This video-poem is an experiment in proclaiming the Word of God at the confluence of biblical exegesis, theology, poetry, visual art, music, and artificial intelligence. Rather than replacing traditional preaching, it asks what preaching might become when the ancient languages of Scripture encounter the emerging languages and technologies of our own time.
At its center stands the enigmatic Aramaic expression bar enosh in Daniel 7:13, usually known to English-speaking Christians through the translation “son of man.” Daniel’s vision describes “one like a bar enosh” coming with the clouds of heaven, in striking contrast to the terrifying beasts that represent the violent kingdoms and empires of the world. The expression would later acquire messianic resonance and occupies a distinctive place in the Gospels, where Jesus repeatedly uses “Son of Man” in speaking about himself.
Yet something of the expression’s evocative power becomes less visible in translation. The Greek biblical tradition renders bar enosh as huios tou anthrōpou, conventionally translated “son of man, human being.” Jesus and his earliest hearers, however, inhabited a Semitic linguistic world in which enosh (> ’-n-sh “to be weak, to be mortal”) carried associations with human frailty, vulnerability, and mortality. Heard against that background, Bar Enosh can resonate not merely as “a human being,” but more suggestively as “Son of Weakness and Mortality.”
This ancient expression opens a theological horizon. The mystery of Christ is not simply that God becomes human, but that the incarnate Son freely assumes the condition of those who are vulnerable, wounded, and destined to die. He takes upon himself our weakness and mortality in order to heal and transfigure them, restoring the human person toward the primordial beauty of the divine image and the life-giving breath of God.
The poem follows this paradox through the imagery of Daniel: kingdoms rise like beasts and disappear; banners rot, weapons fail, and human glory passes away. Against them walks an apparently powerless figure, “a child of weakness, flesh and breath.” His victory does not imitate the violence of the beasts (past kingdoms). He enters suffering and death themselves. Weakness becomes the place in which divine strength is disclosed and perfected (1 Cor 12:9); mortality becomes the terrain of resurrection.
Thus the poem moves from Daniel’s Bar Enosh to Christ crucified and risen, and from Christ to every vulnerable human person: the orphan, widow, mourner, pilgrim (or foreigner), child, sick, dying, and forgotten. The biblical image becomes proclamation. What the kingdoms of this world dismiss as weakness is precisely where divine grace may reveal its transforming power. The Cross overturns our definitions of strength, while the Resurrection announces that mortality does not have the final word.
The accompanying video extends this interpretation beyond the printed page. Word, image, sound, rhythm (Byzantine style antiphonic music), and movement become partners in a form of digital proclamation. Scripture is not reduced to information or illustration; rather, the ancient text generates a contemporary audiovisual meditation designed to invite the viewer to hear Bar Enosh anew.
Human–AI Choreography: Learning a New Alphabet
Human beings have repeatedly encountered inventions that altered the ways we remember, communicate, create, and understand, from writing and printing to industrial technologies, computers, and the internet. Each innovation required time before we learned not only how to operate a new instrument, but how to inhabit responsibly the new possibilities it created. Artificial intelligence presents another such threshold. It brings genuine questions and risks, but it also challenges us to learn a new alphabet of human–machine cooperation. This video-poem explores that alphabet as a human–AI “choreography”: the human interpreter remains responsible for the biblical exegesis, theological vision, discernment, and direction, while generative technologies participate in giving that vision new audiovisual forms. Here AI is neither preacher nor theologian; it becomes an instrument within a larger creative process grounded in serious engagement with Scripture. Exegesis becomes theology; theology becomes poetry; poetry encounters image, sound, and digital art. The result proposes one possible form of proclamation beyond the classroom, seminary, pulpit, and printed page: a contemporary experiment in carrying the ancient Word into new spaces of human attention.
Biblical inspiration: Daniel 7:13 and the Gospel tradition of the Son of ManConcept, biblical interpretation, theological vision, and poem: Fr. Eugen J. Pentiuc
Form: Visual art, music, and generative AI (prompted and guided by the author)