Aryo-Semitic Speech: A Study in Linguistic Archaeology

James Frederick McCurdy (1847-1935) was educated at the University of New Brunswick and Princeton Theological College, where he studied with William Henry Green. He graduated in 1871 but remained at Princeton for eleven more years, serving as Green's assistant while supervising the schools linguistics program and teaching Hebrew and Sanskrit. In 1878 he received an honorary PhD. McCurdy left Princeton in 1882 when he was deemed too sympathetic to Darwinism by colleagues at the college, then spent the next three years in Goettingen and Leipzig studying with Franz Delitzsch. In 1885, McCurdy returned to Canada where he began teaching at University College in Toronto. While there he wrote his most significant work, 'History, Prophecy, and the Monuments'.