Biopolitics in the Trial of Jesus (John 18:28–19:16a)*

1. Introduction

This article explores the biopolitical dimension of the trial of Jesus in John 18:28–19:16a. From an Agambenian perspective, Jesus can be interpreted as a “bare life” in a zone of absolute undecidability in which both the Jewish and Roman laws simultaneously are operative and ineffectual. ¹ More specifically, Jesus is an insider in both the Jewish and Roman worlds on the grounds that he is subject to both the rules of Judaism and the Roman Empire. But at the same time, Jesus is an outsider from both the Jewish and Roman worlds because his kingship goes beyond both earthly rules (18:36; cf. 8:23; 17:14, 16). Paradoxically, Jesus is simultaneously an insider in and an outsider from each of the Jewish and Roman reigns. That is to say, Jesus lives in both of the reigns, while at the same time belonging to neither of them. It follows from this that Jesus is located in a liminal zone between insider and outsider. My contention, therefore, is that Jesus is such a liminal character—an unfixed and unfixable character in a zone of uncertainty—that he subverts the sovereign power and hierarchical dualism of the Jewish and Roman worlds.

2. Agamben’s Biopolitics

Let us briefly take a closer look at the political theory of Agamben with particular attention to a “zone of indistinction.” Specifically, Agamben in his book Homo Sacer attempts to highlight the political paradigm defined as a “zone of indifference or undecidability” wherein the distinctions between sovereign rule and its exceptions become indiscernible. ² Drawing on Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower and biopolitics, Agamben analyzes how sovereign power engenders homo sacer or “bare life” in the “state of exception,” where sovereign power is momentarily suspended within the juridical order that it itself sets up. ³

It is worthwhile to elaborate his use of “bare life”. Agamben turns his attention to a pivotal differentiation in Greek between zoe (natural or biological life) and bios (political life) as Aristotle constructs them. To Aristotle’s categories for life, Agamben adds a third type of life, which he calls “bare life.” “Bare life” is an original production of sovereign power, paradoxically both inside and outside the juridico-political sphere in the form of exception. It is thus neither zoe nor bios, but rather a life deprived of human rights, the very condition of life. Human beings in the modern era have often been reduced to “bare life”, for instance, in the concentration camps during the Second World War. Agamben articulates it thus:

[T]he decisive fact is that, together with the process by which the exception everywhere becomes the rule, the realm of bare life—which is originally situated at the margins of the political order—gradually begins to coincide with the political realm, and exclusion and inclusion, outside and inside, bios and zoe, right and fact, enter into a zone of irreducible indistinction. At once excluding bare life from and capturing it within the political order, the state of exception actually constituted, in its very separateness, the hidden foundation on which the entire political system rested. ⁴

Here, Agamben explains how “bare life” operates in the “state of exception”. The “state of exception” is a state wherein the threshold between the juridical order and anomie, or that between an insider and outsider of the juridical order, becomes blurred as a result of a law that is suspended from its effectiveness yet is effective in its suspension. ⁵ As Kalpana Seshadri suggests, “For Agamben, such a typology of the law enables the acknowledged and extreme right of law not only to enforce the rule of the law, but also to suspend its own application, thereby rendering the inside and the outside of law absolutely undecidable”. ⁶ To illustrate, Roman law placed a “bare life” outside of the Roman legal system under its realm in the form of exception. To put it otherwise, a “bare life” was excluded from the Roman sovereign system, while simultaneously being included in it; therefore, a “bare life” could stand both inside and outside the sovereign law simultaneously. For Agamben, the emphasis here is that the sovereign power to control the natural life of its population in the form of “bare life” is an operative paradigm across temporal and spatial constraints. If such is the case, the powerless in the ancient Roman Empire, notably, the colonized subjects, were made all the more vulnerable to the highest risk of becoming “bare life” under Roman imperial sovereignty. ⁷

With this in mind, I will interpret Jesus as a “bare life” between the Jewish and Roman worlds as well as between the heavenly and earthly realms. I assert that Jesus, particularly in the trial scene, can be understood as destabilizing and undermining the binaristic worldview constructed in John’s Gospel. I go further and affirm that Jesus is such a liminal character subverting the hierarchical sovereign power of the Jewish and Roman worlds that he becomes an unfixed and unfixable character in a zone of undecidability or uncertainty.

3. Interpreting Jesus as a Liminal Character between Heavenly and Earthly Kingship

Scene One (18:28–32): Let us observe how John’s Jesus becomes a liminal character standing on the threshold between the Jewish and Roman worlds in his direct and indirect interactions with Pilate and the Jews. Due to Jesus’s absence in the scene where Pilate and the Jews discuss the charges against Jesus, Jesus’s characterization is indirect rather than direct. In the Johannine version of events, the Jews portray Jesus as an evildoer, that is, a criminal involved in political disturbance, in responding Pilate’s inquiry into their accusations against Jesus (v. 30). When Pilate commands the Jews to pass judgment on Jesus, he refuses to label Jesus as an evildoer under Roman law (v. 31). This moment in the trial narrative lays a foundation for the conflict that will arise later between the Jews’ portrayal of Jesus as a political criminal and Pilate’s portrayal of him as an innocent Jew.

Scene Two (18:33-38a): The scene revolves around Jesus’ identity as a king (βασιλεὺς) in conflict with the world (κόσμος), a disbelieving world that turns its back on Jesus, as represented by the Jewish and Roman worlds. ⁸ The Greek word βασιλεὺς is by far the most dominant of the motifs found in the trial narrative. ⁹ The crucial point, however, is that, throughout the scene, Jesus never owns the label of a king, but rather refers only to his otherworldly kingship that exceeds but encompasses the Jewish and Roman worlds.

The scene centers on the sovereignty of Jesus as a king, not of this world but in this world. Importantly, John’s Jesus actively engages with Pilate’s questions as to whether he is “the king of the Jews (ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων)”, whereas the other Gospels do not include this conversation. More importantly, Jesus, the interrogated, goes even so far as to interrogate Pilate (v. 34). It seems highly likely that the power balance once, if not for all, shifts between the two characters. ¹⁰ Pilate attempts to determine whether Jesus is “the king of the Jews” in particular (v. 33) or a king in general (v. 37). When asked if he is “the king of the Jews” (v. 33), Jesus hints at the heavenly origin and character of his kingship, thereby rebuffing the claim to Jewish kingship alone and thus refusing any constraints on his kingship in racial-ethnic terms (v. 36). This also suggests that Jesus’ kingship is not restricted by the Roman world or the Jewish world (v. 36). ¹¹

Thus, Jesus clarifies his kingship as not deriving from this world, but existing in this world. Cornelis Bennema is correct in interpreting Jesus’ kingship as one that “is ‘from above’ but it exists and operates in this world”. ¹² That is to say, the origin of Jesus’ kingship is not from this world, neither from the Jewish world, nor from the Roman imperial world. At the same time, the impact of his kingship may nonetheless exist in this world, whether Jewish or Roman (see 17:13–18). ¹³ In the words of David Rensberger:

Jesus’ declaration about his kingship is not a denial that it is a kingship, with social consequences. Rather, it specifies what those consequences are. It is not a question of whether Jesus’ kingship exists in this world but of how it exists, not a certification that the interests of Jesus’ kingdom are ‘otherworldly’ and so do not impinge on this world’s affairs, but that his kingship has its source outside this world and so is established by methods other than this world’s. ¹⁴

Jesus’ kingship is neither Jewish nor Roman in that its origin is from heavenly kingship, but its effect echoes around the world in that it exercises its authority over this world. As a consequence, Jesus characterizes his kingship as existing outside the Roman imperial world as well as the Jewish world, but still applying to both worlds.

Scene Three (18:38b–40): After finishing his inquiry into Jesus’ case, Pilate returns to the Jews and declares Jesus innocent of their charges. When Pilate offers to release Jesus, the Jews instead prefer Barabbas. John’s Gospel uses the Jews’ choice of Barabbas, a known political criminal, to reveal that their accusation against Jesus as a political criminal was irrelevant. It thus becomes all the more clear that Jesus is an outcast from the Jews.

Scene Four (19:1–3): Given the violence inflicted on Jesus at the center of the trial narrative scene, Jesus seems to be a mere victim of Roman imperial power, exerted by its representative, Pilate. In this scene, John’s Gospel thus reveals Pilate as a savage colonizer from the perspective of the colonized subjects. Pilate intends to deride Jesus, and, by extension, the Jews, as colonized subjects of Rome, through the actions and words of the Roman soldiers. The soldiers ridicule Jesus by putting a crown of thorns on his head, dressing him in a purple robe, mockingly hailing him as “the king of the Jews” and striking him on the face (vv. 2–3). ¹⁵ However, despite the soldiers’ intention to mock Jesus, their hailing him as “the king of the Jews” may signal their unexpected acknowledgement of his kingship.

Scene Five (19:4–7): A cacophonous conversation between the Jews and Pilate implicitly portrays Jesus as an anti-imperial king as well as an imperial king. On the one hand, it is significant to note that Jesus continues to wear the crown of thorns and purple attire for the rest of the trial scenes (v. 5). ¹⁶ In spite of the soldiers’ intent to insult Jesus as a caricature of the Roman emperor, they cannot control the implications of their mocking: Jesus’ imperial kingship. On the other hand, the Jews’ charge that Jesus claims to be “the Son of God” insinuates that he becomes an anti-imperial character opposed to Roman imperial theology. Clearly, the phrase ‘υιὸς θεοῦ’ runs parallel to Roman imperial theology, which venerates the Roman emperor as divi filius. Therefore, the emperor was worshipped not solely as a ruler (in the political arena), but also as a deity (in the religious arena). The reader familiar with the Roman cult would interpret the divine sonship of Jesus as a parody of the Roman emperor, which subverts the emperor’s imperial authority. Jesus’ sovereignty runs counter-parallel to that of the emperors in the religious and political realms. His kingship thus exists in the undecidable zone between imperialism and anti-imperialism.

Scene Six (19:8–12): The final conversation between Pilate and Jesus presents Jesus as a liminal character resisting the colonial authority of Pilate, the representative of earthly sovereignty. In the Roman context, Jesus’ claim to be “the Son of God” threatens Pilate due to both its imperial and anti-imperial echoes (v. 8). Pilate is likely trepidatious about the divine sonship of Jesus because of its ambivalence (v. 8), which motivates him to inquire about Jesus’ origin (v. 9a). As the subordinate, Jesus is expected to answer the governor’s question, but he keeps silent for a moment (v. 9b). Silence tends to mean submissiveness, but actually, in this particular case, demonstrates resistance. When Pilate vaunts his colonial authority (ἐξουσία) to exonerate and condemn Jesus as a colonized subject, this indicates that Pilate has interpreted Jesus’ refusal to speak as an act of resistance (v. 10). Rather than being intimidated by Pilate’s colonizing power, Jesus instead intimidates Pilate by asserting that earthly sovereignty has its origin in heavenly sovereignty (v. 11a). In addition, Jesus demonstrates his superior power over Pilate by pointing to Pilate’s sin (v. 11b). This statement highlights the inversion of the power relations between Jesus and Pilate since Jesus takes over the role of a judge with special reference to sin (ἁμαρτία).

To make matters more complicated, this power dynamic demonstrates that, although heavenly sovereignty, as represented by Jesus, does not belong to earthly sovereignty, as represented by Pilate, the former still operates over the latter. To put it otherwise, at the ‘this-worldly’ level, the sovereignty of Jesus, an agent of God, is governed by the sovereignty of Pilate, an agent of Rome, while, at the ‘other-worldly’ level, heavenly sovereignty governs earthly sovereignty. Jesus’ kingship is in force in both political and religious dimensions. To illustrate, in verse 12, the Jews hint at the political dimension of Jesus’ kingship in connection with the Roman Empire by stating, “Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

As a consequence, Jesus is situated on the historical threshold of the Jewish and Roman contexts and, more fundamentally, on the threshold of this-worldly and other-worldly levels. In this redoubled position, Jesus becomes a resistant character against the colonial power of Pilate, causing Pilate’s anxiety about Jesus’ identity as both imperial and anti-imperial at both the this-worldly and other-worldly level.

Scene Seven (19:13–16a): The last conversation between Pilate and the Jews portrays Jesus as a Passover lamb yet to be slaughtered and as a king denied sovereignty. Throughout the whole narrative, the Gospel of John endeavors to look upon Jesus as “the lamb of God” (ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ) (1:29, 36). It is interesting that, in stark contrast to the Synoptic Gospels, in which Jesus’ death occurs after the Passover meal, the Gospel of John describes his crucifixion as occurring on the same day the Passover lamb is slaughtered (v. 14b; cf. 18:28). ¹⁷ The implication is that Jesus can be symbolically read as a Passover lamb. ¹⁸

Furthermore, the death of Jesus as the Passover lamb has both religious and political overtones of deliverance. ¹⁹ In the religious realm, as Bart Ehrman aptly suggests, “Jesus’ death represents the salvation of God, just as the sacrifice of the lamb represented salvation for the ancient Israelites during the first Passover.” ²⁰ In the political realm, the death of Jesus as the Passover lamb indicates a sacrifice for liberation from Roman colonizers in exactly the same way that the first Passover lamb symbolized deliverance from Egyptian oppressors.

In the Johannine trial narrative, when Pilate presents Jesus as the king of the Jews (v. 14b–15a), the high priests respond, “We have no king but Caesar (oὐκ ἔχομεν βασιλέα εἰ μὴ Καίσαρα)” (v. 15b). This announcement suggests that the high priests turn their back on the kingship of Jesus and, more importantly, on the kingship of God, who is the only king of Israel according to Jewish creed (cf. Judges 8:23; 1 Samuel 8:7; Psalms 2:7; Isaiah 26:13). ²¹ The Gospel of John places the high priests in a trap, whereby, in repudiating Jesus’ kingship, they end up adopting Roman sovereignty.

Thus far, we have interpreted Jesus as an elusive character in the uncertain zones between the Jewish and Roman worlds, and, moreover, between the earthly and heavenly realms in his ongoing interactions with Pilate and the Jews. Jesus’ heavenly sovereignty subverts earthly sovereignty. In the indistinguishable zones between the Jewish and Roman worlds, and between the earthly and heavenly sovereignties, Jesus becomes an ambiguous but resistant character who undermines earthly powers. To begin, Jesus causes Pilate’s anxiety because he cannot fully understand Jesus’ ambiguous identity, both imperial and anti-imperial. Furthermore, the Gospel of John depicts the Jewish high priests as self-contradictory in their ostensible adherence to Jewish law yet adoption of Roman law.

Conclusion: The Implications of Biopolitics

With Agamben’s framework in mind, we have thus far analyzed how Jesus is paradoxically both “both a Jew and a colonized subject of Rome” and “neither a Jew nor a colonized subject of Rome”. It is my contention that the death of Jesus can be traced back to the fact that (1) Jesus is subject to neither the Jewish nor Roman law, in that the Roman law is sovereign but finds no problem with Jesus’ action and the Jewish law finds cause for the death penalty but has no sovereignty, and (2) he is subject to both Jewish and Roman laws, in that a combination of both laws leads to the death of Jesus. ²² In this light, a “zone of indistinction” could be reformulated as a zone of both “neither … nor” and “both … and” as it relates to Roman and Jewish laws. In the case of Jesus in the trial narrative, a blurred zone operates both between overlapping laws and within neither law. Jesus finds himself to be located both within and beyond the distinction between the Jewish and Roman worlds.

Therefore, Jesus can be interpreted as a “bare life” in a zone of absolute undecidability and uncertainty between Jewish and Roman jurisprudence. According to the Johannine trial narrative, Jesus belongs to the Jewish legal system in the sense that he is a Jew to whom Jewish laws are applicable. At the same time, he belongs to the Roman legal system in the sense that he is a colonized Jew under the Roman imperial system. But, when the Jewish leaders try to impose a death penalty due to religious and political affairs surrounding the suspicion that Jesus is “the king of the Jews”, they have no means to do so because the power to enact the sentence of life/death belongs to the Roman legal system. At the same time, the Roman governor, Pilate, finds no charges with Jesus such that he even attempts to release him. This being the case, the Fourth Gospel’s narrative implies that, arguably, both the Jews and Romans should take responsibility for the death of Jesus and, at the same time neither the Jews nor Romans are to blame for it. In the final analysis, Jesus belongs to a “zone of indistinction” in which both the Jewish and Roman laws simultaneously are operative and are ineffectual. In this regard, Jesus stands within the limits of the Jewish and Roman laws and at the same time goes beyond them.

In addition, Jesus becomes a liminal character in terms of his sovereignty. ²³ Most importantly, Jesus claims not to belong to this world (κόσμος) (18:36). One should keep in mind that God’s sovereignty is hidden within the discourse of the Jewish leaders, which runs counter to Roman sovereignty. This suggests that Jesus is, by nature, both subject to earthly sovereignty in that he is the one sent from heaven to the world by the Father (3:17; 4:34; 5:36; 6:29, 57; 7:29; 17:3, 8; 18, 23, 25; 20:21) and is not constrained by it in that he is fundamentally subject to heavenly sovereignty. Jesus transforms himself into an ambivalent character on the grounds that he is both the insider and outsider of the earthly world; Jesus belongs to the religiopolitical zones of the Jews and Romans, while, at the same time, he transcends them. Thus, Jesus is presented as destabilizing the sharp (insider/outsider) binary of John. As a liminal character, Jesus undermines the sovereign powers, Jewish and Roman, in a zone of undecidability.