Sixteenth-century forgers deliberately made apocryphal scriptures difficult to read.

Evidence

Translating any part of the Arabic lead books that were found on the Sacromonte near Granada is not easy. This is in the first place because the forgers who created these apocryphal Christian scriptures did not intend them to be easy to read. The intention must have been to puzzle and to mystify. A second and quite different factor creating difficulties for those approaching these writings in modern times has been that until very recently it has not been possible to secure access to the originals, to the lead disks on which the texts were inscribed. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1758

Categorization

• QUESTION: What strategic purpose did the forgers have in making the texts deliberately obscure — to seem more authentically sacred and ancient, or to make verification harder?