Excavated Entrance to the Suba Cave

As readers know one of the archaeological sites I discuss in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, is the Suba cave, located outside Ein Kerem, the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist, a few kilometers west of Jerusalem. My colleague, Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson and I have been digging there since early 2000. In fact, this past March we just finished our seventh season of excavations at the site. What we have uncovered is quite amazing with many questions still remaining to be answered.
Recently a reader of my book pointed out to the entire world (the World Wide Web that is, where anyone can post anything at anytime): “The Suba cave that Tabor thought was used by John the Baptist is now agreed by other scholars to date to the iron age. It was later utilized briefly in the 4th century AD. John the Baptist had nothing to do with it.”

Since Gibson and I are the ones who discovered as well as reported upon and published the evidence related to the Iron Age construction of this site, this reader’s assertion that “other scholars” have set us straight on this point borders between the amusing and the irritating.

Whether John the Baptist or Jesus ever used this site for ritual water purification ceremonies we can not be sure. What we can say are three things in that regard. 1) In the Byzantine period Christians came to this cave to remember and venerate John the Baptist, leaving behind some of the oldest Christian art associated with John ever found in the Holy Land. This should not surprise us since it is located just outside Ein Kerem, the earliest place associated with his birth. 2) In the first century A.D. scores of people were coming to this cave and carrying out some kind of ceremonies associated with water purification. 3) The Suba cave itself, as well as the entire complex (there is much we have now found outside the cave) has a much earlier history, constructed in the Iron Age for a yet undetermined purpose.

Gibson and I published a summary of our evidence in this regard in an article titled “John the Baptist’s Cave: The Cave in Favor,” in the May/June, 2005 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Dr. Gibson has also ably summarized all our relevant archaeological findings in his book, The Cave of John the Bapist (New York: Doubleday, 2004), which is now out in paperback.

Gibson and I are as interested in the Iron Age history of Suba as what went on in the 1st century. However, for those who are skeptical regarding our hypothesis that massive activity involving ritual water purification rites went on for several decades in the early 1st century, possibly involving movements such as those inaugurated by John the Baptist and Jesus, are obligated to come up with alternative explanations for what we found at those levels of the excavation. For one to say “I am not convinced that John the Baptist was associated with this cave” misses the point. What we are obligated to do is to try and come up with the most plausible evidence we can to explain the massive and unqiue material evidence. Gibson and I welcome alternative hypotheses.

In The Jesus Dynasty I suggest Suba as a possible location for the massive baptismal activities of Jesus and his disciples reported in John 3:22-24; 4:1-4. This “hill country” of Judea is a rugged area with a few springs but no significant bodies of water. The Suba cave is massive and surely was a well known and prominent feature of that area. It is removed from any significant population center. I take the “Jesus the Baptizer” tradition as historically probably since to have Jesus baptised at all by John was a problem enough for early Christians. To have him then carrying out extensive baptisms himself, in the south, in the Judean countryside, with John working in tandem in the north–is not something the author of the gospel of John would likely have concocted. That is why the “editor” of John adds the caveat: But Jesus himself did not baptize, only his disciples! When we see that sort of qualifying gloss we can be almost certain that the underlying tradition is valid–thus the protest.

P.S. There are some breaking new discoveries at Suba about which I will write as soon as Gibson and I determine how we want to initially report them.

In the Introduction to my book, The Jesus Dynasty, I offer a comprehensive discussion of the potential importance and significance of the ossuary or “bone box” inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” that came to public attention in late 2002. If authentic it offers us the first archaeological evidence ever discovered that directly links to Jesus and his family. This bone box most likely contained the skeletal remains of James the brother of Jesus.

In the summer of 2003 the Israeli Antiquities Authority declared that the inscription was a partial forgery, and that the phrase “brother of Jesus” had been added by the owner, Oded Golan, to enhance the potential value of the artifact. Without the phrase “brother of Jesus” the inscription “James son of Joseph” alone does not offer enough evidence to connect it to Jesus’ family.

Unfortunately there is an all too widespread public impression, echoed in some of the reviews and reactions to my book, that the “James ossuary” has been declared a forgery. I have encountered this repeatedly in recently touring the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Just this week someone posted a review of my book on the Amazon Web site that is typical of the ignorance surrounding this subject:

“Tabor’s “The Jesus Dynasty” starts off with some dubious archeology and that’s the high point of the book…Oded Golan, finder of the ossuary, is in jail. When the police invaded Golan’s home recently they found a large number of forgeries in various stages of completion. Even the carved pomegranate Golan sold to the Jerusalem museum is now deemed a fake. So much for the ossuary being real.”

Such is hardly the case. Mr. Golan is not in jail and his trial still in process. No one questions whether the ossuary is “real” or even the inscription, but whether the last two words are authentic or not. But more important recent scientific tests have seriously called into question the case of the Israeli government on the authenticity of the James ossuary inscription.

As is often the case, people “hear” or “read” something in a press report, then repeat it as fact without either checking for accuracy or keeping up with the outcome of a given story. Ignorance is bliss, as the old saying goes, but it seems to also give rise to a level of dogmatic ignorance that never ceases to amaze me.

The best overall source for the up-to-date facts regarding the matter of the authenticity of the “James ossuary” are the materials on the Web site of the Biblical Archaeology Society. All of the relevant sources are archived there, both those questioning authenticity as well as those supporting it. A quite balanced and comprehensive summary of the current state of the debate was recently published by Hershel Shanks in a Jerusalem Post editorial. Even though Shanks is cautiously supportive of the potential authenticity of the James ossuary inscription he has admirably included on this BAS Web site all points of view, pro and con.

It is regretable that self-declared experts feel free to pontificate about the “James ossuary” having been shown to be a forgery, apparently without having bothered to inform themselves on even the most basic elements of the discussion.

I have given permission for The Introduction to my book to be available free on the Web (but without the photos and illustrations). It offers a comprehensive overview of the information regarding the James ossuary that was available when I went to press last year. Since that time other facts have come to light, including the latest new scientific tests, with much more to come.

So, the next time you hear someone say, “Hey, don’t you know that the ‘James ossuary’ was shown to be a forgery and its owner Oded Golan a crook” you can set them straight and challenge them to educate themselves a bit before they speak and further perpetuate inaccurate information.

More than one evangelical Christian reviewer or reader of my book The Jesus Dynasty has objected to the exclusion of the so-called “miraculous” as a part of an investigation of the “historical” Jesus. As Christianity Today’s Darrell Bock put it: “James Tabor’s historical assumptions that reject God’s activity on Earth force him into odd arguments to explain the birth of Christianity.” Bock is referring particularly to my observation that historians assume that all humans have two biological parents and that dead bodies don’t rise to life. Ironically, to most historians the “odd arguments” are characteristic of those who take the assertions that Jesus had no human father or that he walked out of his tomb and ascended into heaven as literal scientific statements of fact. Whether I personally reject “God’s activity on Earth” is another matter entirely that I don’t address directly in my book.

My training at the University of Chicago was that of an historian, not a theologian or even a “Biblical Scholar” as such. My Ph.D. was not from the Divinity School but in the Division of Humanities. I worked broadly in the area study of “Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Culture” and more specifically within ancient Judaism and early Christianity. What I reflect in The Jesus Dynasty are the methods and approaches generally employed by most academically oriented scholars who work in these areas.

Doing the work of an historian is not “hard” science in the purest sense of the term, but none of us in the field would want it to be understood as “art” either, at least not in some wholly subjective sense. There is no doubt that historians often differ in their conclusions in important ways, and that “interpretation” of the data, how it is finally weighed and processed, is indeed a partially subjective process. I write about this in the “Conclusion” of my book. But when my students retreat into the subjective regarding some historical conclusion that I or others have reached, with the easy retort “but that is just your interpretation,” I encourage them to go beyond that kind of reductionism. History is not mere subjective interpretation. Ideally it is based on arguments and evidence and in the end a good historian wants to be persuasive. It is rare that historical conclusions close out any possible alternative interpretations, but the goal is to set forth, in the open court of reasoned argument and evidence, a compelling “case” for whatever one is dealing with. Even when we disagree we end up stating “why” we don’t find this or that argument convincing, or what we find weak in the assumptions of one with whom we differ.

As for sources, nothing is excluded and everything can be evaluated as long as it offers us some reasonable way to reconstruct the past. Historians love and welcome evidence. That is what we live on and we crave any new materials that can shed more light on what we know. But even our best sources, particularly the literary ones, are remarkably tendentious. Modern standards of argument and objectivity were unknown to ancient writers. Writing was more often than not a blatant attempt at propaganda and apologetics, and all the more so when it came to competing systems of religious understanding. Recognition of those factors is a vital part of every historian’s method. If we want to “use” Josephus we also have to give attention to what we know of him as a person, as a writer, what his tendencies are, what his competence was, and so forth. It is the same with the Gospels, with Eusebius, and with all the ancients texts that we have at our disposal. It is also the case that for many important questions related to Jesus and his movement we simply do not have good evidence and probably never will. As thankful as we are for what we have, whether textual or archaeological or myth or tradition, in the end we have to face our own limitations. So, just to take one simple example, if we want to speculate on the “lost years of Jesus” we can do so, but in doing so we acknowledge that we have so little to go on, especially if we confine ourselves to early material (say 1st century AD), that our attempts are educated guesses and creative reconstructions. I cannot prove that Jesus and his brothers worked in Sepphoris, but I think it is a likely possibility, given what we know. But the assertions that Jesus traveled as a child with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea to Britain, or that he studied in Egypt or in India, are based upon legendary materials far removed in time and place from his world. Or, what about the question of whether Jesus was married to, and had children with, Mary Magdalene, that is so much in the public mind these days based on the success of Dan Brown’s book and film? As Bart Ehrman and quite a few others have shown, there is little to no historical evidence supporting the idea in any early sources. The public has been geared to think of the suppression of evidence, usually with the Roman Catholic church being the culprit, but such grand “conspiratorial” theories have little basis in fact. What we do find characteristic of early Christianity, or more properly, “Christianites,” is a competing diversity of “parties and politics,” each propogating its own vision of the significance of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. All sorts of interpretations are offered of Jesus, but the question finally comes down to how convincing a given argument is to other historians who work in the field and know the materials.

As far as the subjects of the miraculous and the supernatural, historians of religions remain observers. We do not exclude religious experience in investigating the past. What people believe or claim to have experienced becomes part of the evidence. We can note that Mark reported that Jesus walked on water, and then we date and evaluate Mark as a source, just as we note the miracles that Philostratus claims for his contemporary hero Apollonius of Tyana, or that the story that Zeus fathered Hercules or that Romulus was taken bodily into heaven (see the materials at my University Web site on Heroes and Gods) Most scholars in the field would say that Jesus practiced “exorcism,” but what that implies about the reality of the demonic world goes beyond our historical methods. We know enough about human psychology and our modern controversies regarding psychic phenomenon to realize the complexities of drawing such conclusions. History and theology/faith do part ways in some of these areas. It is easy to hold that “God” can do anything, and thus argue for the acceptance of a male baby being born without male sperm, or a corpse rising after two or three days, but such claims are not the purview of historians and they run contrary to our human experience and a more rational scientific understanding of birth and death. Historians likewise deal with “beliefs” about the afterlife and the unseen world beyond, but without asserting the historical reality of these notions or realms. We can evaluate what people claimed, what they believed, what they reported, and that all becomes part of the data, but to then say, “A miracle happened” and claim it as historical fact, goes beyond our accessible methods. I don’t want to oversimplify things here and I realize that the question of “faith” and “history” and the assumptions modern historians make in terms of a so-called “materialistic” worldview can be challenged, even philosophically. But for the most part historians are willing to leave the “mystery” in, but in terms of advocating this or that view of the so-called “supernatural,” as an explanation, they properly, in my view, remain wary.

We will probably never know who Jesus’ father was, or what happened to the body of Jesus, but I prefer the “odd arguments” of the historian in investigating those matters, however inconclusive and speculative, to the dogmatic assertions of theology that are problematic from a scientific point of view.

Several more popular Evangelical Christian reviewers of my book, The Jesus Dynasty, have suggested that my method of using texts, both biblical and otherwise, is based on what they call “cherry picking.” The idea seems to be that one simply takes what one likes while discarding anything unfavorable to ones outlook or portrait of Jesus. The “picking and choosing” question is one that I get quite often, even from my beginning students.

All of us who work in the field are keenly aware of Albert Schweitzer’s apt observation that work on the historical Jesus often reflects the autobiographical proclivities of the researcher–in other words, people come up with the Jesus they want to find. This makes it all the more imperative that we self-critically clarify our methods and lines of argument. What can appear at first to be a rather arbitrary process, and one that might be directed by ones own presuppositions, actually turns out to be a rather controlled and disciplined scholarly process.

What I attempt to do in The Jesus Dynasty is to take the non-specialist reader into the more technical world of the biblical scholar and “walk one through” some of the methods scholars use as we historically analyze texts. Let me make a few points about this process and then offer an illustration.

First, historians do not privilege any texts, be they in or out of the Bible, as inherently reliable based on a view of divine inspiration. This method immediately separates historical work from theological work, in that theology, at least traditional Christian theology, begins with the assumption that the texts of the Bible are inspired and thus at some level “true” or at least “more true” than other writings of the time. For the historian there is a sense in which all texts are created equal and are therefore examined with the same methods of analysis. That does not mean, however, that some are not considered more accurate historically than others. For example, when it comes to reliable history or teaching of Jesus most scholars would not give as much weight to the Gospel of Thomas as the Gospel of Mark. Often this has to do as much with dating and chronology as to whether a text is “in” the New Testament or not. Thomas, like the newly published Gospel of Judas, dates from the late 2nd or early 3rd century whereas Mark was written around 70 A.D. Older is not always better, but when we have a text as old as Mark, we surely want to give it the priority that it deserves. On the other hand, many of us have become convinced that the Q source, which is now embedded in Luke and Matthew, as I explain in my book, is even older than Mark, and likely preserves for us a layer of the teachings of Jesus that might go back as early as 50 A.D. Chronology is not everything, but at least in the beginning we want to try to arrange our sources as much as possible in a chronological fashion, thus when it comes to Jesus we have: the Q source, Mark, Matthew (and Hebrew Matthew), Luke, John, the letter of James, the Didache, and Thomas. It is true that various scholars differ on how to date and value these materials. For example, John Crossan, in his important work, The Historical Jesus puts both the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter much earlier than I or many others would.

Second, it is important to try and detect the kind of editorial development that goes on in such a trajectory of texts. It is often not strictly chronological, but often it is. On the whole we can see, within the early Christian tradition, a tendency to make Jesus more divine and less human, to downplay the role of John the Baptist, and to mute or mitigate the role of James and the family of Jesus. What we try to do is to take all our sources and compare them side by side and then to draw conclusions, as much as we can, as to what is most likely closer to Jesus and what might be a later development. I offer many examples in my book, but here are a few to illustrate.

Matthew uses Mark as a source and he consistently “edits” him at crucial points. In Mark 10:17-18 a man says to Jesus “Good teacher, what do I do to inherit eternal life?” and Jesus rebukes him replying, “Why do you call me good, there is One who is good, God.” Matthew comes to that story and alters Jesus’ answer to read: “Why do you ask me about the good.” Here you can see that given Matthew’s more divine view of Jesus, he finds the wording of Mark troubling and freely edits it. When it comes to Q there are times when the Hebrew version of Matthew appears to be less edited than the Greek versions in either Matthew or Luke. A prime example is Matthew 11:11 (Luke 7:28) where Jesus declares that “among those born of women there is none greater than John.” This startling statement stands unqualified in the Hebrew version of Matthew preserved by Ibn Shaprut, whereas in Greek, both Luke and Matthew have the qualifying addition: “but nonetheless, the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” I am convinced that the latter is an editorial gloss that was added to soften the shocking implication that John the Baptist is then greater than Jesus. In such a case we often give the more difficult, or the more “primitive” reading more weight than what appears to be a later addition. The issue of Jesus being baptized by John is one of the clearest examples one can find of the unfolding tendency to elevate Jesus above John. Mark offers a straight account of John Baptizing Jesus, Matthew adds the lines in which John objects to doing this since Jesus is greater, Luke reports Jesus’ baptism and implies John did it, but never directly says so, and John drops the entire narrative account entirely. Most of us are convinced that this kind of evidence can not be dismissed as chance and it should not be ignored but carefully analyzed.

This entire process can appear to a casual reader as “picking and choosing” at will, but it is in fact a carefully worked out process. Throughout my book I constantly bring texts into the discussion and I try my best to bring the reader into the method of analysis so it is clear as to why certain texts and traditions are thought to be more historically reliable while others are seen as secondary. It is not a perfect lab science, but there is a method to what might appear to some to be “madness.” I want to invite my readers into the process of critical evaluation and reflection; the same process that I use with my students and that is commonly followed in advanced courses in universities when one deals with the historical Jesus. Once one carefully works through the arguments I present in The Jesus Dynasty I think one might find that what seems at first glance to be “picking and choosing” is actually a rather careful methodological attempt to sort through the sources in a responsible historical manner.

One of the best ways to keep up with all the discussion related to the so-called James ossuary, which I treat extensively in the Introduction to my book, The Jesus Dynasty is to check regularly the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site where one can find archived materials as well as coverage of breaking news.

Yesterday a comprehensive update article on the whole matter was published in the Toronto Star by feature writer Stuart Laidlaw.

Posted by permission…The Toronto Star
Bone box on trial
James ossuary is at the centre of a Jerusalem court battle
where the seamy side of the trade in ancient artifacts is exposed
Jul. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM
STUART LAIDLAW
FAITH AND ETHICS REPORTER

In the city where Jesus preached and was killed 2,000 years ago, a controversy is building that could shake the foundations of the religion founded in his name. The James ossuary, the purported burial box of Jesus’ brother declared a fake by Israeli authorities three years ago, is at the centre of a Jerusalem court battle over alleged forging of antiquities.

The ossuary, with the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” made a big splash when it was unveiled to the world nearly four years ago at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. The trial, on hold for more than a month due to scheduling delays that plague the Israeli court system, resumes Tuesday with the testimony of Avner Ayalon of the Geological Survey of Israel whose examinations of the ossuary helped lead to charges be laid.

With barely one-quarter of the prosecution’s 124 witnesses called since the trial began last fall, and the defence team expected to call at least as many witnesses, the case is expect to take years to make its way through the court system.
“Trials in Israel are really something special,” deadpans defence attorney Lior Bringer in a telephone interview from his office in Tel Aviv. His client is Oded Golan, an antiquities collector charged with forging part of the inscription on the ossuary and faking two other artifacts. Experts called as witnesses have contradicted each others’ testimony — with one going so far as to say she will leave the profession if the limestone ossuary is a fake and another saying the entire controversy may be the result of an over-zealous cleaning.

One German expert even alleges that the Israeli Antiquities Authority “recently contaminated” the most contentious part of the ossuary, its inscription, in such a way that earlier tests cannot be reproduced.
Through it all, the on-again off-again trial of Golan and two of his colleagues has exposed the seamy underbelly of trade in ancient artifacts — a world of deception, forgery and secret deals that Golan says is becoming even more secretive thanks to efforts to crack down on dealers.

That puts the archaeological heritage of the country at risk, he says, as artifacts are taken out of the country with little or no documentation of their origins rather than risk trouble with authorities. “The less important (antiquities) are sold to tourists and the most important are taken out of Israel,” Golan says in a telephone interview from his home in Tel Aviv, where he is under house arrest.

The exact origins of the ossuary are not known. Golan, one of the largest collectors in Israel, says he purchased it from an Arab antiquities dealer in the mid-1970s for a bout $200. He was still in university at the time, studying industrial engineering. The ossuary spent the next 15 years in his parent’s apartment, including a stint on the balcony. At one point, it may have even been used as a planter, though no one can remember for sure. Golan then took it to his apartment for several years, before putting it in storage along with about 3,000 other items in his collection. Only the most beautiful of his antiquities are kept in his apartment, he says, and the plain box now known as the James Ossuary did not qualify.
It was not until a French scholar, André Lemaire, stumbled across it in Golan’s storage shed in 2002 that Golan began to realize how significant it might be. Within months it was on display at the ROM, and within a year the subject of a police investigation.

Its route from tomb to trial is mapped by rumour, hearsay and speculation. Golan says the dealer he bought it from told him it came from Silwan, a village south of the Old City of Jerusalem. Others suggest it came from a tomb uncovered in the 1980s, or from one raided by thieves in June 2000. The uncertainties of its origin, however, have only added to the intrigue and scientific debate over its authenticity. At the centre of the debate is a report by the Israeli Antiquities Authority, a government body that stores and authenticates ancient objects for scholarly research, that declared in June 2003 that the ossuary was authentic, but that part of the inscription was forged.

Both the ossuary and the inscription, “James, son of Joseph,” date to the time of Jesus, the authority declared. But the second part of the inscription, “brother of Jesus,” was a modern forgery. A crude attempt to apply artificial patina under high temperatures was made to hide the forgery, the authority said. “The patina was not created under natural conditions,” report contributor Yuval Goren says in a telephone interview from Israel, where he is an archaeology professor at Tel Aviv University. The report relies on what is known as an isotopic test, meant to compare the composition of patina on the ossuary to others of a similar age.

If the patina of two ossuaries are the same, they are about the same age. If the patina inside an inscription matches the patina outside, the inscription was made when the ossuary was new. Patina is a darkening that come with age.
The results, Goran says, show that the ossuary itself dates from the time of Jesus, but that parts of the inscription do not.
“The patina on the rest of the ossuary was created in normal cave conditions,” he says, adding that the patina inside the inscriptions did not match that on the face of the ossuary. That means the inscription was made later, with a fake patina added, possibly by dissolving in water patina taken from the rest of the ossuary and then spreading the resulting paste into the inscription and baking it on. “I don’t know about the motive and I don’t know who did it,” he says. “The bottom line is that the patina in the inscription is not natural.”

His conclusions have come under severe attack, however, with the criticisms mounting since the Golan trial began last fall.
In one court exchange with Bringer, noted Israeli palaeographer Ada Yardeni said she would resign as an expert on ancient inscriptions if the ossuary is fake. “Yes. I said that I would leave the profession,” Yardeni said on cross-examination, confirming a story in Biblical Archaeology Review, the first publication to report news of the ossuary four years ago,
Making the criticisms all the more visceral is the questioning in archaeological circles about the use of isotopic tests themselves.

In a report that the review’s editor Hershel Shanks called a “bombshell” in the Jerusalem Post last month, Wolfgang Krumbien articulated the growing concerns of many experts about the antiquities authority tests. An internationally recognized expert on patina from the University of Oldenburg in Germany, Krumbien declared that the tests done by the authority were “irrelevant” and should never have been conducted. Isotopic tests, he wrote in a report prepared for Golan’s defence team, can only be used when on objects stored in ideal cave conditions and at steady temperatures.
But there is plenty of evidence that the James ossuary was not kept in such conditions. In fact, Krumbien found, it is likely that wherever the ossuary spent much of the past 2,000 years, there was either a flood or a cave-in of the wall of the tomb, which damaged the ossuary. “The cave in which the James ossuary was placed, either collapsed centuries earlier, or alluvial deposits penetrated the chamber together with water and buried the ossuary, either completely or partially,” he wrote.
As well, he wrote, he was able to find microscopic bits of patina within the inscription that matched the patina on the outside of the box, indicating that the lettering dated to the origins of the ossuary itself. He attributed Goren’s failure to find the patina to aggressive cleanings that removed almost all the patina from the lettering. Goren declined to comment on the Krumbien report, saying he will do so when called to testify before the trial. He was not sure when that might be.
Ed Keall, a retired curator at the ROM responsible for the ossuary when it was in Toronto, says he saw the patina in the inscription by using powerful microscopes. He also saw evidence that the ossuary — pockmarked along its bottom edge — had been buried or immersed in water for extended periods. “It’s all eaten away, like a piece of cheese,” says Keall, who remains optimistic that both the ossuary and the inscription date to Jesus’ time. “I have yet to be given any unequivocal evidence that it’s false,” he says. He is quick to add, however, that the question of the ossuary’s authenticity may never be settled, particularly since aggressive cleanings by antiquities dealers looking to boost the value by enhancing the inscription and by the antiquities authority have made it more difficult to find patina in the inscription.

Once the trial is over, however, Keall would like to see an open forum organized to discuss the ossuary and to debate the various opinions about its authenticity. Shanks of the Biblical Archaeology Review is already working on pulling together such a forum, though he sees no need to wait until after the trial. The problem, he says, is that Goren has said he won’t discuss the matter until after he has testified, and Shanks says the forum can’t be held without him — meaning the debate will just have to wait. “It would be like staging Hamlet without Hamlet,” Shanks says from his Washington office. “It can’t be done.”