NEZIAH

NEZIAH.— The name of a family of Nethinlm (Ezr 2", Neh 7«8); caUed in 1 Es 5^ Nasi or Hasith (tiie latter form in AV and RVm).

NEZIB .—A town in the ShephSlah of Judah ( Jos 1 5") ; the present Beit Nusib, 7 Roman miles from Eleuthe-ropolis on the road to Hebron.

NEBHAZ.— An idol of the Avvites (2 K 17"). But the Heb. text is corrupt, and no identification of this deity is possible.

NIBSHAN.— A city in the desert of Judah (Jos 1S«). The name has not been recovered.

NIOANOR. — 1. Son of Patroclus, a Syrian general who was engaged in the Jewish wars (1 Mao 3"). He was sent by Lysias in B.C. 166 against Judas Maccabseus, but was defeated. Five years later he was sent on the same errand by Demetrius; this time he endeavoured to win by strategy what he had failed to gain by force, jigain he was compelled to fight, and was twice defeated, once at Capharsalama (1 Mac yai-ss), and again at Adasa, where he lost his life. The day of his death was ordained to be kept as a festival as 'Nlcanor's Day.' The account in 2 Mac (esp. 14'2-'») differs in several details. 2. One of the 'Seven' (Ac 6').

T. A. MoxoN.

NICODEUUS. — A Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin (Jn 3' 7'"), elderly (3<) and evidently well-to-do (19"). He is mentioned only in the Fourth Gospel, and there he figures thrice. (1) At the outset of His ministry Jesus went up to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of the Passover, and His miracles made a deep impression on Nicodemus, half persuading him that He was the Messiah ; insomuch that he interviewed Him secretly under cover of the darkness (Jn S'-"). He began by raising the question of the miracles, which, he allowed, proved Jesus at the least a God-commissioned teacher; but Jesus interrupted him and set him face to face with the urgent and personal matter of regeneration. Nicodemus went away bewildered, but a seed had been planted in his soul. (2) During the third year of His ministry, Jesus went up to the Feast of Tabernacles (October). The rulers were now His avowed enemies, and they convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin to devise measures against Him (7"-"). Nicodemus was present, and, a disciple at heart but afraid to avow his faith, he merely raised a point of order: 'Doth our law judge a man, except it first hear himself and know what he doeth?' (RV). (3) At the meeting of the Sanhedrin which condemned Jesus to death Nicodemus made no protest; probably he absented himself. But after the Crucifixion, ashamed of his cowardice, he at last avowed himself and joined with Joseph of Arimathsea in giving the Lord's body a kingly burial (19"). David Smith.

NICOLAITANS.— See next article.

NICOLAS (lit. 'conqueror of the people'). — Among the Seven chosen in Ac 6 to minister to the Hellenists or Greek-speaking Jews, was Nicolas, a 'proselyte of Antioch.' The remaining six, we infer, were of Jewish birth, for 'proselyte' is the emphatic word (e*). At a later age the Jews divided converts to Judaism into two classes, 'proselytes of righteousness,' who were circumcised and who kept the whole Law, and ' proselytes of the gate,' who had only a somewhat undefined con-nexion with Israel. It is probable that this difference in its essence also holds in NT, where the latter class are called 'God-fearing' or 'devout,' a description which in Acts appears to be technical (so Lightfoot, Ramsay; this is disputed, however). If the view here stated be true, there were three stages in the advance towards the idea of a Catholic Church: (1) the admission of Nicolas, a full proselyte, to office in the Christian Church, followed by the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, also probably a full proselyte (8"); (2) the baptism of Cornelius, a 'God-fearing' proselyte, i.e. of the latter

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class; (3) the direct admission of heathen to the Church without their haying had any connexion with Judaism.

Nicolas is not further mentioned in NT, but Irenaeus and Hippolytus assert that he was the founder of the Nico-laltans of Rev 2»- " (if indeed a real sect is there meant); and Lightfoot thinks that ' there might well be a heresiarch among the Seven' {Galatianifi, p. 297). It is, however, equally probable that this was only a vain claim of the late 2nd cent, sect of that name mentioned by Tertullian, for both heretics and orthodox of that and succeeding ages apocryphally claimed Apostolic authority for their opinions and writings; or it is not unlikely that the Nicolaitans of Rev 2 were so called because they exaggerated and dis-torted in an antinomian sense the doctrine of Nicolas, who grobably preached the liberty of the gospel. Irenseus and [ippolytus are not likely to have known more about the matter than we do. A. J. Maclean.

NIGOFOLIS, or the ' city of victory,' was founded by Augustus in B.C. 31, on the spot where he had had his camp before the battle of Actium. It was made a Roman colony, and was peopled by citizens drawn from various places in Acarnania and ./Etolia.

In Tit 312 St. Paul writes, ' Give diligence to come unto me to Nicopolis; for there I have determined to winter.' It may be taken as certain that this means Nicopolis in Epirus, from which doubtless St. Paul hoped to begin the evangeUzation of that province. No other city of the name was in such a position, or so important as to claim six months of the Apostle's time.

The importance of NicopoUs depended partly on the 'Actian games,' partly on some commerce and fisheries. It was destroyed by the Goths, and, though restored by Justinian, it was supplanted in the Middle Ages by Prevesa, which grew up a Uttle farther south. There are extensive ruins on its site. A. E. Hillabd.

NIGER. — The second name of Symeon, one of the prophets and teachers in the Church of Antioch (Ac 13'). His name Symeon shows his Jewish origin, and Niger was probably the Gentile name which he assumed. Nothing further is known of him.

MoBLEY Stevenson.

NIGHT.— See Time.

NIGHT-HAWK ((ocftmSs).— An unclean bird (Lv ll'", Dt 14'*). What the tachmas really was is merely a matter of speculation. A species of owl, the ostrich, and even the cuckoo, have aU been suggested, but without any convincing reasons. ' Night-hawk ' is merely another name for the familiar night-jar or goat-sucker (Caprimulgus), of which three species are known in Palestine. E. W. G. Masteeman.

NIGHT MONSTER.— See Lilith.

NILE. — The Greek name of the river, of uncertain derivation. The Egyptian name was Hopi, later Yer- 0, 'Great River,' but the Hebrew generally designates the Nile by the plain Egyptian word for 'river,' Ye' Br. The Nile was rich in fish, and the home of the crocodile and hippopotamus. It bore most of the internal traffic of Egypt; but it was pre-eminently the one source of water, and so of hf e and tertiUty , in a land which, without it, would have been desert. The White Nile sends down from the Central African lakes a steady stream, which is greatly increased in summer and autumn, when the half-dry beds of the Bahr el-Azrek and the Atbara are filled by the torrential rains annually poured on the mountains of Abyssinia. The waters of these tributaries are charged with organic matter washed down by the floods, and this is spread over the fields of Egypt by the inundation. The height of the Nile rise was measured and recorded by the Egyptians from the earliest times: on it depended almost wholly the harvest of the year, and a great excess might be as harmful as a deficiency. The rise begins about June 19, and after increasing slowly for a month the river gains rapidly till September; at the end of September it becomes stationary, but rises again, reaching its highest level about the middle of October. The crops were

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