Eutychus was a young man tended to by St. Paul. Eutychus fell asleep due to the long nature of the discourse Paul was giving and fell from his seat out of a three story window. Paul then picked him up, insisting that he was not dead, and carried him back upstairs; those gathered then had a meal and a long conversation which lasted until dawn. After Paul left, Eutychus was found to be alive. This is related in the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 book of Acts

Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...

 20:9-12.

It is unclear whether the story intends to relate that Eutychus was killed by the fall and Paul raised

Resurrection

Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...

 him, or whether he simply seemed to be dead, with Paul ensuring that he is still alive. Recent translations of the text differ on this point. Regardless of the result of the fall, the implication of the passage is Eutychus' complete recovery, whether by resurrection, by healing or by neither.

The name Eutychus means "fortunate".

Homeric tradition

The story may be based on the story of Elpenor

Elpenor

In Greek mythology, Elpenor was a comrade of Odysseus.-The story:Elpenor was not especially notable for his intelligence or strength, but he survived the Trojan War, and appears in the Odyssey. He is the youngest man to survive the Laestrygonians...

 from Homer’s

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

 according to Dennis R. MacDonald of the Iliff School of Theology. MacDonald cites many other similar stories in Greco Roman mythology and storytelling, Er, Misenus, Palinurus and Thespesius are examples.

Further reading

• Arndt, William & Gingrich, F. W.
  F. Wilbur Gingrich
  F. Wilbur Gingrich was an educator, scholar of Biblical Greek and Christian layman who spent his entire career working with students at Schuylkill and Albright Colleges. He published many books and articles in his lifetime including the definitive translation of a Greek-English lexicon of the New...
  
  (1967), Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (University of Chicago Press).
• Barclay, William (1955), The Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press).
• Bruce, F.F. (1977), Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).
• Oster, Richard (1979), The Acts of the Apostles, Part II (Austin, Texas: Sweet Publishing Company).

External links

• The Case of Eutychus, Christian Courier