Raised in Egypt by American Christian missionaries in the years before the Six-Day War, James Hoffmeier later pursued a career as an Egyptologist—but, unlike most others in this field, he also has paid much scholarly attention to the Hebrew Bible. Hoffmeier argues that the book of Exodus displays extensive signs of familiarity with the culture of Pharaonic Egypt, and could not have been composed—as many academic Biblicists today believe—by someone living under Persian or Babylonian several centuries after the events it describes. After making his case on philological and archaeological grounds, he explains why, as a devout Christian, he believes it important to see the Exodus as a historical event rather than a mere parable or legend. (Interview by Dru Johnson. Audio, 50 minutes.)

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].