Nuts and Bolts: pseudepigrapha.

 Pseudepigrapha, as anyone with any Greek can tell from half a mile away (if they have a telescope) are some kind of dodgy writings.

And indeed they are.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with the written stuff itself, it's more that the writer is claiming to be someone else, usually someone with a lot more fame and authority who might be assumed to know what he or she/whatever was talking about.

Pseudepigrapha go right back to, yes, Ancient Greece. There are texts around which are claimed to be by Orpheus (whom even Aristotle didn't believe had ever existed). 

If you want to refer to an author who claims to be Mick Smith, but isn't, then you can call him either pseudo-Mick Smith or just ps-Mick Smith.

There are two basic forms of pseudepigrapha; the ones where a man's followers are genuinely trying to carry on his influence by means of his beliefs and values; and the forgers hoping to use his fame for their own good.

Whether something or not is actually pseudepigraphical is a matter for endless argument, especially when it comes to religious texts. Even a lot of the letters of Paul are still pseudepigraphical battlegrounds.

The tradition of pseudepigrapha has carried on into modern times, with Robinson Crusoe pretending to be by, um, Robinson Crusoe, and The Lord of the Rings pretending to be a translation of a Middle-Earthish text.

Recently pseudepigrapha have a whole new flourishing existence on Twitter.

We've been treated to @realdonaldtrump (hang on, no, I think that was the real Donald Trump, even though the account contains some rather...um...unusual...stuff. How do you tell?). Anyway, ps-Darth Vader and ps-Lord Voldemort certainly have Twitter accounts, which I think I can claim are less than authentic. 

And not everyone claiming to be Her Majesty The Queen is entirely reliable, either.

Irreverent? Dishonest? Or following in an ancient tradition?

Well, they're not exclusive, you know.

Nuts and Bolts: pseudepigrapha. The pseude- bit means false and epigraphein means to inscribe. The singular of this word is pseudepigraphon.