of Nazareth[26]
• Erick Avari plays Nicodemus in the 2019 web series The Chosen[27]

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.[28]^{: 117–118}[29] 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 referring 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.[30] 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.[29]

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.

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. The National Park Service indicates the town's name came from the 1864 piece, "Wake Nicodemus" by Henry Clay Work.[31] Some point to the lyrics' use of the name Nicodemus as a figurative reference to the biblical figure. In the case of the song, Nicodemus is an enslaved African, long deceased, but acknowledged in the lyrics as both prophet and herald of freedom. The contrast in the lyrics between night and morning, and the enslaved Nicodemus' certainty in what the metaphorical "morning" would bring, have been seen as drawing a parallel to, and being inspired by, the story of the biblical figure. In one story, emancipation, and in the other, salvation, is to come "in the morning"; each Nicodemus has faith in their eventual advent. The lyrics of first verse (in part), the chorus, and the fourth verse, say:[32]

Nicodemus, the slave, was of African birth,
And was bought for a bagful of gold;
 [...]
"Wake me up!" was his charge,
at the first break of day–
Wake me up for the great Jubilee!
 
The "Good Coming" is almost here!
It was long, long, long on the way!
Now run and tell Elijah to hurry up, Pomp
And meet up at the gum tree down in the swamp,
To wake Nicodemus today.
 [...]
'Twas a long weary night – we were almost in fear
That the future was more than he knew;
'Twas a long weary night – but the morning is near,
And the words of our prophet are true.

— Extract from "Wake Nicodemus" by Henry Clay Work (1864)

Rosamund Rodman noted in a 2008 article that slaves who learnt to read generally did so in secret and at night, due to risks of punishment for this forbidden activity. The gospel's Nicodemus came to Jesus to learn from him, also in secret and at night, for fear of repercussions. Such connections and allusions lead Rodman to conclude that the town's name has its ultimate origin with the biblical figure.[33] 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".[9]

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.[34]