Matthew followed the research interest: Ancient Near Eastern History
Matthew started following the work of Jonathan Stökl, University College London, History.
Matthew started following the work of 2 people.
Post-Doc, Philosophy and Religious Studies
About
My research focuses on the history of ancient Near Eastern religion, with a focus on the first millennium BCE, especially the Hellenistic period.
My first book, Predicting the Past in the Ancient Near East, is currently under contract with Brown Judaic Studies monograph series. It contains a detailed study of the major exemplars of vaticinium ex eventu prior to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, with chapters on: the Akkadian ex eventu texts (aka "Akkadian literary predictive texts"); Daniel and 1 Enoch; the Pseudo-Daniel and Apocryphon of Jeremiah material, alongside some other Dead Sea Scrolls texts; and the Jewish Sibylline Oracles. The book argues that the Akkadian and Jewish materials arose independently. Furthermore, I argue for a reassessment of the scholarly categories typically used to analyze such literature, advocating a model that emphasizes the function of texts within and among the cultural discourses of antiquity, rather than emphasizing questions of formal literary similarity.
Current projects include several articles on a variety of Second Temple texts.
