"During the 1960's Cyrus Gordon, a respected professor of the Semitic languages and an ardent diffusionist, revived the Paraíba Stone's claims to authenticity. Basically Gordon asserted that the Paraíba inscription contained Phoenician grammatical constructions unknown in 1872. These same constructions were originally used in the 1870's to argue against the stone's authenticity. Subsequent research during the twentieth century, Gordon said, revealed that the anomalous grammatical usages in the Paraíba Stone were genuine. Other equally qualified specialists disagree with his conclusions and continue to declare the Paraíba Stone a hoax. That opinion remains the judgement of archeologists and historians in general."