24 FEBRUARY 1996, Page 24

Wicked waste

Sir: Surely Emma Rasiel is wrong to fault Ian Hislop on biblical scholarship (Letters, 10 February). As I recall, the sin of Onan was 'spilling the seed upon the ground', and there are more ways of doing this than coitus internrptus. The spirit of the prohibi- tion is surely encapsulated in the famous Michael Palin sketch, in which a brood of 14 children chant: 'Every sperm is special/ Every sperm is great,/ If a sperm is wasted/ God gets quite irate.'

To make the real offence that of only just thwarting the conditions for conception, rather than disregarding them altogether, would surely be perverse even by Old Tes- tament standards.

L.C. Laming

32a Bisham Gardens, London N6