Best known for his knowledge of elvish, the celebrated fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien was by profession a philologist with a mastery of numerous ancient languages—including biblical Hebrew. And he was also a devout Catholic. Thus it was only natural that when Father Alexander Jones began work on creating a fresh translation of Scripture from the original languages for English-speaking Catholics, he turned to the author of The Lord of the Rings. (The resulting edition, published in 1966 and known as the Jerusalem Bible, is still widely used today.) Philip Kosloski writes:

Father Jones asked Tolkien in 1957 to contribute to the Jerusalem Bible and he accepted. After seeing some of his initial work, Jones wrote to Tolkien, “In truth I should be content to send you all that remains of the Bible, with great confidence.”

Tolkien’s primary contribution, however, was [a translation of] the book of Jonah, though Jones hoped Tolkien could help with Joshua as well. Additionally, Tolkien translated a single verse from the book of Isaiah. However, Tolkien was engrossed in his other work and unable . . . to contribute anything else. He submitted his final draft of Jonah in 1961.

Tolkien didn’t know his name would appear in the printed edition, as he didn’t think his contribution was much of anything. He wrote in a letter dated 1967, “Naming me among the ‘principal collaborators’ was an undeserved courtesy on the part of the editor of the Jerusalem Bible. I was consulted on one or two points of style, and criticized some contributions of others. I was originally assigned a large amount of text to translate, but after doing some necessary preliminary work I was obliged to resign owing to pressure of other work, and only completed Jonah, one of the shortest books.”

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].