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The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus story (also paralleled in Q18) can be summarized as this:

Greco-Roman Sources

The early third-century CE account by Diogenes Laertius of the 57-years sleep of Epimenides (1.109; we will come back to this text) is the best known and most often quoted Greek testimony to this motif. However, as the author of the first major scholarly monograph on this subject (J. Koch, Die Siebenschläferlegende, ihr Ursprung und ihre Verbreitung. Eine mythologischliteraturgeschichtliche Studie, Leipzig: Reissner, 1883), John Koch, already observed as far back as 130 years ago, it is Aristotle who is the first to briefly allude to stories about long-sleepers. In his Physics, he engages in a very subtle discussion of what exactly time is (Physics 4.11, 218b23-26). It is important for our purposes in that it clearly shows that by the end of the fourth century BCE stories were being circulated about people who slept apparently long enough to be useful to Aristotle’s argument about the impossibility of the passing of time without change occurring.

He is evidently not talking about regular sleep here. And, as we shall presently see, the fact that the story about Epimenides as a long-sleeper in Diogenes Laertius goes back to much earlier sources, makes it very probable that Greek stories about long-sleepers existed already in pre-Christian, possibly even in pre-Hellenistic times. Although Diogenes only vaguely says that the sources for his chapters on Epimenides were “Theopompus and many other writers” (1.109), it may be taken to be a fact that most of his sources were from the Hellenistic period (Theopompus lived in the fourth century BCE). On the sources for our knowledge of Epimenides see: e H. Diels & W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 1, Berlin: Weidmann, 1951 (repr. 1996), 27-37 (no. 3). Our text is 3A1 D-K. Diogenes’ latest source was probably Phlegon of Tralles of the early second century CE. What he tells us about Epimenides, who supposedly lived in the decades around 600 BCE, is the following (Diog. Laert. 1.109):

The final word, theophilestatos, is very important. It indicates that Epimenides’ ability to sleep extremely long and survive without food and drink was a special divine favour, a motif that will recur time and again, as we shall see. That Diogenes did not invent the story of Epimenides’ long sleep is proved by the fact that half a century earlier, the geographer Pausanias states very briefly in passing that ‘people say’ (legousin) that Epimenides slept for forty years in a cave (Geogr. 1.14.4). In roughly the same period, Maximus of Tyre alludes to “a tale hard to credit if taken at face value … that he [Epimenides] had lain for many years in a deep sleep in the cave of Dictaean Zeus”(Or. 10.1; cf. 38.3). So the motif is older than Pausanias and most probably dates back to the Hellenistic period. We can be rather sure of that because in the middle of the first century CE, Pliny the Elder states that he learnt about a tradition concerning Epimenides’ long sleep.

Pliny the Elder reports the tradition that Epimenides, “when a boy, being weary with the heat and with travel, slept in a cave for 57 years, and when he woke up, just as if it had been on the following day, was surprised at the appearance of things and the change in them” (Nat. hist. 7.175) (R. König, Plinius Secundus d. Ä.: Naturkunde, Buch VII, Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1996, 223). The origins of the motif remain shrouded in darkness, but it is not completely incomprehensible why it was attached to Epimenides. Like the semi-legendary and mysterious Greek traveler, poet, and miracleworker Aristeas of Proconnesus, Epimenides, a poet, a holy man, supposed to have been called in to purify Athens after a sacrilegious event, is a very shadowy figure of the late seventh century BCE. The traditions about him were “quickly obscured by legends and miraculous tales” (A.H. Griffiths, ‘Epimenides,’ OCD (1996) 546), concerning his out-of-the-body experiences, his oracular capacities, his extreme old age (157 or 299 years), his amazing asceticism, his purifying activities, etc (See E. Rohde, Psyche. Seelencult und Unsterblichkeisglaube der Griechen).

1. Jewish Sources
2. The earliest occurrence of our motif is in the so-called Paralipomena Ieremiae (or 4 Baruch), a text most scholars agree to have been written in the early decades of the second century CE (See, e.g., J. Herzer, 4 Baruch (Paraleipomena Jeremiou) Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Writings from the Greco-Roman World 22), Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005, xxx-xxxv). There we read that, after the Lord had promised Jeremiah before the destruction of Jerusalem to protect and save Abimelech “until I bring back the people to the city” (3.11), Jeremiah sent Abimelech away with the words, “take a basket and go to the estate of Agrippa by the mountain trail; bring a few figs in it and give them to the sick among the people” (3.15). And Abimelech did what he was told, while in the meantime Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldaeans.

This passage is crucial for our investigation and for that reason it deserves some closer scrutiny. Firstly, Abimelech is a biblical name, but our Abimelech does not have anything to do with the biblical persons called by that name (see Gen. 20-21; 26; Judg. 9). There is no doubt that Abimelech is to be identified with the biblical Ebed-Melech (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957, 406), an Ethiopian courtier who saved Jeremiah’s life and received via the prophet God’s promise that he himself would be saved during the destruction of Jerusalem (see Jer. 38.7-13 and 39.15-18). Curiously enough, while the Bible has God promise to EbedMelech that even though God is to rescue him, He is going to fulfill his words against the city in his presence, literally, ‘before your eyes’ (lephanêkha) (see J. Herzer, Die Paralipomena Jeremiae (TSAJ 43), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994, 91 n. 257), the text in Par. Jer. 5 has drastically changed that into a rescue scene in which Abimelech does not have to witness anything of the destruction. For the way this motif found its way into later tradition in 3 Baruch 1.1 and elsewhere see (A. Kulik, 3 Baruch. Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch (CEJL), Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010, 98-99). Secondly, while the stories of Epimenides and Abimelech overlap in the striking motif of their supernaturally long sleep and the unrecognizability of the world after their awakening, almost everything else is different. But these differences (e.g., the nondramatic setting of the Epimenides story over against the highly dramatic setting of the Abimelech story) should not make us overlook the fact that in both cases the long sleep is regarded as a divine gift, as a favour on the part of heaven.

1. Thirdly – and now we come to the main problem – the Abimelech story has been presented so far as our first Jewish specimen of the motif of long-sleepers, but is it? Or rather, is it Jewish at all? Let us face the facts: The Paralipomena Jeremiae as we have it is a Christian text that has been handed down to us via Christian channels. Like all or most other Jewish pseudepigrapha, our text, too, has undergone Christian editing and redaction. How sure can we be that the Abimelech story does not derive from a Christian hand? This question becomes all the more pressing when we see that there seems to be undeniably Christian usage in this passage, e.g. in 5.21, where it says that Jeremiah is in Babylon with the people “in order to announce to them the good news (literally, to preach the Gospel, euangelisasthai, and to teach them the Word, katêchêsai ton logon).
2. It should be seen as Jewish, actually. We have a longer and a shorter version of Par. Jer. Of both versions we possess many dozens of manuscripts, in Greek, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Old Church Slavonic. All of these are of Christian provenance and all scholars agree about that. However, most students of the text regard only the final chapter on Jeremiah’s performance as a preacher of the Gospel as a patently Christian addition (and perhaps some other phrases elsewhere in the work as well), but they do regard the main body of the work as definitely Jewish. For instance, Michael Stone stresses that the work is undoubtedly part of the wider Jewish Baruch and Jeremiah literature represented also by the Syriac and Greek Apocalypses of Baruch, the Greek Book of Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, as well as fragments from Qumran (4Q384-385). Also the originally Jewish Jeremiah Apocryphon that has been preserved only in Coptic should be mentioned here; see for text and translation: K.H. Kuhn, ‘A Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon,’ Le Muséon 83 (1970) 95-135 and 291-326. Abimelech’s miraculous sleep is told in three phases in chs. 12, 22, and 38-39. And he adds that the Jewish nature of the original is apparent from many distinctive features. “Thus the approval of sacrifice, the rejection of foreign women, and the attitude to circumcision, to mention only the most prominent, clearly disprove the theory of a Christian original” (M.E. Stone, “Baruch, Rest of the Words of,” EncJud 4 (1972) 276). Further arguments for a Jewish provenance in Schaller, Paralipomena Jeremiou 677-678, who concludes: “Die ParJer sind, wenn nicht alles täuscht, – abgesehen von dem Schlußkapitel – im wesentlichen ein Text genuin jüdischer Herkunft und Prägung.”

1. This is convincing to my mind. Even though there is good reason to regard the words about Jeremiah as a preacher of the Gospel in the Abimelech story (5.21) as a Christian interpolation, there is equally good reason in this case not to regard the whole story as a Christian addition to the Jewish Grundschrift .
2. Perhaps the fact that none of the Church Fathers makes any reference to the Paralipomena Jeremiae (See Denis, Introduction, 690) may be seen as corroborative evidence.

Is there any probability in the suggestion that the Jewish author here has taken over a Greek motif? Even though in the cases of both Epimenides and Abimelech we meet men who are described as especially favoured by a deity, there is no reason to think in terms of Greek influence. Stories of long-sleepers are known from a wide variety of cultures. See the impressive survey in M. Huber, Die Wanderlegende von den Siebenschläfern. Eine literarische Untersuchung, Leipzig: Harassowitz, 1910. Many references to the motif in other cultures also in S. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, 6 vols., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-1958, motif D1960.

1. It is reasonable to think that the motif could have sprung up anywhere, independently from other cultures. And that someone who is able to sleep miraculously long can only be enabled to do so by a deity is something that any person in an ancient culture could think up. Moreover, as we shall see, there are a few other Jewish stories about long-sleepers that do not give us much reason to surmise Greek influence. Let us have a brief look at these texts. They are about the long sleep of Choni the Circle-Drawer (Choni ha-me‘aggel) and/or his grandfather (See J.L. Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, 62-76). There are two different stories about Choni as a long-sleeper, both in two not too different versions. The earliest attestation of one of these stories is found in Talmud Yerushalmi, Ta‘aniyot 3.9.66d. There we read that Choni’s grandfather (or he himself) lived shortly before the destruction of the (first!) temple. He went out to a mountain with his workmen, and when it began to rain, he went into a cave where he fell asleep. He remained asleep for seventy years during which the temple was destroyed and rebuilt for the second time. When after seventy years he awoke and left the cave, he found out that the world had completely changed. Choni did not live during the Babylonian exile but five centuries later apparently did not matter (See Huber, Die Wanderlegende 418: “Vor dem Anachronismus schreckte die Sage eben nicht zurück”).
2. It is clear that here the occurrence of the motif of a sleep of seventy years is the result of a specific exegesis of Ps. 126:1: The Lord has his people return from exile to Zion and we know from Jeremiah that the exile lasted seventy years. When those who see the returnees appear to the latter like dreamers, it follows – according to this exegesis – that they must have been dreaming, i.e., sleeping, for seventy years. So the motif of a miraculously long sleep here receives a biblical basis. That Choni is here the one who receives this divine gift, is not remarkable in view of the fact that in the traditions about him, Choni is always regarded as someone who was God’s favourite (theophilês!). As is well-known, his prayers were famous for being extremely powerful and effective (think of the rain miracle stories) (for references see A. Büchler, Types of Palestinian Jewish Piety from 70 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.: The Ancient Pious Men, New York: Ktav, 1968 (orig. 1922), 196-264; G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, London: Collins, 1973, 69-72). Now one can argue, of course, that the text of Psalm 126 does not necessarily imply that it is possible to sleep for seventy years, and that is correct. So it might be the case that the exegetical quandary (what does ‘those who dream’ refer to?) was thought by the rabbis to be solvable by taking recourse to a motif from Greek legends about divinely favoured long-sleepers. But that is hard to prove. It is not certain in which period this legend about Choni arose. The historical figure of Choni most probably lived in the first half of the first century BCE, and it is not improbable that legends about him began to flourish soon after his death. But the legend of his long sleep cannot predate the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, and it is also not known to Josephus who wrote in the quarter of a century thereafter.

There are both major differences and agreements between the Talmudic stories and the one in 4 Baruch. Let us briefly compare both the Yerushalmi and the Bavli story with 4 Baruch 5. See also the remarks by G. B.-A. Tsarfatti, ‘Chasidim we-’anshey ma‘aseh we-hanevi’im harishonim,’Tarbiz 26 (1956/57) 149-153.

One can follow an interesting process of reworking a tradition that also provides evidence for knowledge of Greek classical traditions and their reuse in Jewish circles (Herzer, 4 Baruch, 88). Herzer draws attention to the fascinating fact that interest in Epimenides among Christian circles of the late first century CE is evident from the famous quotations in Acts 17:28 and Titus 1:12.

Christians Borrowed the Story From Jewish Sources?

If we assume that the Abimelech story, with its setting in the First Temple period, is of Jewish origin, which seems certain, we cannot but conclude that the Christian originator(s) of the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus knew this story and borrowed heavily from it (B. Heller, ‘Éléments, parallèles et origine de la légende des Sept Dormants,’ REJ 49 (1904) 190-218, here 214). What both stories have in common is, first, the setting in a period of great upheaval: the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the deportation of the Jews to Babylon on the one hand and the persecution of the Christians by Decius on the other. Second, there is the central motif of falling asleep, which happens in or near a mountain. Third, there is the element of the return to the city after the sleep, followed – fourth – by the utter amazement about the total change of the world which has become well-nigh unrecognizable. Fifth, there is a dialogue between the sleeper and the inhabitants of the city. Sixth, both Abimelech and Iamblichus begin to wonder whether they have lost their wits. Finally, it seems that even the names of the protagonists are related: Abimelech and Iamblichus (or Malchus) have names (m-l-kh) that are too similar to go unnoticed. These agreements are too many and too striking to be coincidental! They cannot be explained as deriving from general folklore. We must assume that the creator of the Christian legend knew the Jewish story of the pious longsleepers. That Christians did know this Jewish story is certain. The proof is that the Abimelech story has been handed down to us only in the christianized form of the Paralipomena Jeremiae and the same story is also found in the Christian Coptic translation of the originally Jewish Jeremiah Apocryphon. Both writings certainly predate, in their christianized form, the origin of the story of the Seven Sleepers which is to be dated about 450 CE.

1. So knowledge of this Jewish story in Christian circles before the middle of the fifth century is demonstrable. Moreover, there was also a Jewish community in Ephesus in late antiquity; see W. Ameling, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis II: Kleinasien (TSAJ 99), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004, 147-162. 55 Koch, Siebenschläferlegende 51, calls the pious long-sleepers “gottbegnadete Wesen.” That its adoption and adaptation in a Christian setting was possibly facilitated by the fact that these Greek Christians perhaps also already knew the story about the miraculously long sleep of Epimenides cannot be proven but cannot be excluded either. After all, the Seven Sleepers were, like Epimenides (and, of course, Choni and Abimelech), theophilestatoi, especially loved by God. But that matter must remain uncertain. Certain is only that in the middle of the fifth century CE, Christians in Ephesus saw fit to use a motif they knew from Jewish sources which had been preserved among Christians, and put it into new service for their own purposes. The legend of the Seven Sleepers is nothing but the Jewish Abimelech story in Christian dress. This is also the conclusion of Heller, “Éléments” 217: “Nous signalons derrière le décor chrétien le fond juif.”Cf. also Huber, Wanderlegende 422.