Matthew Goff

Professor of Religion
Dr. Matthew Goff

Contact Information

Area
Religions of Western Antiquity
Faculty
Office Location
116 Dodd Hall
Resume / CV
Office Hours

By appointment only 

Background

I joined the faculty of the FSU Religion Department in Fall 2005. I offer courses in Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism. I completed an M.T.S degree in 1997 at Harvard Divinity School and I finished my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2002. I studied under John Collins and wrote a dissertation on 4QInstruction, the longest wisdom text of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This document is the best example available of a sapiential text with an apocalyptic worldview. Working on this composition developed my interest in the intersections between the wisdom and apocalyptic traditions in early Judaism. 

Recent Books

Recent Articles

  • “The Diabolical Wisdom of Solomon: Assessing the Jewishness of the Testament of Solomon,” in Editionen und Studien zum Testamentum Salomonis (Parabiblica 1; ed. F. Albrecht; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), 239-63.  
  • “Aramaic as a Language of Antediluvian Wisdom: The Early Enoch Apocalypses, Astronomy and the Deep Past in the Hellenistic Near East,” in Reimagining Apocalypticism: Apocalypses, Apocalyptic Literature, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 199-231.    
  • With Lorenzo DiTommaso, “Introduction: Re-Imagining ‘Apocalypticism’ and Re-thinking ‘Apocalyptic,’” in Reimagining Apocalypticism, 1-31. 
  • “Coherence, Professionalization, and the Critical Study of Religion: Then and Now,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion 50 (2021): 156-59 (appeared in 2022). 

Research and Teaching Specializations

  • Wisdom Literature 
  • Apocalypticism 
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls 
  • Second Temple Judaism

Courses

Fall 2023
  • REL2210: Introduction to the Old Testament
  • REL3293: Apocalypse Then & Now
Spring 2024
  • REL2211: The Lost Books of the Bible
  • REL2462: Demons, Antichrist and Satan