A Cartography of Kinship: Domestic Space, Tomb Cult, and the Re-Mapping of Ephesus in the Acts of John

Abstract

Scholars have long dismissed the apocryphal Acts of John as insignificant for reconstructing Christian origins in Ephesus, despite the fact that this city serves as the primary locale for John's activities in the text's (extant) narrative. This is due in large part to the Acts's historical inaccuracies, especially its claim that the apostle John destroyed the Artemision a full two centuries before the famous temple would actually experience wholesale destruction. This article, by contrast, puts aside the issue of historical accuracy in favor of examining the Acts's inventive dimensions, namely, how and to what effect the Acts imaginatively reconfigures cultic space within (and outside) the city of Ephesus. I argue that the Acts privileges domestic and extra-urban spaces, such as the home and the tomb, as significant sites for Christian cultic activities at the expense of public polytheistic sites such as the temple of Artemis. In doing so, the Acts constructs a "counter-cartography" that places emphasis on the importance of cultic activities (e.g., domestic cult, burial rites), which underscore ties of kinship within nascent Christian communities. The article concludes by demonstrating important ties between the Acts's constructions of Christian space and the subsequent history of Christian Ephesus in late antiquity, thus underscoring how, despite its reputation for historical irrelevance, the Acts's "cartography of kinship" had important ramifications for the succeeding realities of Christian thought and practice in the ancient Mediterranean world.