Part 2 of our interview with Matthew Goff and Dylan Burns continues the discussion we started in Part 1 about the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library. Goff and Burns explain the significant differences between the two, such as their different dates and locations of origin. But they also explore the similarities, with their mutual interest in more ancient writings, such as how some important figures from Genesis—such as the Book of Watchers, with its myths of evil origins— came from Enoch; and how Melchizedek was the priest associated with the Christ figure.

This is part two of a two-part series. The first episode in the series was released May 7, 2025.

Read the book they co-authored, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices. It's open source, so it's available for free!

Dr. Dylan M. Burns is Assistant Professor of the History of Esotericism in Late Antiquity at the University of Amsterdam. He earned his doctorate in Ancient Christianity at Yale University in 2011, before holding research positions in Copenhagen, Leipzig, and Berlin. Among his books are Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism (2014), Did God Care? Providence, Dualism, and Will in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy (2020), and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices (2022).

Dr. Matthew Goff joined the faculty of Florida State's Religion Department in 2005. He completed an M.T.S degree in 1997 at Harvard Divinity School and finished his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2002. He studied under John Collins and wrote his dissertation on a Qumran text entitled 4QInstruction. His publications focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient Judaism, and his most recent book is The Apocrypha: A Guide (Oxford, 2024). His current book project is on demons and monsters in ancient Judaism and early Christianity.