Why are Lisps excellent, is a better question. They work well with structure editors, and they allow for very powerful metaprogramming of the language to add i

Why are Lisps excellent, is a better question. They work well with structure editors, and they allow for very powerful metaprogramming of the language to add in any needed features. Those forms of excellence do not put Lisp on the JVM, nor give emphasis to multi-threaded, functional programming. Hence, Clojure.