or two of his theories. He holds, for example, that Mahomet at the first fulminated denunciations of temporal judgment impending over his unbelieving people; and then, having been, like Jonah, disappointed in the fulfilment of the menace, and jeered at by his fellow-citizens, he covered his retreat by the threat of judgment in the world to come; and finally, in order to hide the manoeuvre, arranged the passages of his revelation so that the latter were interpolated among the former, and the colouring of a future life thus given to the whole. But there is no ground for this imputation. The two classes of denunciations, present and future, were intermingled in his preaching by Mahomet from the very first; or, if one had the precedence in time, it seems clearly to have been the latter. When the Meccans hardened their hearts and stiffened their necks, then the promise of a nearer and a swifter vengeance was pronounced. And then, as in the days of Isaiah, these mysterious denunciations called forth the scoffs of the people, who challenged their fulfilment like the ancient Jews:—"Let Him make speed and hasten His work, that we may see it; let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it." 

Another characteristic assumption Sprenger bases on the term Mathâni, or "reiterated passages," applied by Mahomet himself to certain parts of his book. These our Author distinguishes from the rest of the revelation, which was styled the "blessed Coran." His theory is, that Mahomet at first did not pretend to deliver a new Scripture, but only to reproduce by Divine aid, in an Arabic form, the revelations of the Jewish and Christian periods. To this rehearsal of existing Scripture, he for a time confined himself; till, after several years, breaking through his scruples, he commenced the delivery of a direct and independent revelation. The idea is ingenious, but that is all. Whatever the term "reiterated" may signify, it is certain that the recitation of patriarchal passages and incidents belongs to a comparatively late stage in the composition of the Coran; in the earlier portions there is but little reference to them. 

The history of Zeid's collection of the scattered Suras (named The Coran), and of its official recension under Othmân,