[00:00:01] The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus a platinum post by Douglas Waitson, MD.
[00:00:07] Now here's a post on an intriguing topic involving an amusing tale that roughly no one has heard of, but Platinum member Doug Wadeson has looked into it. Here we can all learn something of interest.
[00:00:21] I've spent most of my life going to various churches, and yet I have never heard the story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Have you? It's an old Christian tale which is set in the year 250 CE.
[00:00:33] However, I first learned of it in the Quran.
[00:00:36] Muhammad makes reference to this story in Chapter or Surah 18, entitled the Cave.
[00:00:42] Muhammad often borrows stories from the Jews and Christians, so it's not unusual for him to use this story as well.
[00:00:48] I'll get to his version in a bit, but here is the story as cited in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
[00:00:58] The story is this Decius from 249 to 251 once came to Ephesus to enforce his laws against Christians.
[00:01:06] A gruesome description of the horrors he made them suffer follows Here he found seven noble young men named Maximilian, Jamblichos, Martin, John, Dionysios, Exokostylianos, and Antoninus.
[00:01:20] So Metaphrastes. The names vary considerably. Gregory of Tours has Achillides, Diomedes, Diogenes, Probatus, Stephanus, Sambatus, and Quiriacus, and they were Christians.
[00:01:32] The emperor tried them and then gave them a short time for consideration till he came back again to Ephesus.
[00:01:39] They gave their property to the poor. They took a few coins only with them, and went into a cave in Mount Anchylos to pray and prepare for death.
[00:01:47] Decius came back after a journey and inquired after these seven men. They heard of his return and then as they said their last prayer in the cave before giving themselves up, they fell asleep.
[00:01:57] The emperor told his soldiers to find them, and when found asleep in the cave, he ordered it to be closed up with huge stones and sealed, and thus they were buried alive.
[00:02:06] But a Christian came and wrote on the outside the names of the martyrs and their story.
[00:02:12] Years passed. The emperor became Christian and Theodosius either Theodosius the Great from 379 to 395, or Theodosius the Younger from 408 to 450 and that's cited in Cock.
[00:02:26] Theodosius reigned in his time, some heretics denied the resurrection of the body. While this controversy went on, a rich landowner named Edolius had the sleeper's cave opened to use it as a cattle stall.
[00:02:41] Then they awake thinking they've only slept one night and they send one of their number, Diomedes, to the city to buy food that they may eat before they give themselves up.
[00:02:51] Diomedes comes into Ephesus and the usual story of cross purposes follows. He is amazed to see crosses over churches and the people cannot understand whence he got his money. Coined by Decius, of course. At last it comes out that the last thing he knew was Decius reign.
[00:03:09] Eventually the bishop and the prefect go up to the cave with him where they find the six others and the inscription Theodosius is sent for and the saints tell him their story.
[00:03:18] Everyone rejoices at this proof of the resurrection of the body.
[00:03:21] The sleepers, having improved the occasion by a long discourse, then die praising God.
[00:03:27] The Emperor wants to build golden tombs for them, but they appear to him in a dream and ask to be buried in the earth in their cave. The cave is adorned with precious stones, a great church built over it, and every year the feast of the seven sleepers is kept.
[00:03:44] So the seven men go to sleep under the persecution of decius, but awaken 100 years later to find the Emperor. The empire is now Christian. Hurrah. If you want an even more detailed version of the story, the Orthodox Church has their version of this tale and you can find it at the Orthodox Church of America
[email protected].
[00:04:05] the Orthodox Church has specific dates in their calendar commemorating the events of the story.
[00:04:11] Interesting that the story even has the specific names of the men, just as the three names were created for the magi that visited baby Jesus.
[00:04:19] Know that the story is tied to the idea of the resurrection of the body as opposed to a purely spiritual, non bodily resurrection.
[00:04:26] Muhammad refers to this story in Surah 18, entitled The Cave, but he does not give much detail. He calls them the companions of the cave.
[00:04:36] He does add a dog which lies at the entrance of the cave as if to guard it. That's a cute touch. He also says the sleep lasted about 300 years, not just 100.
[00:04:45] The Orthodox Church splits the difference at 200, but he uses the story for the same reason as the Christians. To prove the ability of God to raise people from the dead. You see, just as God raised these men from their sleep after 300 years, so God can raise the dead back to life at the judgment.
[00:05:04] Personally, I don't think an ancient story like this is proof of anything, but that is how the Christians and Muhammad used it.
[00:05:12] As with any ancient story, there are variations, such as the difference in the number of Years the men slept.
[00:05:20] Various locations claim to be the site at which this took place.
[00:05:23] There's the Grotto of the seven Sleepers in Ephesus in Turkey. And that may have been a Byzantine tomb that was fashioned into a church at some point and associated with the Cave of the Sleepers.
[00:05:35] There is another site in Cennini in Tunisia in North Africa.
[00:05:39] The legend goes that seven Christians were imprisoned by the Romans at this spot and locked away for 400 years.
[00:05:46] When they were let out, they had grown to heights of about 12ft. Now that's an interesting variation.
[00:05:54] Other sites include Tarsus and Kaharmanaras in Turkey, Marmusa in Syria and Amman in Jordan.
[00:06:01] There's even a site in Turpan in China which is thought to have been a Buddhist shrine, later converted to a Muslim shrine and then tagged as the Cave of the Seven Sleepers.
[00:06:11] So it seems like a lot of places wanted to get in on the seven sleepers story.
[00:06:15] Clearly the story was well known and widespread in the past, but it seems to have fallen off the radar at some point.
[00:06:22] The seven Sleepers are venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, are known in the Roman Catholic Church, and they give their name to a chapter in the Quran.
[00:06:30] But I'm betting that most Protestants and Evangelicals do not know the story.
[00:06:34] After all, it's not in the Bible, right?
[00:06:37] I think stories like this are significant.
[00:06:40] Most people will dismiss this story as a legend, but then where did it come from? Who invented the story?
[00:06:46] I think we know the why. It was meant to support the idea of bodily resurrection and refute those who believed otherwise.
[00:06:53] But would earnest Christians invent stories to prove a point?
[00:06:58] It seems so, unless you take this story as historical and factual.
[00:07:04] So what does this mean for Bible stories? Were the originators of the Bible stories like the stories of Jesus, more honest and pure hearted and thus would never invent a story that was not factual. Heaven forbid.
[00:07:16] Yet we know that from the early years of Christianity people were inventing stories about Jesus and his disciples, like the infancy Gospel of Thomas and his odd stories about young Jesus or other gospels like those attributed to Peter Thom, Judas and Mary Magdalene and others, but were never accepted by the Church as scripture.
[00:07:36] There are stories of Paul and his female disciple Thecla. Or there's the Acts of Peter in which he brings down a flying magician and resurrects a dead fish.
[00:07:44] These stories are either true, though few people think so, or somebody had to invent them.
[00:07:51] It seems clear that Christians were willing to invent stories in support of their preachings. Of what they saw as the truth.
[00:07:59] Mind you, one can use fiction to present truth. Authors like Dickens and Tolstoy and Orwell and many others used their stories to express true ideas, but they did not pretend the stories were factual.
[00:08:11] However, the stories told by early Christians, like the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, apparently were presented as fact, not fiction.
[00:08:20] Is that righteous in your view?
[00:08:23] There is an alternative view, Perhaps Such stories were originally meant as fan fiction.
[00:08:30] They were told as fictional stories to convey certain points about God and Jesus and the disciples. But over time and as they were disseminated, they were received as true tales of actual events.
[00:08:42] We all want reassurances that our beliefs are correct, and so stories that corroborate our beliefs are easy to accept.
[00:08:49] That's why people can accept miracle stories told within their own faith traditions, while rejecting similar stories told in other religions.
[00:08:59] So did seven young men really sleep for 100 years or more in a cave outside Ephesus?
[00:09:04] Or is it just an amusing fable meant to convey a doctrinal lesson?
[00:09:08] Or maybe it was originally just an amusing story, period, that someone told for entertainment but others picked up on to prove their point about the resurrection of the body.
[00:09:18] Who can say?
[00:09:20] What do you think of the story? Is it factual? Plausible? Fictional?
[00:09:25] Meant for entertainment purposes only?
[00:09:29] For more of my irreverent thoughts, please see my blog at.
[00:09:41] The.
