Now, the Harvard professor who invested nearly four years of work on the fragment and has defended it in publications and conferences has reportedly also come to the conclusion that the story may have been created out of whole cloth, or at least out of Egyptian papyrus.

The Atlantic reports that Karen L. King, who teaches Ecclesiastical History at Harvard, is tacitly backing off of her stance on the fragment's authenticity after reading the magazine's exposé on the origins of the scrap of Coptic text.

"It tips the balance towards forgery," she told the magazine after reading the investigative report. ...