With great confidence and little evidence, Mark Sameth recently wrote in the New York Times that the Tetragrammaton was originally meant to be read backward, so that it was pronounced as the Hebrew equivalent of “he-she.” To this the author adds further ostensible proofs that the God of the Hebrew Bible “was understood by its earliest worshipers to be a dual-gendered deity,” as well as other alleged examples of biblical “gender fluidity.” Robert A.J. Gagnon doesn’t buy it:

Last month, the Chinese minister of defense, together with senior military figures, paid a visit to Tehran, where they met with their Iranian counterparts, as well as with the Iranian president. Tuvia Gering and Jason M. Brodsky doubt the talks will result in a grand Sino-Iranian alliance, but they nonetheless expect increased collaboration between the two countries. For many years, they note, Beijing has evaded or violated embargoes to sell arms to the Islamic Republic, and there’s reason to expect more of the same: