Greetings, historians!
I asked the same question in r/askphilosophy, where they suggested me to try here, since it's about cultural history, so here I am.
My question is about Aristotle's possible heritage in Christian theology in Eastern Mediterranean (including, e.g., Near and Middle East).
Regarding Western Europe, I know he was virtually forgotten until his re-descovery in the so-called "XII century Renaissance", most of all thanks to Arab mediation, and I know about the translation movement in Syria, thanks to which Arabs gained access to Greek texts.
I am at a loss, though, regarding his reception in Christian Theology in the East, especially in the first millennium.
Sure they there was no language barrier like they had it in the West (at least not that strong), but was he influential in the first place? Or was he forgotten like in the West? Or was he basically negletted, in favour of Plato (which would be my guess)? How widespread was his work?
Thanks in advance to anyone who replies and especially to those who can point to reliable academic sources.
I'm not very knowledgeable about Byzantine philosophy (or indeed philosophy in general), but re: Plato vs. Aristotle: Aristotle was definitely influential in some areas of philosophy (logic especially, but also to a certain extent in 'natural' philosophy) in Byzantium, and he was certainly respected to at least a basic extent as an Important Ancient Authority. Plato, however, was by far the more important figure. Platonic philosophy was easier to justify with accepted Christian ideas: obviously God was the supreme good/τὸ καλόν that Plato kept talking about, but he either a.) was on the right track, but wasn't Christian, and therefore couldn't fully express the concepts he was going after, or b.) was some sort of pre-Christ Christian, but lived a hostile pagan society, and purposely hid his real knowledge of monotheism so that only the truly worthy could find it after his death. Platonism in general had a long tradition of syncretist/Gnostic applications: Pseudo-Dionysius uses the idea that everything is attracted to goodness in varying degrees according to its level of perfection to explain the organization of heaven, and this framework gets recycled by later authors all the way down to at least the eleventh century (for example, to explain the organization of the church).
In terms of modern scholarship, the main work I know of is Anthony Kaldellis' Hellenism in Byzantium (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), which looks at how the Byzantines used and repurposed ancient philosophy, including both Aristotle and Plato, in much more detail.