The folkloristic theme of people who sleep long enough to relate stories about times gone by can be traced in many cultures. There is the tale of someone who on a summer evening meets a story-teller under a mulberry tree and decides to go home after hearing some beautiful stories, only to discover that some sixty years have passed. This is just one intriguing example. Another no less intriguing story deals with people in a cave. In Jewish and Christian stories from Antiquity a cave may indicate different motifs, from a sacred place to a burial site, from a place to hide from persecution to a place for contemplation. Sometimes it is difficult to make out which motif is dominant. This holds good for the story of the Men in the Cave as well, of which the Christian and the Islamic version are the best known. Whereas in these two versions persecution is a central motif, in Greek pre-Christian predecessors of this story this motif is generally lacking. This means that in spite of the interesting vistas which an analysis of the Vorlage of the Christian story may yield, the kernel of the story would remain unexplored. Searching for the origin of a story – an ideal in historic-critical research – does not always offer complete insight into a story.