Did Mary spend the last days of her life in Jerusalem or in Ephesus? If she lived in Ephesus, then the Assumption occurred in that place and not from her tomb outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Apostle John and the Virgin Mary
The current Roman Catholic claim is that as it is known that the apostle John went to Ephesus as a missionary, and Mary was given to him as a mother to live in his household, then she went with him to Ephesus.
John 19:25-27
25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman,[a] here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Epiphanius of Salamis (ruined city in Cyprus) in the 4th century said that the Virgin Mary may have gone with the apostle John to Ephesus, but he later stated that she was buried in Jerusalem. No early sources make any mention of Ephesus in relation to the Virgin Mary.
Ephesus was part of the Persian Empire and later part of the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great, but in the first century it was part of the Roman Empire. Ephesus was in the Roman province of Asia. Today it is in Ionia, Turkey.
In the years following the crucifixion, the other apostles left Jerusalem to go on mission to other parts of the world, but it is known that John remained in Jerusalem until after the Council of Jerusalem in AD 50/51. Irenaeus wrote that John went to Ephesus after Mary had died. Irenaeus was the pupil of bishop Polycarp who was taught and appointed bishop of Ephesus by John.
The apostle John lived a very long life, staying in Ephesus, being banished to the Island of Patmos, returning to Ephesus and dying of old age sometime after the times of Trajan which means after 98 AD. If John, the youngest apostle was aged 18 at the crucifixion in 33 AD, then he must have lived until over the age of 83, but he may well have been older. Tradition locates the tomb of John under the former basilica of Saint John at Selcuk, a small town near Ephesus.
The church in Ephesus had been founded by Priscilla and Aquila who had been converted by John the Baptist. It was led by Apollos. Paul had contributed to founding this church on his journeys.
Ephesus is now a collection of impressive ruins 3 km southwest of Selcuk in the Izmir province of Turkey. The city was abandoned in the 15th century after the Fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Christian Empire.
Merry and True 