This word occurs twice in the New Testament (; ). In the former passage the conduct of the Nicolaitanes is condemned; in the latter, the angel of the church in Pergamos is censured because certain members of his church held their doctrine. Various traditionary accounts of the origin and practices of his sect have been given by the fathers, but none of them are entitled to any credit.
It is evident from the accounts which they give, that the Nicolaitanes with whom they were acquainted were Gnostics; since they impute to them the distinctive tenets and practices of the Gnostics. But in the short allusion in; , there is nothing to identify the tenets or contact alluded to with Gnosticism, even supposing that Gnosticism, properly so called, existed in the Apostolic age, which, to say the least, has not been proved to be the case. So that the conjecture mentioned by Mosheim, and which Tertullian appears to favor, may be regarded as probable, that the Nicolaitans mentioned in Revelation had erroneously been confounded with a party of Gnostics formed at a later period by one Nicholas.
The ingenious conjecture of Michaelis is worthy of consideration, who supposes that by Nicolaitanes (; ) the same class of persons is intended whom St. Peter () describes as followers of the way of Balaam: and that their name, Nicolaitanes, is merely a Greek translation of their Hebrew designation. The only objection which occurs to us against this very ingenious and probable supposition, arises from the circumstance that, in the passage, , both 'they that hold the doctrine of Balaam,' and 'the Nicolaitanes,' are specified, and are distinguished from each other: 'So hast thou also,' the Nicolaitanes, as well as the Balaamites, mentioned in the previous verse. So that whatever general agreement there might be between those two classes of heretics—and their collocation in the passage before us seems to imply that there was such agreement—it appears equally evident that some distinction also must have separated them the one from the other.
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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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