eikōn

The lexica (LSJ, BDAG, Moulton-Milligan, Spicq's TLNT) and the major theological dictionaries (TDNT, NIDNTTE) agree that eikon spans crafted likeness, living/effective representation, and human figure, and that its New Testament use is governed less by the Platonic notion of an inferior copy than by manifestation and effective presence. Four converging streams inform the New Testament word: the royal-representational Hebrew tselem of Genesis 1 (von Rad, Bird, Middleton, Curtis); the Platonic eikon as derivative copy, already softened toward mediation by the Middle Platonists (Kleinknecht, Dillon); the Hellenistic-Jewish synthesis of Wisdom 7:26 and Philo's Logos as the image of God (Kittel, Runia, Tobin, Winston); and Greco-Roman imperial visual culture, in which a ruler's image localized his presence and power (Price, Zanker, Kreitzer, Friesen). Eltester's Eikon im Neuen Testament (1958) crystallized the consensus that the New Testament eikon is effective representation participating in the prototype's reality. For Christ as eikon in Colossians 1:15 and 2 Corinthians 4:4, commentators (O'Brien, Lohse, Bruce, Moo, Wright, Harris, Barth and Blanke, Bauckham) read the term as the visible making-present of the invisible God, drawing on Wisdom and (most hold) implying genuine pre-existence; Dunn alone preferred a more functional framing and moderated it over time. Hebrews 10:1 uses eikon for the substantial reality itself against the shadow (Attridge, Lane, Ellingworth, Buchanan). For Revelation's image of the beast, the imperial-cult background is dominant (Price, Aune, Friesen, Beale, Osborne), read as a Christological parody of true worship (Bauckham, Beale). On the human side, Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Colossians 3:10, 1 Corinthians 15:49, and Romans 1:23 are read as imago Dei distortion and renewal (Dunn, Moo, Beale, Goranson Jacob).