I'd like to answer the objections raised by Mwekali and Edmonds in the last issue of the GSO against my article titled "Religion Classes Biased."  Yet their arguments are so sophomoric and rife with fallacies I hardly know where to begin.

These fellows making a big deal out of the distinction between a religion class and a religious studies class comes across as a bit lame when one considers the fact that the religious studies department here stemmed from the department of religion, which apparently changed names when the department expanded.  And from the class I had while it was still called the department of religion and classes I had later when it came to be called religious studies, I've seen no difference in how those classes were taught.

Let me say next, it was not "my charge" that the professor taught something not much different from what is taught in most seminaries.  The professor, John Huddleston, stated that himself in class.  I simply agreed with him on that point, but argued that a class in Hebrew Bible should be offered at the College with the class taught substantially differently from how it is taught in most seminary schools.
Let's move on next to their charge that "the majority" of my "vague and hasty opinion piece is a tangled, decontextualized attempt to string together disparate verses related to sacrificial acts."  The use of such a big word as "decontextualized" may automatically make some want to convey scholarly status on these fellows, but all they're actually saying is that I was taking disconnected verses related to sacrificial acts and using them out of context.

     Now the problem with what they're saying is that they have no argument.  To have an argument they would first have to say what the context of each verse was in order to demonstrate that I'd used the verse out of context.  That's how argument works.  Otherwise, all one has is an unsupported assertion.

     As for my supposedly decontextualizing the text, I did just the opposite.  I made every effort to provide the context -- both the immediate and broader context -- and to show how each verse fit within that context.  That's why, when I quoted the verse commanding sacrifice of the first-born son, I also quoted the verse immediately following it, to prove that the Israelites were being told to treat their first-born sons the same way as they were told to treat their cattle and flocks.  That's why I also brought up the story of Moses destroying the tablets, to demonstrate that another writer deemed it necessary to devise a story to account for why such a brutal law was in their sacred text and to insert in that text a reading of the new tablet replacing the old tablet where another law, the sacrifice of a sheep in place of the son, did away with that initial law.

     In fact, the law requiring sacrifice of the first-born son is connected to many more well-known stories in the Old Testament text.  For example, the story of the final plague on Egypt, God's slaying of the first-born sons of Egypt was a story contrived to suggest that law and the practice derived from it was equivalent to a plague.  The celebration of Passover was a day to commemorate the Passover event but also to commemorate the law that replaced the law requiring sacrifice of the first-born son.  Exodus 13:13-15 says, "You must redeem every first-born male among your children.  And when, in time to come, your son asks you, saying, 'What does this mean?' you shall say to him, "It was with a mighty hand that the LORD brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage.  When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD slew every first-born in the land of Egypt, the first born among both man and beast.  Therefore I sacrifice to the LORD every first male issue of the womb, but redeem every first-born among my sons.'"*

     "Therefore" is the operative word there.  It connects the event of the Lord slaying all the first-borns of Egypt, both man and beast, with the law of sacrificing to the Lord every first male issue of the womb, but redeeming every first-born son.  So it's not just me making the connection between the commemoration of that event and the new law that replaced the law of the sacrifice of the first-born son; the writer himself is making that connection.

     Finally, let me turn to the last paragraph of these students' letter.  They say, "Aiello's personal angst directed at the contents of the Hebrew Bible has no place in a classroom setting nor a campus newspaper."  Their ad hominem attack (Aiello's personal angst) to start a sentence calling for censorship of my ideas is quite in keeping with the mentality of those who want to keep ideas contrary to their own from being openly expressed.  And, let's be honest, that's what their letter was all leading up to and is all about: trying to censor the views of someone who has expressed ideas contrary to beliefs they've accepted on faith.  Indeed, for men who have no logical basis for their beliefs, it comes quite naturally to them to want to censor those who express ideas they disagree with and for which they can offer no logical rebuttal.

* All the quotes here and in my previous article "Religion Classes Biased" come from the JPS translation of the Hebrew Bible, commonly called the Tanakh.