HistoricalChristian.Faith

George Syncellus on the Rabbinic Corruption of Scripture

Dates: c. 810 (the Ecloga Chronographica written c. 808–810, left unfinished at his death, c. 810, and continued by Theophanes) · Wikipedia
Summary: The Byzantine monk and chronographer — once synkellos ("cell-mate," a senior ecclesiastical aide) to the patriarch of Constantinople — whose Ecloga Chronographica ("Selection of Chronography") makes the Eusebian chronology charge the standard of a great Byzantine universal history. Setting the Septuagint, the Jewish Hebrew, and the Samaritan reckonings of Genesis 5–11 side by side after Eusebius, Syncellus endorses the verdict as his own: the "text of scripture used by the Jews has erred in its chronology from Adam to Abraham," "the Hebrew text used by the Jews is wrong," the Septuagint was made from "an ancient and a strictly accurate Hebrew text," and "it is this version that we too have used in our own chronography." His charge, in the surviving critical text, is one of error — that the Jewish numbers are wrong and the Greek original — rather than, explicitly, of deliberate falsification; the inflammatory "criminal act of the Jews" line later fathered on him cannot be found there. He sits, on the chronology strand, between the bare tabulators and the conspiracy-narrators.

Claims & evidence

The Jewish Hebrew text "has erred in its chronology from Adam to Abraham"

"According to the most ancient Hebrew text, which is to this day still in fact preserved by the Samaritans, there is, then, clear agreement with the Septuagint that the patriarchs from the Flood up to Abraham procreated after the passing of one hundred years plus some additional period of time. By what reasoning, therefore, would one say that their predecessors, even though they lived much longer than their posterity, proceeded with the utmost alacrity to procreate, and not rather according to the years marked down in the Septuagint? On this issue, then, careful reflection suggests this conclusion: there is no choice but to acknowledge that, with the exception of Jared and two generations after him, the text of scripture used by the Jews has erred in its chronology from Adam to Abraham, whereas the Samaritan text is in error only for the years from Adam to the Flood."

— George Syncellus, Ecloga Chronographica, trans. William Adler & Paul Tuffin, The Chronography of George Synkellos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 123–124, source.¹ The reasoning is Eusebius's own, carried forward: the tables in this section of the Ecloga are headed "From Eusebios," and Syncellus's argument runs along the Eusebian groove — the patriarchs after the Flood are agreed on all sides to have fathered children past a hundred, so the much longer-lived antediluvians can hardly have rushed to father them earlier, and the shorter Hebrew begetting-ages must therefore be the error. The interest is that a major Byzantine chronicler, copying Eusebius, makes the verdict his settled conclusion ("there is no choice but to acknowledge…") and turns it on the Jewish text by name.

"The Hebrew text used by the Jews is wrong" — the Septuagint is original, and the Church's text

"But it is abundantly clear that the Hebrew text used by the Jews is wrong. … There is thus complete confirmation that the Septuagint translation was translated from, so it would seem, an ancient and a strictly accurate Hebrew text of scripture. So for good reason it is this version that we too have used in our own chronography, especially insofar as the Church of Christ diffused over the whole earth is devoted to this version alone, the apostles and disciples of our Saviour having handed down a tradition from of old that it be used."

— Ecloga Chronographica, trans. Adler & Tuffin (2002), p. 124, source.² Two moves here matter for the doctrine. First, Syncellus does not merely report the discrepancy but adopts the Septuagint as his own working text ("it is this version that we too have used"), so the Eusebian preference for the Greek becomes the operating standard of his chronicle. Second, he grounds that preference in the same place Philoxenus and Julian of Toledo ground it — the Church's reception and apostolic use of the Septuagint — the premise that an authoritative Greek text makes a divergent Hebrew one look like error. The legend underwriting that authority is traced on the companion doctrine, the Origin and Inspiration of the Septuagint.

Notes

• Following Eusebius. The chronology argument in this part of the Ecloga is Eusebian material that Syncellus transmits and affirms — the tables headed "From Eusebios," the footnoted reasoning attributed to him. Syncellus's distinctive role is not to invent the charge but to canonize it: he makes the "the Hebrew has erred, follow the Septuagint" verdict the backbone of the most influential Byzantine universal chronicle, the channel through which much of Eusebius's lost Chronicon survives. He thus carries the chronology strand from the Latin West (Julian, c. 686) into the Greek East around 810.
• Error, not (explicitly) deliberate falsification. In the critical text (Mosshammer's edition, followed by Adler & Tuffin) Syncellus's charge is that the Jewish Hebrew "has erred" / "is wrong" — the language of mistakenness and inferiority, not, in so many words, of a knowing anti-Christian crime. That keeps him a shade milder than Jacob of Edessa (who names the anti-messianic motive) or Agapius (who narrates a plot). ⚠ The sharper line often quoted in his name — "I concur entirely in the opinion, that this… was a criminal act of the Jews" — comes from the nineteenth-century Egyptologist Gustav Seyffarth, citing a Paris edition ("Syncell. p. 84 Ed. Paris."); it cannot be located in the critical text, and Henry B. Smith Jr., who quotes it, concedes he could not find it in Adler & Tuffin's 725-page translation. It is given here only as an unverified later attribution, not as Syncellus's own attested words.³
• On the evidence. Syncellus is a witness to the textual half of the chronology charge — that the short Hebrew numbers are the errant ones and the long Greek the original — without the motive half. That textual question is genuinely open and is weighed on the Genesis 5/11 chronology argument (assessment: contested), where the text-critical mainstream (Hendel, Tov, Wevers) in fact leans the other way (Septuagint inflation of a longer Vorlage). His appeal to the Samaritan agreement with the Greek for Adam-to-Flood, and his careful exception of "Jared and two generations after him," track the same patterned hundred-year differences the argument turns on. He shares the antediluvian genealogy with the Flood doctrine's timeline.
• Sourcing. Cited from the standard English translation, William Adler & Paul Tuffin, The Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (Oxford, 2002), pp. 123–124, from Alden Mosshammer's critical edition of the Greek; the comparison of the three chronologies runs pp. 115–125, the book's index entering it under "Jews: corruptions of biblical text." Syncellus is also named in the deflation-witness chain on p. 122 of Smith's ICC 2018 paper.

Sources