Bogdan Bucur: "I am the Image of Your Glory": Exegesis and Intertextuality in a Byzantine Funeral Hymn

At first sight, this line in the Byzantine funeral service invites a connection with Genesis 1:26. However, even though the allusion to the story of creation, Eden, and the Fall is undeniable (and underscored by various other hymns in the same service), this hymn does not speak of the human being as kat’eikôna, but straightforwardly as the eikôn of God's glory. A first step in interpreting this line should therefore be the consideration of another set of biblical references, dealing not with "image" but with "glory." We can then, as a second step, make sense of the resulting interpretation within the context of the service's numerous references to creation kat’ eikôna, and within the larger theological context of Byzantine Christomorphic anthropology, with its rich biblical and extra-biblical sources.