robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

unbelievers, may say, “What did God intend by this as a similitude?” So God leads astray
whomsoever He will, and He guides whomsoever He will; and none knows the hosts of thy
Lord but He. And it is naught but a Reminder to mortals.
32. Nay! By the moon
33. and the night when it retreats
34. and the dawn when it is white,
35. surely it is one of the greatest things
36. as a warner to mortals,
37. to whoever of you desires to go forward or lag behind.
38. Every soul shall be pledged for what it has earned,
39. save the Companions of the Right;
40. in Gardens they will question
41. concerning the sinners,
42. “What thrusted you into Sakar?”
43. They shall say, “We were not of those who prayed,
44. and we fed not the needy,
45. and we plunged along with the plungers,
46. and we cried lies to the Day of Doom,
47. till the Certain came to us.”
48. Then the intercession of the intercessors shall not profit them.
49. What ails them, that they turn away from the Reminder,
50. as if they were startled asses
51. fleeing before a lion?
52. Nay, every man of them desires to be given scrolls unrolled.
53. No indeed; but they do not fear the Hereafter.
54. No indeed; surely it is a Reminder;
55. So whoever wills shall remember it.
56. And they will not remember, except that God wills; He is worthy to be feared, worthy to forgive.
Even in English, the lengthy, discursive verse 31 does not appear to be an original part of this passage.
It looks immediately as if it has been added to the sura from another source—possibly some other sura of
the Qur'an itself. It breaks the flow of the clipped, spare verses of the rest. The verse sounds more like the
prosaic ruminations of what Islamic tradition considers to be the Qur'an's chronologically later passages
than the vivid poetic visions of those traditionally held to be the chronologically early suras.
Lüling observes that Qur'an 74:1–30 “is composed in a very homogeneous form, in that every verse has
the same rhythmic style and approximate length of, on average, three to four words (indicating its having
originally been a strophic text).” Even Muslim scholars acknowledge that the sura was edited, he points
out: “Islamic Koran scholarship has…classified this over-length-verse 74.31 as a late insertion into an
earlier text.” According to those scholars, the editing took place during Muhammad's life, originating “in
the Medinan period of the Prophet's activities as against his earlier Meccan period.” 38 But the very fact
that Islamic scholars admit that changes were made to the perfect book is significant.
The last line of the “homogeneous” section, verse 30, could be a fragment of what was originally a
longer (and clearer) statement. Neither this verse nor any other states explicitly what there are “nineteen”
of, or what these nineteen are exactly “over.” Apparently they are above “Sakar,” which is often