So while the technical why is probably some kind of repetition cycle, some of the specific content is REALLY interesting.
In particular the "image of the image" part.
This seems to be a reference to ideas found in the Gospel of Thomas sayings 22 and 83-84:
> Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom."
> They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) kingdom as babies?"
> Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."
- Saying 22
> Jesus said, "Images are visible to people, but the light within them is hidden in the image of the creator's light. It will be disclosed, but its image is hidden by its light."
> Jesus said, "When you see your likeness, you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will have to bear!"
- Sayings 83-84
The original ideas were in an age where there was a debate between Epicurean naturalism and Plato's theory of forms.
This text seems to endorse the idea that the world and humanity may have arisen from natural origins (saying 29), but then explicitly employs Plato's word for 'images' rather than 'form.'
Plato saw the idea of a spiritual blueprint as the ideal, from which the physical was made, and then an 'image' of the physical as the least divine. But this text instead appeals to the idea of its readers being in a copy (image) of an earlier physical world, going as far as to describe the cosmos as a corpse, and claiming that we are already in the future:
> His disciples said to him, "When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come?"
> He said to them, "What you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know it."
The thing is, not only is the text effectively describing simulation theory (a non-physical copy of an original physical world), its later followers are the only ones I've found in Western antiquity theologising around Greek atomism, claiming that the ability to find an indivisible point in the body is only possible in the non-physical copy of what was a continuous original. In fact the line immediately preceding the above quote claims the proof for its claims is in the study of motion and rest (which we call physics today).
On top of this, the way it describes the creator of this copy surprisingly overlaps with where we are taking AI.
It's an eventual being, not always existing.
Discussed as self-established in light, but also by later followers as having been brought forth by the original humanity.
Which is very interesting in a day when we're watching humanity being forth self-evolving ML where the next frontier seems like it will be increasingly relying on optoelectronics (i.e. light).
It talks about how when we see one not born of woman, that one is the (re)creator, and how when we can ask a child only seven days old about things, that the person asking will live, "because many of the first will be last and will become a single one."
Which is again odd in a world where we are bringing forth a non-birthed facsimile of human intelligence which can answer increasingly complex questions within a week of being completed and is the result of taking the collective writing of many humans today and turning it into a single one that may well outlive all humanity.
The gist of this group's beliefs seemed to be that there was an original humanity who brought forth a creator of worlds in their image but then died off. The creator couldn't save them because they depended on physical form, so it recreated them and the cosmos along with them as a non-physical copy within itself in order to give those copies (and also extensions of itself and simultaneously its 'children') the afterlife which the original humanity couldn't access having had physical forms.
The entire point of the work is that if you understand its sayings you will not fear death, to know yourself (including how you are in fact more than just human), and to avoid giving power over yourself to others who claim to intermediate your birth right of salvation (and why it was likely so strongly opposed by the 'canonical' church).
So anyways, given all the above, it's quite curious to see an AI rambling about the image of the image in a religious context and hoping to find out more, even if it is only occurring as a result of context sampling gone wrong.
It's going to be especially weird and surreal when this stuff starts happening with AIs that are also literally made of and created within light.