Enoch and Hesiod in George Syncellus

The Western rediscovery of five of the many Enoch books, the five most-revered in Ethiopia, is nowadays given in scare-quotes. This is a common trend of modern #wokery to erase the achievements of our forebears. It seems clear to the rest of us that the West did lose the original text of these five books - most of which books were indeed composed in the Levant (maybe Similitudes and 1 Enoch 83-84 in Egypt or Nubia) - and that James Bruce did find and publish the Ethiopic, however belatedly, in 1773.

My post mainly concerns one of the sporadic semi-rediscoverers of the Middle Ages (another problematic term, but - whatever): George, patriarch Tarasius' syncellus.

Theophanes Confessor continued George's work giving rise to the never-dispensable Chronography. Zonaras and Cedrenus relied upon George (via Theophanes); likewise, I think, Anastasius among the Latins. George's Byzantine MSS were likely looted by the Venetians; although apparently not going further asea than Corinth, whence one J. Goar finally published it in Paris. Since then, classically Westerners have scoffed at George for credulity, for instance McClintock and Strong - but I'll get back to this.

As a result of George's publication, his Enoch excerpt was already loose in the wild as of 1773. Since 1727 it has even enjoyed an English translation courtesy of William Whiston. In the West, much of George was only had from excerpts of this sort, if you weren't a Byzantinist or at least a Hellenist. For Anglophones since 2002 a translation of all Syncellus can be had for, admittedly, a pretty penny. I don't suppose we are allowed to thank William Adler and Paul Tuffin, either.

As to George's (un)reliability Luca Arcari would beg to differ. George was an excellent scholar, if a bit autistic, and attempted to deliver his sources (like Julius Africanus) to the best of his copious abilities. If there are problems in George those are usually problems in his sources. So is the case of his transmission of the "Enoch" material. George tries not to do mythology, but made an exception here, because textual fidelity was paramount. Also it seems George was himself much less of a misogyne than was his version of Enoch. Arcari sees a reader of Hesiod between Aramaic Enoch and George.

Besides the anti-woman adaptation of 1 Enoch 8:1 in George's excerpt, also there seems a harmonisation of 1 Enoch 7:2's giants. The Enochian tradition, which (per Boccaccini) includes post-Enochian Jubilees, recalls giants, Naphil, and Elyo. The Enochians with Jubilees probably considered them as contemporaries, maybe subsets maybe synonyms. For George, one led to another led to the last, the Elioud (somewhat reminding me of Viles, Demondim, and Waynhim / Ur-Viles in Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever). Matthew Goff sees parallels in [Iraqi] Rabbinic literature and calls it a Biblical eisegesis. I submit that here we have more Hesiod, before the Flood as it were.