Matthew Goff

Contact Information
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
- Co-editor, with Dylan Burns, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices. Leiden: Brill, 2022 ("Open Access publication").
- Co-editor, with Lorenzo DiTommaso, Reimagining Apocalypticism: Apocalyptic Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Writings. EJL 57. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2023.
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
- REL 2462: Demons, Antichrist and Satan
- REL 2211: The Lost Books of the Bible