Mouannes Hojairi revisits the debunked myths of Maronite exceptionalism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings by Patriarch Istifan al-Duwayhi, Bishops Nicolas Murad and Yusuf al-Dibs, and Fathers Pierre Dib and Butrus Daw, and claims that these texts and related scholarship by later lay historians shaped Lebanon's twentieth-century “nationalist discourse” that “has definitely been hegemonic, but not entirely so” (22). The author follows that up with the argument “that [Maronite] historians are central agents of [Lebanese] nationality” (23). Yet, despite Maronite church historians’ claim to a special status for their community, a “pragmatic” Maronite patriarch in 1920 lobbied for a “Greater Lebanon” that was not a Maronite-majority state (162). That some Maronite political elites seeking to justify why their community deserved important seats in government would turn to church or lay historical sources that celebrate Maronite valor (via the “Mardaite ancestor”), perseverance (thanks to the Lebanese “mountain refuge”), and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, which became an important patron, should not surprise us. What matters in etho-religious identity construction is a compelling narrative, not historical fact. While some modern historians, according to Hojairi, engaged with the church documents uncritically (e.g., Philip Hitti or Yusuf al-Sawda), others demoted or entirely debunked their factuality (e.g., Kamal Salibi or Matti Moosa), proving that scholarly interpretation is linked to political projects. Hojairi could have made his own political project more explicit.