James Frederic McCurdy (1847–1935), born in Chatham, New Brunswick, was Professor of Oriental Languages, University College, Toronto, Canada. He studied at the University of New Brunswick, then at the University of Göttingen and University of Leipzig, then Princeton Theological Seminary under William Henry Green. His main area of study was the origins of ancient Hebrew and . He was one of the scholars who held to the view that the ancient Israelites already had an advanced literary culture at the time of the migration from Canaan to Egypt.