SEVEN SLEEPERS OF EPHESUS

Even if the story of the seven sleeping youths of Ephesus seems like a fairy tale, this cornerstone of our shared civilization, made up of denominations, religions, and worlds, should be taken very seriously. Which saints has Ursa Major ever been renamed after? Goethe sang beautifully of the seven youths and their dog in his “West-Eastern Divan.”

1 Unlike modern historical Western Christianity, Orthodoxy seeks to avoid a kind of “demythologization” of the saints. When their lives contain episodes that seem too incredible or lack precise historical context, Orthodox theology works to create an appropriate hermeneutics of what has already been written about saints over the centuries. As the great 17th-century theologian Cornelius Jansenius (1585ā€“1638) once wrote with reference to Saint Augustine, the task of theology is memory. The lives of the saints are the Church’s memory, as a community of believers, of itself in human history.

2 On August 17, the Orthodox Church commemorates the Seven Youths of Ephesus. These are seven young men whose names in the Orthodox liturgical calendar are as follows: Maximilian, Iamblichus, Dionysus, Exacustodianus, Anthony, Martinian, and John. The names of the seven saints vary somewhat in various historical sources, among the Church Fathers, and among various Christian churches. The seventeenth of August and the seven saints are almost like the ā€œseventeen moments of springā€ of Christianity.

3 The story of the seven is briefly summarized below. During the persecution of Decius in the mid-3rd century (249-251), they hid in a cave and fell asleep. During the long reign of Theodosius the Younger, from May 1, 408, to July 28, 450, the young men revived. This presumably happened in 448. One of them went to Ephesus to buy food and showed the seller a coin from the reign of Decius, for which he was arrested on suspicion of being a gravedigger. The local bishop intervened, and it became clear that two centuries had passed in the lives of these people. Whether they slept or died is not known from tradition. In Orthodox popular piety, the Seven are venerated as martyrs, and their “temporary death” is considered a great sign from God and, at the same time, proof of the bodily resurrection of the dead.

4 In his domestic politics, Theodosius was confronted with fierce Christological controversies, in which Origenism played a truly tectonic role. Origenism attempted to “spiritualize” the idea of the resurrection. Therefore, the sign of the Seven Youths was highly relevant and even prophetic.

5 Today, many people consider this story a fairy tale. At best, it is perceived as the fruit of popular piety of the past. But this is a grave error. After all, the significance of these saints is enormous. The archetypes they created continue to have an impact today. This significance is spread across several aspects that can be summarized as secular, religious, liturgical, literary, cinematic, and dogmatic. Of course, we will only describe the most striking examples, since it is simply impossible to exhaust these meanings in a short essay.

  1. Secular. In European languages, the expression “Seven Sleepers” exists in one form or another. It has different meanings but exists from German to Swedish. Once, the Great Bear was even renamed in honor of the Seven Youths. It was believed that its eight stars represented them.
  2. Religious. The Quran, as we know, consists of 114 suras. Unlike the Biblical Psalter, which contains 150 psalms and is arranged in a different order, the suras in the Quran are arranged from major to minor. Sura 18 is called “The Cave.” It is at the beginning and is thus one of the major suras. This sura is dedicated to sleepers.
  3. Liturgical. In the Orthodox liturgy, there is a special litany in which God is asked for deliverance from insomnia. In particular, the Seven Saints of Ephesus are invoked.
  4. Literary. In Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk’s novel “My Name is Red,” the third chapter is dedicated to the “Seven Youths.” The story is told neither in the name of the author, nor in the name of God, nor in the name of any human being. It is called “I am a dog.”
  5. Cinematographic. In the film “Goodbye, Lenin,” the main character, a female party activist in East Germany, suffers a stroke. When she awakens from a coma, doctors recommend that her son give her the illusion that communism is alive. Meanwhile, the Berlin Wall has fallen. Relatives do their best to prevent her from understanding anything. By chance, she learns the truth, and this truth reconciles her with reality, with her fate, and becomes her salvation. Essentially, it is a completely agnostic, secular version of the ancient story of the Seven Youths. Ultimately, the realization that not only have the persecutions ceased, but that even the emperors of Rome have become Christians, represents reconciliation for the Seven. They do not remain on earth but leave this world immediately. Or, as in the German saga of the Brothers Grimm: one of the miners, buried alive in a coal mine, prays to come out into the light, to be recognized by his wife, and then to die. The Seven Saints suffered for the Christian faith. Two centuries later, they awoke, were recognized by the contemporaries of that completely new time and then died. As if they had once wondered whether their suffering would have meaning and significance for future generations. In Iran, the ā€œSeven Saintsā€ were the subject of a TV series, ā€œPeople of the Caveā€ (1998).
  6. Dogmatic. Thus, worldly meanings gradually flow into dogmas. Why are there eight stars in the Big Dipper if there were seven saints? Why is the story of the Seven Saints told from the perspective of a dog in Pamuk’s work? And finally: Besides the Seven Saints, who else is mentioned in the 18th sura of the Quran? There is an answer to all these questions. There’s a very common ancient version of the Life of the Seven Sleeping Saints, according to which a dog fell asleep with them and then came back to life. Owners of pets, cats, dogs, and many others, even domestic hedgehogs, are often inconsolable. They wonder what will happen after their pets die. The answer is usually that they are lost forever; they have no soul and cannot be resurrectedā€. The Life of the Seven Saints shows that this is entirely possible. To paraphrase the Gospel: If it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, why is it impossible for a camel to come to life through the power of God? Nothing is impossible for God (Matthew 19:24-26). But a pet is meant for a person. Let us remember how hopeless the announcements about the loss of pets are. Therefore, the owner of such a pet must live righteously to be resurrected justly and can call their pet to them. Because if a person is not saved, their pet will remain lost forever. There will simply be no one for them to be resurrected for. In the words of Mayakovsky: “Listen! if the stars are lit, then someone must need them, of course? then someone must them to be there, calling those droplets of spittle pearls?ā€ (https://ruverses.com/vladimir-mayakovsky/listen/22/)