Rate My Professor Matthias Henze

Matthias Henze is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism in Rice University's Department of Religion, a position he has held since joining the faculty in 1997. He also serves as the founding director of the Program in Jewish Studies, established in 2009. Born and raised in Hanover, Germany, Henze earned a Master of Divinity from the University of Heidelberg in 1992. He pursued advanced studies at Harvard University, receiving an M.A. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in 1996 and a Ph.D. from the same department in 1997, with his dissertation focused on Daniel 4.

Henze's research specializes in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Jewish literature and thought from the Second Temple period, early Jewish apocalyptic literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and Syriac language and literature. He has authored key monographs such as Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus (Fortress Press, 2017), Jewish Apocalypticism in Late First Century Israel: Reading Second Baruch in Context (Mohr Siebeck, 2011), The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel: Introduction, Text, and Commentary (Mohr Siebeck, 2001), and The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar: The Ancient Near Eastern Origins and Early History of Interpretation of Daniel 4 (Brill, 1999). Among his edited volumes are Israel’s Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New (Eerdmans, 2023), Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters, second edition (Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2020), Textual History of the Bible: Volume 2, The Deuterocanonical Scriptures (Brill, 2019–2020), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Fifty Years of the Pseudepigrapha Section at the SBL (Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2019), and Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction After the Fall (Brill, 2013). Henze's scholarship bridges non-canonical early Jewish texts with biblical writings, illuminating the literary history of ancient Judaism from the fourth century BCE to the early second century CE. He has been honored with the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2009, 2010, and 2015, the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize in 2003, the Graduate Student Association Teaching/Mentoring Award in 2015, and the Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service in 2019.