Archaic language in devotional texts can mislead historical dating

Evidence

If we are to judge from their manuscripts, they may have been linguistically somewhat more conservative, more prone to archaisms, than their Christian neighbors, but then the evidence may be misleading. Devotional texts the world over tend to be archaizing, so we must be careful not to base datings exclusively on elements in Morisco writings that, had they occurred in contemporary Christian texts, might have seemed outmoded. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 406

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A subtle methodological discipline: the conservative register inherent to devotional literature undercuts using it as evidence of a language’s actual state. That registering illusion is widely transferable beyond this case.
• XREF: connects to: Canonical sacred texts betray their own youthful radical origins; Being present-date does not mean being new in a citational culture — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1021