HKB
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Often appears with: fate, destiny, and necessity · ephesus · seven sleepers legend · seven sleepers · myth and the gods of the nations · islamic legend parallels · history and the writing of history · fable, romance, and storytelling · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · christian-to-islam transmission
Usually: argument (2) · skepticism (2) · curiosity (1)
“This easy and universal belief, observes the philosophical historian of the Decline and Fall, "so expressive of the sense of mankind, may be ascribed to the genuine merit of the fable itself.” Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology · observation
Gibbon dismisses ecclesiastical legend by analyzing the Seven Sleepers: youths of Ephesus sleep for 187 years, awaken under Theodosius, and become a universal Christian-to-Islamic tale reflecting human love of sudden time gaps.
37 (return) [ See the Chronicles of Idatius, Isidore, Prosper, and Marcellinus. They mark the same year, but different days, for the surprisal of Carthage.] A new city had arisen from its ruins, with the title of a colony; and though Carthage might yield to the royal prerogatives of Constantinople, and perhaps to the trade of Alexandria, or the splendor of Antioch, she still maintained the second r…
Lyell argues that geologists can become as inconsistent as dreamers, illustrating this with the Seven Sleepers legend and its later spread from Christianity into Islam.
if a geologist form theories under a similar delusion, we cannot expect him to preserve more consistency in his speculations than in the train of ideas in an ordinary dream. It may afford, perhaps, a lively illustration of the principle here insisted upon, if I recall to the reader's recollection the legend of the Seven Sleepers. The scene of that popular fable was placed in the two centuries which elapsed between t…