To the editor:

I audited Paul Mirecki’s course “Religion 124: Understanding the Bible,” so I have experienced his objectivity in the classroom and his encouragement of free discussion of the issues inevitably raised. It was a thoroughly researched course taught by an intelligent and competent scholar.

As a Kansas University classroom teacher of English literature for many years, I know how difficult it is to discuss questions generated by religious allusions, freely and without offense or discomfort, in a secular classroom. So I greatly admired Paul’s presentation of the historical development of documents that came to be called the Bible.

The term “evolution” is almost unavoidable here because anyone who has studied the Bible, not merely quoted isolated stories and passages, knows that the work evolved over hundreds of years and was the product of many writers with varying agendas, however divinely inspired. That it began in myth, as does all speculation about human origins, cannot be overlooked by rational people and Christians today.

Priscilla McKinney,

Lawrence