One could find fault with it if the professor is promoting his own forgery. I think that the question of authenticity and controversies is rooted in a series of unlikely coincidences about the discovery, not just the issue of traditional values.Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Aug 24, 2017 7:10 am Now that gay marriage is pretty much a bit of 'settled law' the manuscript isn't as controversial and we can take a second look. But the question of authenticity was rooted very much in the question of 'tradition' and 'traditional values' not so much with regards to actual difficulties arising from the manuscript.
A Columbia professor finds a manuscript, takes photographs, leaves the manuscript where he found it and publishes a brief paper when he returns home and eventually publishes a more comprehensive study on the manuscript later. Who can really find fault with that? If a 'culture war' hadn't been brewing in his home country in the ensuing years after the discovery none of this could have been deemed controversial because it wasn't and isn't controversial.
The discovery can be still controversial for someone for whom the sexual issues aren't as upsetting as for a conservative "traditionalist" because of the chain of coincidences (eg. the similarities with the two books: Mystery of Mar Saba, and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes)