Xoroaster 3, 'malista' key to Dating Bible Greek
Channel: Brain Outy
Date: 2013-08-29

This is a followup video to Xoroaster 2.  Lest I prove to be a bad scholar too, this video simply explains why 'malista' is an important key to dating Greek text.  It by no means is the only key, but it's important:  for in early Greek, it was considered 'gauche' to use superlatives (like saying 'bestest', in English).  Only the uneducated, used superlatives.

Check this with tenneral, an atheist who is a retired classical Greek teacher:  http://www.youtube.com/user/tenneral .  He doesn't know I'm making this video, so if you ask him, you'll have to fill him in on the backstory, or just ask the question without referencing me.  You can also Google;  but as I show briefly in this video, the Google listing is pretty bad.  If you want, you can register in B-Greek and ask the scholars there.  (I'm registered there, but cannot post because I won't use my real name.)  Not everyone there is a scholar, but there should be at least one who will authoratively answer you.

Why this matters:  in the middle or late 50's AD, it became more common to use superlatives, and was considered educated, by Hadrian's time.  Thus it becomes easier to tell that Matthew's Gospel is early, etc.  For you date a language's age by the way it uses the words, not by the media on which the words are penned/imprinted, etc.

Now, 'malista' had been used ever since Homer, Herodotus, Aristotle, Demosthenes, etc.: Josephus, by contrast, is using it as a superlative (well, really a combination of traditional and superlative, to stress irony).