In this book, Eric C. Smith uses the postcolonial theory of necropolitics to interpret the Acts of the Apostles. Necropolitics, a way to account for how power makes claims on the lives of persons especially in colonial or imperial circumstances, is particularly relevant for the study of Acts because of its attention to those specific imperial situations and the way coercion, violence, intimidation, imprisonment, and fear show up in the lives of its characters. Necropolitics reveals a useful perspective for understanding Acts and its account of the aftermath of Jesus’s death, the expansion of the Jesus movement across the Mediterranean basin, and the movement’s many encounters with representatives of cultural, religious, and political power.

Eric C. Smith is Associate Professor of Early Christian Texts and Traditions at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. Smith is the author of several books including Jewish Glass and Christian Stone: A Materialist Mapping of the Parting of the Ways (2018) as well as numerous articles, book chapters, and works of creative nonfiction.