Modern critical biblical scholarship has long laboured under the belief that the object of teaching the biblical text was to communicate the original meaning of a traditional and canonical text. Contemporary criticism points more and more to the intertextuality of both text and reader in the interpretative process. The interpreter is inevitably inscribed in the act of interpretation. A reading of the Nicodemus material in the Fourth Gospel attempts to show that “autobiographical” readings need not abandon the achievements of more traditional forms of scholarship. Text, tradition, rhetoric and reader can combine to provide a reading of the text which continues and enriches Christian beliefs and practice.