Tales of the Ancient: Qur’anic Stories and Mesopotamian Myths

This Sunday November 26th at 10:30am, we will be meeting in our usual 2nd floor room in the Koffler Building, 569 Spadina Ave.

Anyone who has read the stories from Mesopotamian mythology will notice striking parallels between them and the stories in the Old Testament and the Qur’an, especially the story of creation. This begs the question: were the three major monotheistic religions influenced by ancient Mesopotamian myths? Will exploring the ancient texts from Mesopotamia explain the origin of the stories in the Qur’an? Mohammed Jaber will bring to us a detailed comparison between the ancient tablets from Mesopotamia with the Islamic central text and propose a theory for the origins of the main stories in the Qur’an.

Mohammed Jaber is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto majoring in Psychology and minoring in Classical Studies and Philosophy. He discovered a passion for the study of classical antiquity while taking a course on Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythologies in his second year at university. Ever since, he’s been interested in researching the origin of modern religions and their link to ancient mythology.

Our musicians this week will be Cassie Norton and Tristan Murphy.