Philip Yoo joins Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies in 2021/22 as Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies. A native of Mississauga, Ontario, he is a graduate of the University of Toronto (B.Comm. in Commerce and Finance; M.Div. from Knox College), Yale University (S.T.M.), and the University of Oxford (D.Phil.). Before his arrival at UBC in 2021, he was first Postdoctoral Fellow and then Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on Pentateuchal theory, Ezra-Nehemiah, Second Temple Judaism, and biblical interpretation. He is the author of Ezra and the Second Wilderness (Oxford, 2017), co-editor of To Gaul, to Greece and into Noah’s Ark: Essays in Honour of Kevin J. Cathcart on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday (with Laura Quick, Ekaterina K. Kozlova, and Sonja Noll; Oxford, 2019), and several articles. His current book project, From Egypt to Canaan: The Israelite Wilderness and its Mythmakers examines the exodus and wilderness accounts and the reception of this tradition by the earliest Jewish and Christian interpreters.
In 2021/22, Dr. Yoo will be teaching RELG 101: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Religious Traditions, RELG 330: Origins of Judaism and RELG 475E/RELG 502A: The “Bible” in Antiquity: Exodus.
