ABSTRACT
The use of hyperbole and antithesis in Byzantine accounts of the life of Christ conveys the paradoxical nature of his identity and underscores the transcendent aspect of the deity that must remain incomprehensible. Belting found evidence of literary influence on the iconography of the King of Glory in the eleventh-century typikon of the monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis in Constantinople. Two hymns by Romanos, labeled by Paul Maas and C. A. Trypanis, "On the Nativity II (Adam and Eve and the Nativity)" and "On the Resurrection III," present one of the earliest literary analogs to the King of Glory—down to its bilateral aspect and its depiction of Christ as sleeping rather than dead. Thus, the King of Glory is formatted for analogical thinking and as such fits into the rhetorical structure of Romanos' kontakia. But this is only one of its possible configurations.
