In Religion as We Know It, Jack Miles, a renowned scholar of comparative religion, notes that modern Western notions of religion, and of the difference between the sacred and secular, have been “profoundly shaped by Christian assumptions.” Miles traces these assumptions specifically to early Christianity’s experience with persecution. But, writes Elaine Pagels in her review, his story of how this conception of religion came into being has a major flaw:

While Miles’s account apparently selects data through the lens of the “history of ideas,” a clearer sense of the social and political dynamics in the historical conflicts he mentions could add depth to his analysis. Historians of Judaism, for example, have shown that before the time of Jesus, many Jews throughout the world, forced to accommodate to domination by foreign armies—Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman—sought to separate their sacred practices from the demands of occupation forces. From the first century of the Common Era into the second, Jews, including many of Jesus’ early followers, benefited from an “atheist’s exemption” to demonstrate loyalty to Rome by paying taxes and offering sacrifice for the emperor’s welfare in their own temple.

In the same review, Pagels examines another recent book—Believers, by the anthropologist Melvin Konnor—about the permanence of religion:

Noting that the death of religion, so long predicted, has failed to arrive, Konner asks “what it is about the brain . . . that has made this so.” . . . [N]oting that “theorizing about religion’s origins is now a cottage industry,” he dives into scientific and social-scientific papers that investigate related questions, and offers a series of marvelously readable chapters to summarize the research they present.

Best of all, Konner refrains from offering a simple answer, which people asking questions about religion often expect. Instead, like Charles Darwin, he notes that “such a huge dimension of life must serve many functions.” Some readers may take this to mean he is ducking the question; yet the energy and passion articulated in the book belie that charge. In his final chapters, he clearly states his conviction that religion is “a part of human nature,” and so “very persistent, and, in my view, will never go away.”

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.