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. 

I was awarded a grant from the Humboldt Foundation (Forschungsstipendium für erfahrene Wissenschaftler) and spent the 2013-14 academic year at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany, working on a book on giants in ancient Judaism. 

Recent Conferences

Prof. Goff is co-organizing an interdisciplinary conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi codices, with Dr. Dylan Burns (Freie Universität Berlin). It takes place in Berlin on July 20-22. For more information, see here.

Recent Books

• Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Ancient Contexts, Traditions, and Influences (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016) (co-edited with Loren Stuckenbruck and Enrico Morano). 
• Pedagogy in Early Judaism and Early Christianity (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2017) (co-edited with Karina M. Hogan and Emma Wasserman). 

Recent Articles

• “Students of God in the House of Torah: Education in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Second Temple Jewish ›Paideia in Context‹ (eds. J. Zurawski and B. Boccaccini; BZNW 228; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 71-89. 
• “The Mystery of God’s Wisdom, the Parousia of a Messiah, and Visions of Heavenly Paradise: 1 and 2 Corinthians in the Context of Jewish Apocalypticism,” in Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought (eds. B. Reynolds and L. Stuckenbruck; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 175-92. 
• “Gardens of Knowledge: Teachers in 4QInstruction, Ben Sira and the Hodayot,” in Pedagogy in Early Judaism and Early Christianity (eds. M.J. Goff, K.M. Hogan, and E. Wasserman: Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2017), 171-93.
• “Where’s Enoch? The Mythic Geography of the Qumran Book of Giants,” in Sibyls, Scriptures and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy (2 vols.; eds. J. Baden, H. Najman and E. Tigchelaar; JSJSup 175; Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1.472-88. 
• “A Blessed Rage for Order: Apocalypticism, Esoteric Revelation, and the Cultural Politics of Knowledge in the Hellenistic Age,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 5 (2016): 193-211. 

Research and Teaching Specializations

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

News

Courses

Upcoming Courses (fall 2019)

• REL2210: Introduction to Old Testament
• REL3209: The Dead Sea Scrolls

Current Courses (spring 2019)

• REL4290: Exodus (co-taught with Dr. Martin Kavka)
• REL4203/RLG5292: Seminar in Aramaic