Prelude

This chapter begins to apply the theoretical insights gained in Part I in a reading of Acts 1:1–11:18. This reading is ‘spatial’, in that it explores how space is organised and structured within Acts. Part I refuted the equation of space with emptiness, or its marginalisation as passive background. It showed how, all too often, in the face of what Soja has termed ‘historicism’, spatial cues can ‘shrink’ before temporal or materialist assumptions governing the reading process in a manner analogous to Janice Capel Anderson's observation that female characters can shrink when read within wider androcentric assumptions. A spatial reading of Acts instead assumes that in Acts – like any narrative – space is produced in places, at contested sites of meaning and at varying geographical scales, each carrying theological meaning and also being shaped by theological meaning.

As Part I showed, this ‘geography’ is concerned with the perception, classification, division and ordering of space into places and territories, and it anticipates the articulation of a ‘worldview’ that is broader than the kind of information presented simply on maps. This search for the spatial in Acts therefore involves reading Acts for the geographies which actively constitute meaning within the text.

This first exegetical chapter is foundational for what follows, expounding Christ's ascension for its determinative role in ordering space within Acts. In particular, it argues that the thirdspatial effect of 1:9–11 should supplement existing readings of Acts which judge 1:8, in isolation, as setting the narrative's geographical agenda.