Dr. Ahn is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at HUSD. He is trained in ancient Near Eastern and Religious Studies. He holds the Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Hebrew Bible/Old Testament), Yale University; S.T.M., Yale Divinity School (Class Marshal); M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary (Seminary Fellow); and B.A., in Linguistics (highest GPA citation) and Religious Studies (with honors) from New York University (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He specializes in the historical and social reconstructions of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE with interests to the first century CE. Dr. Ahn is classically trained in ANE languages and history, text criticism, literature, and paleoclimatology. He also employs social scientific theories, including cultural memory, trauma, generational consciousness, and forced and return migration studies to better understand the text's original and layered historical, social, literary (re-writing), and religious-cultural traditions of ancient Judah/Israel for ancient and contemporary actualizations (with canonical consciousness) fostering new knowledge. Dr. Ahn is the editor of The Journal of Religious Thought.
Dr. Ahn is the current president of the Mid-Atlantic Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) (2021-2022). He has been selected as the section review leader for Daniel and the Book of the Twelve (Minor Prophets)—NRSV-Updated Edition.
Dr. Ahn is a highly regarded and recognized scholar in the study of the forced and return migrations periods, more commonly known as the exile and return. Trained under world leading scholars, Dr. Ahn continues to demonstrate leadership and serves in (various) academic guilds: founder/chair of the "Return Migrations in Biblical Literature" (SBL International, 2019-present), the founder/chair of the "Exile-Forced Migrations Group" (SBL Annual, 2008-2012), International Meeting (2010-2012), Program Chair of the Hebrew Bible, Southwest SBL (2011-2013), president of the Korean Biblical Colloquium (KBC) (2017-present), and Writings Section Chair, Mid-Atlantic SBL (2018-present).
Dr. Ahn's monographs (authored and edited) include, Exile as Forced Migrations (de Gruyter, 2010), The Prophets Speak on Forced Migration (SBL Press, 2015), By the Irrigation Canals of Babylon (Bloomsbury, 2012), Thus Says the LORD: Essays in Honor of Robert R. Wilson (T & T Clark, 2009), and Landscapes of Korean and Korean American Biblical Interpretation (SBL Press, 2019). Currently, he is working on several projects of which two are: the Wilderness Wandering Tradition and an edited volume on The Last of the Kings on Forced and Return Migrations: 2 Kings 24-25.
Before his appointment at HUSD, Dr. Ahn held faculty academic appointments in Texas (2006-14) and Connecticut (2002-06).
Dr. Ahn has led NGO projects to Africa, India, Ukraine, Siberia (Russia) and spent time in Israel as an archeologist. He has also worked in leadership development at a Global 500 (Austin, TX). Since 1994, he has served congregations in New York and Texas. Dr. Ahn is ordained in the Korean Presbyterian Church in America (New York Presbytery) and served as the Senior Pastor of the Northwest Baptist Church (Austin, TX) (2011-2015).