Review of Christopher Hitchens. God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

 https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1775&context=msr

 Likewise, in discussing the exodus, Hitchens dogmatically asserts: “There was no flight from Egypt, no wandering in the desert . . . , and no dramatic conquest of the Promised Land. It was all, quite simply and very ineptly, made up at a much later date. No Egyptian chronicle mentions this episode either, even in passing. . . . All the Mosaic myths can be safely and easily discarded” (pp. 102–3). These narratives can be “easily discarded” by Hitchens only because he has failed to do even a superficial survey of the evidence in favor of the historicity of the bibli-cal traditions. Might we suggest that Hitchens begin with Hoffmeier’s Israel in Egypt and Ancient Israel in Sinai?14 It should be noted that Hoffmeier’s books were not published by some small evangelical theo-logical press but by Oxford University—hardly a bastion of regres-sive fundamentalist apologetics. Hitchens’s claim that “no Egyptian chronicle mentions this episode [of Moses and the Israelites] either, even in passing” (p. 102) is simply polemical balderdash.

 The history of later Judaism fares no better under the pen of Mr. Hitchens. Take, for example, his discussion of “the vapid and annoying holiday known as ‘Hannukah’ [sic]” (p. 273). (“You’re a mean one, Mr. Hitch!”) Hitchens informs us that in celebrating Hanukkah, “the Jews borrow shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of a cele-bration that coincides with ‘Christmas’ ” (p. 273). This is a remarkable achievement, considering that the origin of the festival of Hanukkah, the “dedication” of the temple, antedates Christianity—indeed, Jesus Hitchens, god is not Great (Hamblin) • 59 himself is said to have come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of the Dedication (John 10:22)! In a stunning case of blaming the victim, Hitchens informs us that the Maccabean revolt was an attempt to “forcibly restor[e] Mosaic fundamentalism against the many Jews . . . who had become attracted by Hellenism” (p. 273). In Hitchens’s worldview, it seems to be just another case of evil “fundamentalists” (read: Jews who wanted to follow their religious traditions) oppressing benign “true early multicul-turalists” (p. 273) (read: Jews who wanted to abandon their religion and become hellenized). Note, also, the anachronistic transposition of the concepts of modern “fundamentalist” and “multiculturalist”—not necessarily antonyms, by the way—onto the ancient world. 

  The problem was not, as Hitchens declares, that fundamentalist Jews oppressed a minority of Jews who voluntarily hellenized. Rather, Antiochus IV (reigned 175–164 bc), a king of the Greek Seleucid dynasty that ruled much of the Near East in the second century bc, became the banner-bearer for the policy of enforced hellenization of the Jews.