Eutychus of Troas

When was Eutychus active?

Eutychus of Troas is dated fl. c. 57 (death unrecorded) in the archive, which places Eutychus in the Apostolic Age (AD 4–70). The dating is traditional and approximate; the archive marks it as uncertain rather than fixing a year the sources do not give.

Which early sources mention Eutychus?

Eutychus of Troas is named in 2 primary-source passages catalogued here, drawn from Luke and John Chrysostom. Every passage is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.

Where was Eutychus from?

The archive associates Eutychus of Troas with Troas.

Who were Eutychus’ contemporaries?

The archive links Eutychus of Troas to 3 other figures, including Paul of Tarsus, Carpus of Troas and Luke the Evangelist. Each connection is drawn from a source that places them together, not from inference.

And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.

But the Devil disturbed the feast — not that he prevailed, however — by plunging the hearer in sleep, and causing him to fall down. … But observe, I pray you, the theatre, how crowded it was: and the miracle, what it was. “He was sitting in a window,” at dead of night. Such was their eagerness to hear him! Let us take shame to ourselves! … And the wonderful circumstance is, that though he was a youth, he was not listless and indifferent; and though he felt himself weighed down by sleep, he did not go away (οὐκ ἀπέστη), nor yet fear the danger of falling down. It was not from listlessness that he slumbered, but from necessity of nature. … “Trouble not yourselves,” he says. He said not, “He shall come to life again, for I will raise him up”: but mark the unassuming way in which he comforts them: “for his life,” says he, “is in him.” … This thing cut short the discourse; it did no harm, however. … At the same time too the miracle which took place would make them evermore to remember that evening; so that the fall turned out to the advantage of the teacher. Great was the delight of the hearers, and even when interrupted it was the more increased. That young man was to rebuke all that are careless of the word, he whose death was caused by nothing else than this, that he wished to hear Paul. [The NPNF editor holds with Chrysostom that this was a real death and a real restoration, not a revival from swooning: the text says Eutychus was taken up νεκρός, not ὡς νεκρός, and “he was dead; they brought him alive.”]