Configuring Nicodemus

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Complex Characterization

Michael R. Whitenton

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780567695543
• eBook ISBN: 9780567685636
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Michael Whitenton offers a fresh perspective on the characterization of Nicodemus, focusing on the benefit of Hellenistic rhetoric and the cognitive sciences for understanding audience construals of characters in ancient narratives.

Whitenton builds an interdisciplinary approach to ancient characters, utilizing cognitive science, Greek stock characters, ancient rhetoric, and modern literary theory. He then turns his attention to the characterization of Nicodemus, where he argues that Nicodemus would likely be understood initially as a dissembling character, only to depart from that characterization later in the narrative, suggesting a journey toward Johannine faith. Whitenton presents a compelling argument: many in an ancient audience would construe Nicodemus in ways that suggest his development from doubt and suspicion to commitment and devotion.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the study of character and characterization has markedly increased in New Testament studies, and this surge is probably most palpable in the Gospel of John.¹ Of the more than seventy characters in the Fourth Gospel,² Nicodemus stands out as one of the more memorable. Over the years he has attracted scholarly attention like the Sirens of old, beckoning would-be suitors to the craggy rocks of his confusing behavior.³ Nicodemus seeks out Jesus, but he does so under the cover of night. He claims confusion, but his status as a religious leader in Israel casts doubt about the credibility of such a statement. Are we really to believe that this religious scholar cannot understand what the audience surely would have? As a result, the attention Nicodemus has garnered has not birthed consensus.⁴ Also, some interpreters have promoted an intentionally ambiguous characterization for this (in)famous leader of the Jews, who evinces signs of affinity for Jesus alongside characteristics that seem to fail the Johannine standard.⁵ Yet, despite the brilliant colors used to paint these portraits of Nicodemus, entire palettes remain relatively underutilized and overlooked, particularly relating to ancient rhetoric and the contemporary cognitive sciences. Perhaps predictably, Johannine scholars have tended to remain within the borders of traditional narrative and historical criticisms when it comes to character and characterization studies.

And yet a tide change is perceptible for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Ever since the first edition of Werner Kelber’s The Oral and the Written Gospel,⁶ a consensus has been developing that early Christian literature, including John’s Gospel, was written to be delivered orally before a largely illiterate audience.⁷ However, the effects of the oral-aural exchange between a lector/performer and his or her audience members still remain largely uncharted waters in character and characterization studies.⁸ As a result, the field is white for a harvest of new insights and approaches that blend ancient rhetoric and poetics and research from the contemporary cognitive sciences regarding the way the minds of ancient hearers worked. The payoff would be an approach to characterization true to ancient theory and practice, as well as contemporary theoretical and empirical research.

In the pages and chapters to follow, I chart an interdisciplinary approach to complex characters in ancient narratives, using the Fourth Gospel as a case study.⁹ The remainder of this chapter will address the most recent and important work in the study of Johannine characterization vis-à-vis Nicodemus. It will conclude with a detailed roadmap for the journey ahead.

Reflections on Trends in Johannine Characterization

Scholarship on Nicodemus tends to fall into one of two distinct camps.¹⁰ After the rise of narrative criticism, the vast majority of studies have construed Nicodemus as a sympathetic figure, who comes to the Johannine Jesus out of benevolent interest; he has a budding, if inadequate, faith.¹¹ In these studies, Nicodemus often represents a “secret believer” or “seeker,” whose sign-faith brought him to Jesus, even if that seed of fidelity never fully flowers, being trampled beneath the fear of “the Jews.”¹² On this reading, Nicodemus’s words are taken at face value with the result that his laudatory greeting is rendered as on the Johannine track to a robust confession (Jn 3.2), just as his moments of confusion are understood as genuine befuddlement (3.4). Add to this initial encounter the fact that Nicodemus seems to defend Jesus in Jn 7.50-52 and that he assists in his burial in Jn 19.38-42, and it is not difficult to understand why most Johannine interpreters read Nicodemus as a relatively straightforward character.

Others have contended that Nicodemus is instead an ambiguous character.¹³ While not disparaging the observations made above, these scholars try to do justice not only to the positive elements of Nicodemus’s characterization, but also to the factors that cast a shadow of doubt over him. While most scholars usually emphasize either the positive or negative traits, Jouette Bassler, Susan Hylen, and Raimo Hakola, among others, have tried to hold both elements in tension.¹⁴ Thus framed, the narrative leaves Nicodemus’s characterization open-ended. Most recently, Hylen has dedicated an entire book to ambiguous characters in John’s Gospel.¹⁵ After sifting through the relevant passages, Hylen concludes that “[b]ecause the Gospel gives no motivations for [Nicodemus’s] actions, the reader is left to make a determination based on what is implicit.”¹⁶ For Hylen, Nicodemus can be configured in divergent ways, and this ambiguity is never resolved.¹⁷ The result is that audience members are left to ponder whether Nicodemus possesses Johannine faith; this question (rather than the answer) is most important for the discipleship of the audience members themselves.¹⁸ In other words, these scholars seek to maintain the ambiguity that others have sought to resolve.

The recent trend toward maintaining ambiguity represents a boon for Johannine character studies in that it focuses attention on the role of the audience in meaning making.¹⁹ Indeed, the attempts of Hylen and others to maintain the ambiguity in the characterization of Nicodemus and leverage it for interpretive gain produce interesting and even important readings. However, embracing ambiguity—while an important step—does not go far enough. This book encourages us to think beyond ambiguity in ways that comport with ancient rhetoric and the cognitive sciences.

Recent character studies in Johannine studies have largely overlooked the value of Greek stock characters. The paucity of work in this area may reflect the neglect of ancient rhetoric for understanding characterization in early Christian narratives more broadly.²⁰ A notable exception is the work of Alicia Myers, who has consistently pushed for the importance of ancient rhetoric in characterization studies. In her debut monograph, Characterizing Jesus, Myers attends to the characterization of the Johannine Jesus from the vantage point of ancient rhetoric. She demonstrates that the Fourth Gospel, like contemporary encomiastic bioi, not only emphasizes clarity, conciseness, and credibility (as prescribed by the progymnasmata), but also utilizes the common topoi in the characterization of the protagonist (e.g., origins, upbringing, deeds, synkrises with major figures, goods of the mind, reputation, age, speech, manner of death, and events following death). The major focus of Myers’s project is the narrative’s appeal to the Jewish scriptures, both in Jesus’s discourse and in passages outside the discourse.²¹ As a result, Myers arrives at a characterization of the Johannine Jesus—and an explanation of the means of that characterization—that, at least in theory, a first-century audience would recognize. In this case, she argues that the encomiastic topoi drive at the conclusion, “Jesus, as the incarnate Logos, is God’s revelation made flesh.”²² Myers’s work demonstrates the usefulness of ancient rhetoric, especially the topoi, in Johannine character studies. While I share Myers’s appreciation of the relevance of the topoi, I am more interested in the potential relevance of Greek stock characters, along with the figured speech placed in Jesus’s mouth by the fourth evangelist, for understanding characters in John’s Gospel.

As far as I am aware, Jo-Ann Brant was the first to draw attention to the potential of Greek stocks for understanding Johannine characters: she briefly noted the similarity between Nicodemus and Theophrastus’s “dissembling man” (ὁ εἴρων) in her Paideia commentary.²³ Indeed, Brant points out such connections between Johannine characters and Greek stocks throughout her commentary, drawing attention to the alazōn, eirōn, and mōros.²⁴ However, undoubtedly constrained by the limitations of a single-volume commentary, Brant does not go on to explore the durable utility of any of these observations. As I will argue at length in the next chapter, Greek stock characters provide an important window into the stereotypes of antiquity and thus enable us to think in a more emic manner about ancient audience perceptions of characters.

Interpreters also tend to undervalue cognitive research.²⁵ For example, Hylen is correct to highlight the inherent diversity in interpretations “on the ground” among audience members, but she does not explore the cognitive dynamics of this diversity.²⁶ While there is much to be gained by the recent focus on “ambiguity,” I will show that this account of audience members’ construals of characters—however heuristic—is unintentionally incomplete. Attention to the breakthroughs in research on the human brain allows us to better appreciate—and even approximate—the moment-by-moment, albeit largely unconscious, dynamics of auditor-oriented character construction. In other words, Hylen’s proposal fits well within contemporary silent literary readings of characters, but not aurally based dynamic hearings akin to those experienced in the first century.

Concluding Remarks

The most recent work on character and characterization omits attention to the way that characters were perceived through hearing in a performance, rather than studying a written manuscript.²⁷ In order to address this shortcoming, however, we must gain familiarity with the rudimentary workings of information processing, including the ways that humans use what is called “prototyping” to make sense of other people (Chapter 2), as well as the relevant “prototypes” that populated ancient Mediterranean minds (Chapter 3). As a result, my aim is to offer more than a configuration of Nicodemus; I hope to set forth a new way of thinking about characterization as a whole.

This approach to characters has more to do with an audience’s experience of a narrative than an author’s intention in constructing it: I make no claims to whether the readings offered below were “in the mind” of the author or that they are the simplest available readings. Rather, I argue that the readings in the following chapt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Information
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Characterization, Cognition, and Ancient Listeners
• Chapter 3 Relevant Prototypical Characters
• Chapter 4 Configuring Nicodemus in John 3.1-21
• Chapter 5 Stability and Development in Nicodemus’s Character in John 7 and 19
• Chapter 6 Rhetorical Function(s) of Nicodemus
• Chapter 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index Of Ancient Sources
• Copyright Page