I guess he is trying to say that writing a factory method for producing callable/anonymous functions are easier with create_function than with closures, because you call eval implicitly, instead of explicitly.
Exactly this historical "factory method" part is it. Thank You!
sort of documentation for the previous link:
https://github.com/phpcr/phpcr-utils/blob/master/src/PHPCR/Util/Console/Command/NodesUpdateCommand.php#L62
https://github.com/phpcr/phpcr-utils/blob/master/src/PHPCR/Util/Console/Helper/PhpcrCliHelper.php#L111
Not shure about a "safer version" with different name. Maybe breaking BC is acceptable to some degree, if touching and refactoring this to same codebase as closures.