The following useful discussion of the “Ancient of Days” in Eastern Orthodoxy comes from “Ancient of Days” on the Orthodox Wiki Website:
In Orthodox
Hymns
In Orthodox Christian hymns, the Ancient of Days is often
identified with Jesus Christ.
"Thou hast borne incomprehensibly the
Ancient of Days as a new Child Who showed us new paths of virtue upon the
earth..." Teotokion, 1st Ode of Friday Matins in the 5th tone.
"Thou hast borne the Ancient of Days as
a new Child unto us..." Theotokion, 8th Ode of Tues. Matins in the 6th
tone.
"Thou hast surpassed the laws of nature,
O pure Daughter, in bringing a new Child upon the earth Who is both the
Lawgiver and the Ancient of Days..." Theotokion, 8th Ode, Matins, 5th
Sunday of Lent.
. . .
The Ancient
of Days in Iconography
In Orthodox Iconography, we find the image of the Ancient of
Days used in two ways:
1. Often, Jesus Christ is depicted as an old man, to show symbolically that he existed from all eternity, and sometimes as a young man to portray him as he was incarnate. This iconography emerged in the 6th century, mostly in the Eastern Empire.
2. The Father is also often symbolically
depicted as the Ancient of Days. We find this on many miraculous icons,
including the Kursk Root Icon, the Reigning Icon of the Mother
of God (Derzhavnaya icon), and the Sitka Icon, just to name a few.
The Council of Moscow in
1667 declared that the Ancient of Days was the Son and not the Father, and that
the depiction of the Fathers as the Ancient of Days was forbidden. This is
however the same council that anathamatized the Old Rite, and like many of its
decrees, this decree has generally been ignored ever since, and this image has
been a regular element in Orthodox Iconography, both within Russia, and
elsewhere in the Church. The above cited references to the standard
"Painters Manual" of Dionysius of Fourna, as well the comments of St.
Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain in "The Rudder" demonstrate that this
was an accepted element of Orthodox Iconography. In the second half of the 20th
Century, however, a movement to reject this element of Iconography arose from
some of the representatives of the Neo-Patristic movement, and so this has
become a matter of controversy in more recent times.
