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The Seven Sleepers (Arabic: اصحاب الکھف ''aṣḥāb al kahf'', "companions of the cave") of Ephesus is a story of a group of youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around 250 AD, to escape a persecution. The king forced all his kingdom to worship idols and whoever did not would be killed. These men escaped as their faith in God (their belief varies by regional origin) was strong and refused to worship idols. The story is one of the many examples of the legend about a man who falls asleep and years after wakes up to find the world changed. Another version is that Decius ordered them imprisoned in a closed cave to die there as punishment for being Christians. Having fallen asleep inside the cave, they purportedly awoke approximately 180 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, following which they were reportedly seen by the people of the now-Christian city before dying. The earliest version of this story comes from the Syrian bishop Jacob of Sarug (c. 450–521), which is itself derived from an earlier Greek source, now lost.〔 An outline of this tale appears in Gregory of Tours (b. 538, d. 594), and in Paul the Deacon's (b. 720, d. 799) ''History of the Lombards''. The best-known Western version of the story appears in Jacobus de Voragine's ''Golden Legend''. The Roman Martyrology mentions the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus under the date of 27 July , as follows: "Commemoration of the seven Holy Sleepers of Ephesus, who, it is recounted, after undergoing martyrdom, rest in peace, awaiting the day of resurrection."〔''Martyrologium Romanum'' (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2001 ISBN 88-209-7210-7)〕 The Byzantine Calendar commemorates them with feasts on 4 August and 22 October. The story has its highest prominence, however, in the Muslim world; it is told in the Qur'an (Surah 18, verse 9–26). The Quranic rendering of this story does not state exactly the number of sleepers Surah 18, verse 22. It also gives the number of years that they slept as 300 solar years (equivalent to 309 lunar years). Unlike the Christian story, the Islamic version includes mention of a dog who accompanied the youths into the cave, and was also asleep, but when people passed by the cave it looked as if the dog was just keeping watch at the entrance, making them afraid of seeing what is in the cave once they saw the dog. (see Islamic interpretation). In Islam, these youths are referred to as "The People of the Cave". ==Christian interpretation== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Seven Sleepers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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