Staff profile

I joined the Department of Theology and Religion in 2025, having previously taught at the University of Aberdeen and the University of St Andrews.

My work is particularly concerned with the theological significance of the New Testament writings, as these emerge within the diverse but coherent contexts of early Judaism and then function normatively for subsequent interpretative communities. My research is marked by a particular commitment to exploring the complexities of early Jewish culture (including the significance of emergent Jewish Christian communities) through close examination of the primary literature. I am particularly interested in the programmatic need to “recentre” the map of New Testament research onto Roman Syria, such that the Western appropriation of “the Mediterranean” as the principal evaluative context is challenged by a recognition that the literature emerges from a world in which Asian and African intellectual cultures are as important as Roman or Hellenistic. I have been invested in methodological reflection about how dominant Western/Northern frameworks effectively marginalize entire communities from antiquity, as a function of both geography and cultural otherness.

I am also concerned that the New Testament is properly identified not only as historical artefact, but also as primary theological literature. I have been particularly concerned to think about how these two identifications (and the communities of scholarships by whom they are made) can be coordinated constructively, which involves the recognition that they are non-identical but are also non-exclusive. This commitment to coordinating-without-collapsing the historical and theological identifications of the New Testament will be particularly embodied in my forthcoming 2 volume International Theological Commentary on Romans (Bloomsbury). I have also worked extensively on the relationship between the theological interpretation of the New Testament and the embodiment of disability and neurodiversity in the church, partly drawing on my own lived experience. 

I am co-editor with Annette Yoshiko Reed of the Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha series (Leiden/Boston: De Gruyter Brill).

From September 2025 to August 2028, I will be working on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to consider "The Biblical Pseudepigrapha and Eclectic Philosophical Cultures in Antiquity." During this period, I will be on research leave, but will continue to supervise PhD students. Interested candidates should contact me on grant.macaskill@durham.ac.uk

• New Testament, Biblical pseudepigrapha, Early Judaism, eclectic philosophy, theological interpretation, autism and theology/theology of autism, critical neurodiversity.