[4] He joined the faculty of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati in 1958 before settling at the University of Chicago, where he worked from 1963.
Golb was a key proponent of the viewpoint that the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran were not the product of the Essenes, but rather of many different Jewish sects and communities of ancient Israel, which he presents in his book Who Wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls?
[2] Golb was the discoverer, in 1962, of the Kievan Letter, the earliest document attesting to Jewish habitation of Kyiv.
He also identified Obadiah the Proselyte as the author of the oldest known manuscript of Hebrew music (12th century), the earliest extant legal record of the Jews of Sicily, a new document dealing with the First Crusade and new manuscript materials relating to the Jews of Rouen.
Finally, he recovered a genizah document describing a European convert to Judaism (11th century) and an original manuscript of the Khazars.