P.S. As for the naysayer: The C code does a lot more than run elisp. e.g., memory management/GC, display and I/O, primitives/built-in functions/subrs, system services.
Even if you interpret emacs strictly as an interpreter of elisp, that interpreter is written in C, not elisp.
If you removed all elisp from the emacs distribution, you would still have an extensible windowed text editor. And you could add any desired functionality by writing elisp. Take C code away and you've got nothing functional.