The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

STONE Jewish Tradition and the Christian West 445
Vitae Prophetarum
Another body of material in Armenian which was translated from
Latin also came to our attention. This appertains to the extensive literature
relating to the prophets. The Vitae Prophetarum was composed
originally in Greek and was translated very early into Latin, as
well as into Armenian. In addition to it, two other collections of
prophetic biographies exist in Armenian translations from Latin. One
of these, entitled The Names, Works and Deaths of the Holy Prophets,
is found in two late manuscripts. It contains biographical notices on
various prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch ben Neriah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, the twelve minor prophets, and concludes with a reference to
some pagan Greek prophets. In one of the manuscripts, the The
Names, Works and Deaths of the Holy Prophets is followed by a work
on the Sibyls, which claims to have been translated from 'Prankish',
i.e, Latin. That The Names, Works and Deaths of the Holy Prophets
came into Armenian from a Latin original is indicated by a reference
to St Jerome in the notice on Habakkuk, by a borrowing from
Jerome's preface to Jeremiah in the notice for Baruch, and certain
material in the notice for Jeremiah which is apparently drawn from
the Latin version of Vitae Prophetarum. A second similar work, also
seemingly translated from Latin, has been noted to exist in a
manuscript in Venice, but has never been rendered into a western language.
49 It is entitled The Names of the Prophets and Their Order and
in What Times They Were.
The interest in hagiography is of course common to the Christian
churches. The Vitae Prophetarum and its congeners I have mentioned
can be viewed from the perspective of this shared concern. It seems,
however, that lists of the prophets and, for that matter, of the apostles
and disciples of Christ, formed a distinct type of hagiographic text.
Some such texts were borrowed from East to West, underwent growth
and development, and returned to the East again.
Recent researches on the Vitae Prophetarum have cast doubt on the
49. The work was first published by B. Sarghissian, Usumnasirut'iwnk' Hin
Ktakarani Anuawer Groc' Vray (Studies on the Uncanonical Books of the Old
Testament; Venice: Mechitarist Press, 1898), pp. 257-58; the names were translated
by Stone, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 174-75. The Latin, or less probably Greek,
origin is indicated inter alia by the forms of the names.