other · 29 · Jerusalem
When the temple police came back without Jesus and the Pharisees asked whether any of the authorities had believed in him, Nicodemus asked a procedural question: does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does? The answer was a sneer about Galilee. It is the only defence anyone offers in the gospels before the passion, and it comes from inside the council that will condemn him. John makes a point of noting that this was the man who had come to him before — the burial party at the end is the third and last time he appears, arriving with about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, which is a quantity fit for a king.
To stop the council acting on a man it had not heard.
Nothing, immediately — but he is on the record before the passion, and he is there at the burial.