Postlude I

I've tried very hard
To make you fall in love with me
Now I will just fade away into nonexistence
Like we never had a past or a past life
Together,
Just.

Cephalopod

That walk with that tree child across the numbered of the equipment I.d’s reminds me of the lumber, that slime.  Once society hammered him to the ground, cephalopod was all that was left and darkness maybe kept that alive.  Though the child is to be given a status and the lady will show him the way to an interested type.  The man gazed and lumbers with that...walk—again the man held that child node’s hand and that updated the title of which he was born—was that society’s importance though cephalopod was depressed and unfathomably misunderstood—forever now.  Never will cephalopod look to the future, he will always look for love but never succeed. He and that innocent child node were from hell, and while humanity thought they transcended cephalopod and that here was not heaven for it was against the cephalopod that humanity’s dreams died and death normalized, cause this never fought back the encroaching creep evidently everywhere.  So, when cephalopod realized something was amiss, it was already too late: the world was in slime and nothing would return it to what was worth respecting, that thought.  And the man merely put it into context for the cephalopod, so why not accept all and not fight it out into a burned-out day?  The gloom and the bloom is all created by you and not by me.  Did the father and child grow apart for you as part of your scheme—it did—because they were a victim of control, but the child imposed it upon you so happiness unattainable was for you a heartache and pang of guilt forever pounding you to the nonexistent-invisible love?  God, he and that cephalopod would never coexist in the same area for that slime it loved, take care and let me see the full context next time. That walk recursed over and over again and while the Velaptorraptorrex was all dumbfounded, and motifs were never so good, the child in between the fences  and covered in Tin; it puzzles that cephalopod, but what did you find?  That pointless battles are lost since cephalopod thinks since it is alien.

A summary of the intelligent investor, a non-fiction book by Benjamin Graham

According to The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, an investor makes the very important consideration of choosing the right stocks (also known as shares,) and other securities such as bonds. The difficulty of choosing the right portfolio is to balance the stocks with the bonds in a ratio that is safe and yet not too safe. Fluctuation in an equity (with the exception being that of bonds, which do not fluctuate like a stock) indicates uncertainty in the investment community, not that the stock will perform badly in the long term, and so the trick is to buy a good stock whenever it is at a “bargain” price and to sell when it is high and right before the investment community loses interest in it. When the community has stopped second-guessing itself and the fluctuation stabilizes, usually because of injected uncertainty due to bad news, or a sudden surprise in earnings due to a revolutionary product, you can bet the stock’s fluctuation will attenuate to a more linear function. 

To analyze the probability of success of an investment opportunity, one must look at its history and how investors have reacted to the negative or positive reports, and from this point, the investor categorizes the stock into what may have long-term growth, short-term growth, or simply, bad and good possible outcomes. Analyzing the stock’s price-to-earnings ratio and this change over time, for instance, gives a clear indication of market-rational behavior, but does not predict the investment’s outcome. Analyze NVIDIA, for instance; the reason the price is valued highly by the investment community relies upon the company’s industry, the alleged supremacy of that company in the hardware industry catering to gamers and big businesses reliant on CUDA cores for parallel computing tasks pertinent to new trends in the computer software industry, e.g.: machine learning, a.i., deep learning, data analytics, and clustered relational databases requiring immediate readiness; but ultimately, the success of the stock depends on the faith and belief of the investment community that it will be successful in the long run. I don't think NVIDIA nor Advanced Micro Devices and Intel will retain all its market share in this narrow industry because the company has not invested in quantum computing as many large companies had, and this new technology will really hurt the market capitalization of currently popular growth companies that have not invested in research and development (r.&d.) in quantum computing, and just like the failure of the blue-chip stocks and the crash of the highly esteemed technology stocks in the early 2000's, a repeated correction will occur as soon as these other companies who have invested in quantum computing make them attainable by the masses, affordably and readily.

If a stock’s price-to-earnings ratio is extremely awful, which indicates an overvaluing by the community at large although not necessarily (because some of this is based on what the community thinks the company’s profits will be in the future,) it is extremely important in this case to know just how many times more expensive a stock is than its earnings and how much of it is speculation and how much of it is nearly guaranteed due to positive news, assuming it is truthful or dependent on politics. Price-to-earnings ratios can either be high or low, and they can give an indication as to community’s belief of a stock since if an attractive stock has a low p.e. ratio, than chances are it is undervalued by the market as a whole, but to outsmart the market requires an individual who can see things that are not there, and the investor can gain a kernel of truth by observing patterns of behavior in people: most importantly, the politics and the average trend in political thought while keeping a close eye on our representatives who are more powerful than any of us.  Analyzing voting trends might have a close correlation to how stocks in industries will operate, though not always. As a counterexample of when this is not the case, and Ben. Graham does not say this at all: Trump said that violent video games are the cause of violent shootings and all shooters are liberals. Not only is Trump's self-integrity inherently worthless so his word has no positive effect on the community, and his slimy thoughts about gun control are counter to what most people want for this country--gun control--the fact he is still in power has a negative effect on gun retailer and manufacturer securities, of which have soared. And people have bought more guns and thus increased peoples’ risk of death by guns, though he will claim it is due to him this number is lower, it is because of the resistance that have shouted out and abhorred violence, quite the opposite. Now, I predict that guns will eventually be outlawed in this country, and I’m not saying that we should invest in gun companies of which would be unethical, but like Ben. Graham, we believe politics matters in the outcome of securities in either stocks or bonds. 

Generally, a stock with a low p.e. ratio is considered safe, but safety and the ratio does not indicate the stock will grow again due to the dynamic nature of the investment community, since a security may lose equity due to the unpredictability of negative news e.g. scandals and fired C.E.O.'s or the loss of great C.E.O.'s. A leaderless company is as good as the intelligence of its employees, but the speculative nature of the investment community always reigns irrationally. The company’s investment in research or lack thereof, and the currently bad politics that affects it so, like the solar-panel industry, may not be wanted but it is the case nonetheless. The fact that an attractive stock is nothing other than what is in the eye of the beholder and that this is a problem and the investor can easily become skeptical of a really good bargain-priced stock; things that can cause this: the stock may be overlooked and this would imply that it is unpopular, but patience is key in this case because in the long run, people will generally listen to reason and to logical analysis of a stock’s long-run success probability when investing. If you have taken those steps in your stock analysis, then you are guaranteed to win. Generally, it is a good idea to invest in unpopular stocks (by volatility and p.e.) if you believe that it will become popular. If you look at a chart of p.e. relative to the value of the stock, you will see that there is a close correlation. Thus, if you buy a stock with the attitude that you think the company will make higher than expected earnings than what other people on wall-street think, then you may be on the right track assuming you did your research correctly.  Also, Benjamin Graham recommends to relying on your own opinion when faced with the facts rather than to accept whatever the broker recommends, since often the broker makes more money from hidden fees.

Regarding what Graham calls, “dollar-cost-averaging,” this is simply the exercise of depositing funds into your brokerage account every month or at some specific interval to invest into stocks.  Putting this money into your portfolio is a very thought intensive task since so many possibilities arise. To this, Ben. Graham suggests the avoidance of making formulas since a formula for success has historically only worked in hindsight, he does provide principles in investment regarding the constant paradigms of security investing: like balancing a portfolio on the bullish or bearish nature of a market in bonds or stocks more so one way or another, subject to change of course. Bonds are particularly safer because of their history in yielding better results during market crashes, but Ben. Graham writes that a bond-only portfolio would not have yielded as good of results than an index-fund portfolio of the D.J.I.A. during some decades. Ideally, you want to invest in security right before it has hit its high and to sell it before it has hit its low—determining this ideal difference since markets fluctuate by nature will reduce self-doubt and requires patience.  Graham considers the ideal bond-to-stock ratio to be purely dependent on market trends; I regard the investment in bonds unreachable, for me, so I invest in market funds (a mutual fund of various bonds that can be traded like a stock,) since bond investment requires a large personal capital to begin with, typically above $2.5k. For an individual of a low-income investor such as myself, investing in bonds may still be achieved by investing in mutual funds of the money market sort (funds with bonds) or a mixture fund of both stocks and bonds. Typically, bonds should have at least 25% of the portfolio pie, according to Benjamin Graham, and the rest in stocks according to Benjamin Graham who was recommended by Buffet as a highly influential and excellent author in financial investing. When the market is at a low—stocks have the greatest potential for ROI, and this is when you should have 75% of your portfolio in stocks and 25% in bonds. To take the contrapositive logically: if one were to allocate one’s funds to bonds, then an ideally desirable ratio is 25% to stocks. Of course, an in-between area from within this spectrum is entirely up to you. Remember to think about the market and to think about trends in industries and trends in people. What are people buying? What are they most worried about? And, most importantly, what do they believe is a worthwhile investment? 

Benjamin Graham categorizes investors into various “types:” a defensive investor whom does not have time to check his or her portfolio every day, and the aggressive investor who can invest daily and manage his or her portfolio; typically these investors are wealthier or simply have more money and time to play with, and they refuse to speculate and are open to conducting meaningful research about a company or a fund; though this notion that most investors share this wisdom should not be deduced by his advice, according to Ben. Graham, since he says investors continue to speculate and it is safe to assume that speculation will never cease. The defensive investor, on the other hand, invests in large cap. stocks, and the choices are picked typically by a broker after some dialogue, whom asks about your risk tolerance, always. One who invests in stocks with low p.e. ratios, small cap. stocks, and in the chosen preferred industry by meaningful research by the intelligent investor should be categorized as the aggressive investor, according to Ben. Graham. Growth stocks in already well-established though currently notorious companies which have a huge potential for a turnaround should be worth considering, as well. Ben. Graham categorizes this type of company, in the 70's mind you "willy nilly," by the market capitalization of it of which is in the billions of dollars. The intelligent investor, regardless of other types of entrepreneurial investors (who fail at escaping risky speculation,) he or she spends time analyzing companies as a “quasi-business.” He or she invests in small businesses that will do well, objectively and without bias.  This type of investor looks at small, unpopular, or large businesses “that are going through a time of trouble” in a prophetic way. This prophetic way is a lot like how NVIDIA stagnated and then grew considerably due to demand by gamers. The primary product of NVIDIA, their graphics cards, had not been considered to have more applications to machine learning, a.i., and other parallel computing tasks beyond what most people imagined--and this is what I call investment potential.

The intelligent investor is a lot like an inside trader when compared to the speculators, but without illegal data in company finances or necessarily an esoteric knowledge of how to make these products; to invest in computing, you do not need to be a computer scientist. As an intelligent investor, investing required intelligent guesswork and extrapolation of trends in a market but most importantly the rational, objective analysis of a security based on readily available research.  The decision to buy a security may feel like it is a mere hunch, but that is all that is required before buying a stock, like NVIDIA (which I bought,) and holding on to it without selling too early, since it had two-for-one split and skyrocketed to around $300 at its all-time high; my parents bought shares of it while for me while I was high school, a stock I chose luckily.  Do not sell early, even if you need to buy a car and have no means of transportation; If I held those stocks, I’d have hundreds of thousands of dollars (I sold them to pay for tuition at a university.)

Infinite death

The past is never out of scope in the day-to-day decisions--

The ideas of past's glories

Intoxicate our well-beings,

And the strong make weapons of words

To nurture their inner hawk better;

Time spent on ideas of considerable importance

escape from the cycle

and again do we forget

Of past cycle's ends that would go unhinge?

The sane insult while the insane take us to the fringe,

And we call the past the villain,

While it is misconstrued as sacrilegious rewritings

and while we beg for work,

we are denied the pointless high cars

that take us to an e’er higher status

off their high mountainous fluff to infinite depths.

In their day-to-day dealings, they thank themselves

For their job-well-dones,

While they pat themselves on their perfect backs,

Scratchless as though imperfect,

And we cannot look at themselves critically,

For the villains sing of our overlooked status’,

And my back is yet unrevealed,

So the master humbled had learned from our mistakes,

And he looked upon myself as a summoned ghost

A virus of uncanny resemblance to his deprecated past-times;

We relived the insane inconvenience of infinite deaths

And we laughed at our demons asking for another repeat,

So then they saw the future rain upon themselves again.

The end of this epoch forgotten, I distanced myself like they wanted—

The perfect universe they wanted—a desire burned upon our heads.

Yet they prepared us for our journey through time.

Retrogression

…and our dreams from which our realities are made,

After all, we should have listened to them;

We could have been of our own divining…

The layman is short but in his twenties, and

Long strands of black flow from his heart;

Two women sit in the shade, and they discuss it:

Who am I but everything he never wanted--

The person who makes ill-wills come true,

And, the bringer of misfortune and malintent.

I am the dreamer of men gone sane from obvious madness--

In the nightmares, our villainous are respected,

the heroes ignored, and the fiendishly frantic women

Submit to the surveyors who hide the rich's exact locations.

A man, called the May King, 

keeps track of those who be making out,

So that those who are closer to the truth never whisper in the ear,

And thus, he may continue to hide the true reality from humanity.

Years pass, and he sets in motion a plan that will make everyone feel well-accomplished,

even though no one has written a unique song, poem, or built something of high art in years,

so escaping the happiness offered from him to them,

a villainous intellectual who knows of his scheme to blind humanity hears.

He hears as his heart fills with want of escape his arms with rage, 

observing the women and men seeking ways of exploiting each other's lives

‘till earth itself gives no more and dies.

At the wrong time, the King of ignorance rises from his grave to power, 

and he wonders like a baby addicted to it's future death while in a guise.

He knows his opponents are villains of the New World;

after all, we have all met their manifested destinies and have achieved our fruitless happinesses;

No higher life exists according to him; 

Our mindsets were built on the sweats of pleasures and wars,

And we wouldn't be here for their courageous sacrifices.

But the May King would never say what he can say,

And the ignorant consign of a fantasy implies that truth is a complicit disease leading to further fruitlessness truthfully. 

The laymen women dine merrily at an exterior restaurant,

And I am at a balcony, listening to their melodies and musings:

The two women, particularly, serenade of the nuisances of their lives,

And the arrogance hated and the creepiness perceived by the May King.

They dialogue: I am your dark corridor in your delusional ignorance,

I cannot see him nor interfere,

And I cannot move to him or his city,

And illegally I cannot tie myself to him and say he did this

Of his own hands and rope.

But I do not love him, and I love myself,

in the dark, and in the silence;

I am the passive piercing music in the dark.

He sits in the rain and lacks everything I ever wanted,

for I was nothing itself, and he never said he loved me.

Eulogy - Grandpa Cook

Barney Cook, my grandpa on my mother's side (not-related directly,) passed away this morning, from natural causes. He served the armed forces in WW II, and he was a good man. He loved to sing, "I scream for ice cream," or its reverse meaning since he was a mathematician, when the time was right, and many other songs... When we were younger, he told us stories about his boy-scout years, but now I wish I asked more; the one story that I heard more than once was the day he couldn't solve a difficult calculus problem, in college, and then the night after he woke up--he had solved the problem in his sleep. He was a straight A student who went to the prestigious University of Chicago, and I think he was the top of his class. When I visited their Clear Lake cabin, he would give me math problems, and I would always learn something new, and he happily would answer my questions since math was his cup of tea. He had many great tastes in music--dixie chicks, Chopin, Mozart, Bach, but mostly whatever Grandma Laura liked. In my few years at Florida State University (he lived in Tallahassee,) he was exceptionally generous and he and Grandma Cook took care of me, helping me find work at various commercial locations. He loved my grandmother, his sisters, his kids, and us; but that was because he was an intelligent man; he was a nuclear physicist who invested in the Dogs of the Dow Jones Industrials, and in his last few years of his life, after his stroke, he liked to watch the news as much as possible, on T.V. He never liked the change of direction for this country and Trump. I visited my grandparents, often, and he not once became angry at me. I am almost certain that is what sucked the last mental energy from him, but he was 94. :(

Nightmare

Last night, I dreamt vividly of a nightmarish dystopian future
that I lived on an extra-solar planet,
and it imprisoned me because of humanoid appearing aliens.

The purple necked aliens wore metallic masks to hide their true features.

They guarded us in a limestone cave like we were prisoners for some mysterious purpose
on this planet with similar physical properties as Earth.

We lived in a wrongdoing world but on the outside it reminisced of greenery and vibrancy akin to reality;

we misunderstood the aliens' benevolent intent and we engaged in petty embroilments;
the freedom they revoked, and the rules they enforced
angered the most peaceful men,
for we held low in our vapid gaze a foreboding of an apocalypse,
and the time became closer.

Though, the aliens could not speak,
they spoke and we judged their odd mannerisms, actions.
We knew the improbability of survival from the next swarm of the alien species of musquitos.

Recognizing the demonic nature of these beasts from the enclosure,
immediate fear provided a rush of adrenaline because of the menacing,
shining metallic artificialness of the light that occasionally flickered--
the lightning as of from super advanced telecommunication devices that powered itself
from the natural charge of the atmosphere, between them, and from one to one

one to all the rest.
Our radio receivers picked up the extra terrestrial noise of an open neural network. 

Figuring we may remain alive, the communication simmered and it was again uncannily silent.

As the unfriendly lights augmented itself,
And as we could make out their shapes and sizes,
Flying like sentient animals,
whoever had them purposed wanted us eaten.

During the day, light seeped inside our cave,
so we wouldn't feel completely dazed for the special hour;
helplessly, and hopelessly we dazed into the mesmerizing bright weapons.

I briefly timed myself for an unanswered prayer as I sat on a limestone
bench,

and I pondered my low status of this dismal microscopic instant.
For all my life I believed in arrogance, beauty, and perfection,
but truly I am meant for the poor, ignorant, and dispensable.

Never believing in the religion--the impending doom--I
believed in would one day unfold.
The swarm approached steadfast, uncomfortably malignant.

And we worried ourselves about the occasional spark of lightning since it meant they were nearly charged...
In my dream the dusk flew your point of view as if it were a wisp through a
windowless gap of otherworldy cave.

I made contact with the humanoid aliens,
and I no longer belonged to my species:
I became an alien.

The alien me and myself correlated in intellect,
though I could think of things I never dreamed.
As an extra terrestrial I stood outside, and guarded the entrance--
not to maintain dominance or control--but to guard my former selves from them!
An alien is not a brute--
I was part of a resistance to save all forms of life,
to save the last of humanity from the lack of enough ingenuity
like how the dog lagged behind from the masters,
like how we pick up the weaker ones from their stupidity,
and like how we control the gravity of the cosmos through extra-planar quantum mechanics.

The swarm attacked us from all directions;
I was gifted and ascribed an unfair status at birth;

and my symbolically ascribed mask;
and my purple skin,
painted on me, by my parents,
to kill the moscuitos infestation,
to repel with actions and not maledictions,

though it could not withstand the onslaught,
history through the ages, though we'd be gone,
would provide evidence for a recollect:
this day, too many held hunger like empty, bottomless pits,
and this alien civilization attempted to save humanity not from themselves,
but from the beasty moscuitos.

I telepathically communicated my thoughts to my former self--the captive--

And in the final actions:
I fought the lifeless, the corrupt,
but they robbed me of my flesh,
they gnawed and sucked my soul dry,
starting around his neck;

my interiors disappeared, and it fed them.

I could see myself again in the cave.

And as I lay there, dead, I regretted becoming helpless, a coward, and a failure;
'All my thoughts a stream--now a dried river basin.

Life without a Piano

I love your piano playing, the way you write music, and how you read;

I love every moment I had spent beside you, whether it was for nothing, or not, I may never know.

No love can be bought or paid for, but it only gives love freely.

You may have lacked reciprocation or been dismayed by me in the past, and now it is difficult to make another graceful move, but it is here waiting.

My piano has always given me what I lack, and what I put into it, I have given my all, but you give to me now your soul, so that I might finish this composition.

Three Reading Responses about the Bible and Christianity, and Exegesis'

Reading response #1:

In “Revelations of Divine Love,” early female author Julian assumed that in order to achieve happiness, she must be like Jesus and with him, which would require the enduring of pain, suffering, and death.  Those assumptions correlated with a misunderstanding of the message of Jesus, and in her visions, she heard him lead her from her narrow scope of her understanding to her true purpose in life—especially at that moment in her life—the seeking of an all-encompassing joy.  Towards the story’s denouement, she reveals how she felt transformed after she witnessed his death and his message in an out-of-body experience: she did not want to look back anymore at her own suffering, nor did she ponder at why she should have sought pain, but instead, she wondered why she should feel pain at all if she was looking forward.  Indeed, she mainly believed that looking forward and not backward was the best method for interpreting Jesus.

            Another facet about Julian’s interpretation of God was that Jesus was the God, and while Christians may think that this is true, this belief is not accepted by everyone.  She made her beliefs clear: everyone who believed in the message of Jesus, essentially, would be saved, and those who did not love each other in their Christian community could not be saved; she qualified Jesus’ original message and assumed that in order to be saved she must be Christian.  This belief was assimilated by her in accordance to her religious community, though Jesus never said in order to be saved, his followers must be members of a church.  But if God is a merciful God, and the illiterate who does not know of Jesus’ life does not know a little of who he was, except whether Jesus’ message is universal, then God would judge that person based on that person’s devotion.  So, she contradicted herself early on in her essay though she fixes the fallacy in the denouement. 

Christians are informed of a heaven though Julian says that more than one exists: three exist and one in particular is for Jesus’s judgment.  In a way, Julian’s first-person, autobiographical narrator elevates herself to a prophetess though she does not attain that status nor claim it.  Julian revealed that her vision was not all that different than what Christians knew at the time about the Gospels.  Muslim influence regarding the nature of heaven on Western culture during her century may have provided a context for her visions since in the Gospels, Jesus had only mentioned just one heaven.  I believe he would have mentioned them if he had been spared crucifixion.

                        In Julian’s narrative, her community would have been Catholic church goers since Martin Luther, the theologian who started the Protestant movement, was not born until 1483 and her essay was written in 1413; Julian may well have been the first woman in print to not agree wholly with the Catholic church for various reasons because her life was “recluse” and at odds with the vision everyone had of a joyful life.  Even if it weren’t true, the Church did not adopt her vision into the Church’s orthodoxy.  Julian may have also been wholly against pagans and their rituals because they did not agree with the message of Christ, or they did not disavow their paganism since they aspired to mythologies.  After all, Jesus lived in another part of the world.   

            Since Julian admitted to not fully understanding the message of Christ, she assumed that reading the Bible was not important since it was a norm, and priests would not have read the Bible in any language she would have understood, unless she knew Latin. Julian may have not been as devout to begin with as she had herself believed, because when I was young I went to the Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings and I did not understand everything about the significance of the message Jesus had for me, yet I thought of myself as a Jehovah’s Witness.

Reading Response #2

The interpretive community, according to Stanley Fish’s “Vaviorum,” that I belonged to changed after I wrote the first essay and when I composed the second, although all along, I knew the Bible contained universal truths: these were about Jesus’s life.  I was informed that the Holy Bible contained some dubious and “man-made” truths that contradicted science and my own atheistic beliefs.  I had formed my own opinion without close-reading the Bible about the absence of God, mainly by adopting the criticism of “The Grand Inquisitor” by T. Dostoevsky that seemed to say: if Jesus returned, humanity would again not be ready for someone so pure and good, and (from the entire story of “The Brother’s Karamazov”) the question of why are some people allowed to live and others to die?  If God did exist and he played a role that we are all led to believe about him—this divine being that determines our fate is extremely unfair. 

I was born a Catholic who was baptized in Mexíco though not born there.  Part of my upbringing included listening to the sermons at a Jehovah Witnesses congregation in Ames, Iowa in the U.S., and during my H.S. years, I joined my mom, step-father, and grandparents, on my mother’s side, in becoming a Unitarian Universalist: I had all but rejected some Catholic doctrines, like sayings from Jesus picked up by ear.  I had been free up to the point of writing the first essay for this class.  My audience and I shared a humanness that said a lot about the abovementioned communities that I belonged to (Logic, p. 3, lines 7-8).  I believed that the Bible was a work of literature first and foremost and it can be understood in terms of narrative theory: the Bible is not a work of revelation (Logic, p. 1, lines 13-14).   Some proof of this, according to my first essay, is in the usage of foreshadowing in the plot.  The text was not that holy after all since it was created by an author who adhered to poetic tradition (Logic, p.2).  My interpretive community did not, however, explain to me that God had spoken to these authors, and I did not read the Bible as extensively as we did for class.  Like a typical novel that followed forms and that were created to cause an affect, I still did not understand the Bible possessed forward movement like a great novel designed to teach by evoking powerful emotions, given my interpretive community.  I knew, after reading an Exegesis about Chiasmus form, that it is used by the Bible in more than one way. (Hidden, p. 3, lines 12-22; p. 4, lines 1-3).

My interpretive community after I wrote the first essay  had changed because I had read more from differing perspectives.  Earlier on in the semester, I was convinced that the Bible was all in a giant “fractal” structure where an effect that occurred many or a few years ago would manifest itself later identically though to a different person.  Jesus was someone who considered himself to be part of this fractal view of life, because he saw himself as the next Jewish Prophet.  Jesus gained hypnotic power over the reader (Logic, p. 2, lines 13-23 and p. 3, lines 1-4).  I pondered whether the Bible was narrated by either a man or a woman, because my community contains many strong women aka., my mother, teacher for this course, and classmates (Logic, p. 3, lines 4-5).  At that point, I considered the Bible to be narrated by an individual or individuals who are able to maintain or create a sense of similar tone and diction (Logic, p. 3, lines 5-6).  But I had read, for myself, just the first two books of the Pentateuch. 

My interpretive community also included computer scientists who are heavily math oriented, which was why I mentioned the highly symbolic use of certain numbers that fit into some kind of numerology (Logic, p. 5, lines 11-18; p. 6, 1-8).   The Bible’s prophecies and the interpretation of these prophecies and realization of them suggests there is a magical, logical and infallible truth to the Bible, though after writing my second essay about hidden messages in the Bible, but in retrospect, “magical” is hardly the word I would use (Logic, p. 6, lines 16-17).  I had believed that the word of Christ was all that was to be gained from reading the new testament, but I did not know that Jesus’s silent action symbolized certain truths hidden in this continuing usage of his parables (Hidden,  p. 4, lines 4-6).  My interpretive community were also aware of certain surprises, such as the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ (Hidden, p. 5, lines 7-8). 

The importance of reading earlier sections of the Bible in the old testament is also important.   We must know who the Father is in order to know Jesus (Hidden, p. 5, lines 17-18). Like prior prophets, Jesus “cared about equality” (Hidden, p. 5, lines 19-21).   But in my first essay, perhaps because I was daunted by the monumental task of reading a large work of literature—the Bible—I believed, and so did others in the class that Christianity exists in part to mesmerize and control rather pessimistically (Logic, p. 2, lines 16).

I seemed to believe that God was this magical being, like in shamanism or other myths, that God was someone who turned the normal into the supernormal (Logic, Page 1, lines 1-3).  In writing the first Essay, I also believed that the concept of one God was the result of anthropomorphism, and that I was skeptical and ironic of “an entity known as God” (Logic, p. 1, line 3; p. 1, lines 15-16).  I did not believe God authored the scriptures as I had heard from some people (Logic, p. 2, lines 3-4). 

My essays seem to suggest that my community I belonged to strongly believed Jesus is humble and a provider to his apostles and the poor (Logic, p. 5, lines 8-10).  Not only that but Jesus had led the ideal life and that when confronted with death, during the falling action of the Gospel of John, Jesus used hidden meanings and parables in his actions after his last teaching in the Last Supper (Hidden, p. 1, line 1).  After reading about Jesus and prior books in the Old Testament, the second essay correlates Jesus with the Pentateuch well (Hidden, p. 1, line 5).

Reading response #3:

Misreading of the Bible in today’s culture

            In postmodern American culture, many people who claim they are Christian have come to the conclusion that many liberal institutions are incompatible with Christian beliefs, and liberal institutions such as programs that help mothers, social security, and universal healthcare should be eliminated.  They also disapprove of other liberal ideas, such as the raising of the minimum wage and tolerance to other religious beliefs.  I believe that when Christians take a politically conservative position that results in their disapproving of key liberal ideas that try to recognize the humanity of others and the needs of others, Christians misinterpret the teaching of Jesus.

             Regardless of what interpretive community they belong to, many of these misinformed Christians who consider themselves socially conservative do not accept that liberal institutions and liberal politics have been created so that society could be healthier, better, and less focused on the the elite at the expense of the poor, as Jesus had been focused on in his own society.   Jesus had understood humanity’s psyche better than most people, but this does not deter these misinformed church-goers from spreading lies about the overall importance of a  work ethic.  Though true in that Jesus would have wanted laborers to work hard, these Christians are incorrect in placing blame on and trying to destroy what they deem a bloated government that Jesus would disapprove of.  Although government looks bad in the New Testament—the Romans and the Jewish priesthood--Jesus had in fact wanted to make the ultimate sacrifice.  These Christians do not understand the umbrella of the corrupt Jewish priesthood at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and they blame the Roman provincial manager for sentencing Jesus to death, but it was Jesus who wanted himself to die for the sins of the many, and he could see no other way than to face trial.  Governments always have corrupt individuals, and the U.S. is doomed to a similar fate since humans cannot understand human motivation fully and their desires, nor can they see eye-to-eye on important matters.  Correcting an inadequate government was not the point of the New Testament, and in fact Jesus said that his followers should give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.

This community of misinterpreters does not support programs like Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions for young mothers who do not wish to have a baby because the former views a human being as existing in the womb.  If abortion were extremely immoral in the eyes of God, the sometimes violent God of the Old Testament would have taken care of these heretics with a plague, or granted them forgiveness through Jesus (Jesus gave his life to destroy sin).  Although many passages from the Old Testament are violent because of what God does to humans who disobey him, nowhere in the new testament does it say a human embryo cannot be aborted even though the practice was not alien to them during the years of an alive Christ.  In contrast, Jesus cared a lot about women who had hard a difficult life.  He encouraged a woman to listen to him rather than work too hard, he persuaded the elders not to stone an adulteress, he had a close friend who was a former prostitute.  I believe that although abortion is a difficult practice for society to tolerate, it is a necessary option for women who have no means of caring for themselves or a child.  Such women who make the decision to abort their children have God's forgiveness, I believe.  As do other women who “sin” in this way, since Jesus's sacrifice makes their sins forgiven, as the Christians themselves say.  The focus on abortion by Christians, and not a focus on warfare, where individuals who everyone can agree are actually human beings, is a sign that there is inconsistency in their beliefs and something self serving about them.  I think that this inconsistency points to a group of people who want to control women, who are using the power of the church to promote men's power.

Jesus’ Hidden Message to his Disciples while at the Last Supper

Daniel Apatiga

Prof. Lori Branch

Engl: 3140, Sect. 1

Dec. 16^th 2016

Jesus’ Hidden Message to his Disciples while at the Last Supper

            Jesus’ action of washing the Apostles’ feet held a hidden symbolic meaning and the action was a turning point in the plot of the Gospel of John (Bible, page 1904).  Christians commonly associate the washing of feet as a lowly act including Catholics (Pope Francis in particular), but in the Gospel of John, Jesus cleansed the feet of his disciples because he understood the Jewish scriptures very well, and he enjoyed telling parables.  Jesus understood that in order to keep the love of his followers it must be shown in an extraordinary way.  In his last action and riddle, Jesus said, “’You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’”, and this was a fatherly kind of love that he held for them (Bible, page 1904).  To Simone Peter, he misinterpreted Jesus because he assumed that Jesus had quit his aspirations to become King of the Jews by assuming a lowly job as a feet washer, but Peter misunderstood despite thinking he understood when he said, “Lord, not my feet but also my hands and my head!”, because Jesus wanted to be the Lord, divine, and remembered in another way (Bible, page 1904).  The removal of the disciples’ sandals symbolized the trust the Apostles had in Jesus and he in them and also signified a major turning point in the plot in addition to Jesus saying much earlier in the Gospel of Mark, “‘But who do you say that I am?’  Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’” (Bible, pg. 1807).

Before Jesus shared his ideas during the last meal, he asked his disciples to let him wash their feet, and this request alluded to the story of Moses when he took off his sandals at God’s request because the divine voice that spoke to him communicated this truth: the feet are more holy than the sandals (a human’s creation), because, the feet are God’s creation—therefore, the action of taking one’s sandals off was signifying the act of being in the presence of the divine.  Also, the feet can become dirty from the matter that is near the divine—Jesus—for the feet are most welcome in his presence; and, the feet are significant parts of the body that symbolized cleanliness or dirtiness and either femininity or masculinity, and should be naked like how God made us.  And this action signified that the soles of the feet were designed to toughen so gaining callouses or blisters would not be bad.  This event may have symbolized the importance of being active in terms of work even though it is “the work of the lowliest of servants” by Jewish society at the time.

Although Jesus appeared to the disciples as both a person a mystical being, who used a lot of parables, the washing of the apostles’ feet meant to Jesus that his apostles were ready to understand the deeper meanings and truths in life.  Cleaning a person’s dirty foot will still be dirty again, and this infinite loop humans enter of washing ourselves despite becoming dirty again has a kind of insanity to it like a stopwatch: a stopwatch is a tool that lets an agent know how much time has passed, so in that way, Jesus was done preparing his disciples for a test of loyalty, strength of mind, and of character, but they would gain the benefit of being judged by him.  The event of Jesus’ crucifixion in the story of Christ evoked emotions of loss and tragedy, like when a close friend of mine died, and this event undoubtedly left the Apostles asking for Jesus to push the stop button but it was too late, he could no longer be their teacher for he was dead.   In Catholicism, I was taught that Jesus is alive in heaven, but no way existed to be judged except after death. 

After this turning point in the Gospel of John, Jesus foretold his betrayal and gave a piece of bread to Judas, and Jesus was removed from the last supper by Jewish authorities because Judas betrayed him.  What came before the feet washing was entirely about the joy of living, gaining a following, seeing things that a “blind man” had not been aware of before, sharing food with the poor and donating belongings to them, disavowing Kingship while the authorities accused him of seeking power, telling funny stories that poke fun at the absurdities of society, transcending cultural taboos by befriending a promiscuous adulteress, all of which were enjoyable to Jesus’ followers because of his quick advice and love for humans. 

After Jesus shared his last demonstrative teaching of washing his followers’ feet, the story does not stop with the use of parables.  In the Gospel of John, the form of the story follows a Chiasmus form, but in a much bigger sense: the last teaching of Jesus is at the center, while everything after what came before the middle section is somehow related to each other but is variated.  This often takes the form of structural ironies to the plot in that the story contains parables before the turning point and Jesus speaks a lot, and his diction reveals his knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence.  But when we get to the central turning point of the plot in the Gospel of John, a higher calling or a search for the divine occurs like in all Psalm poems that employ Chiasmus form.  Some examples of parables that are later variated after the central plot are when Jesus fished and was a good fisherman, the raising of Lazarus, the breaking of bread and sharing it among a huge crowd of followers.  Similarly, in the prime sections (imagine this form ABC’B’A’ and now we are at section A’) and after the turning point, Jesus was arrested and like a fish in a net, flogged like a fish that was skinned, and Jesus was crucified, raised, and sent to heaven like the raising of Lazarus only it was God who raised Jesus, and Lazarus had sort of disappeared from the plot, too. 

After the turning point of the plot during the Last Supper, Jesus’ says that one of his disciples will betray him because he knows that his death is the will of God, but the reader later discovers that Jesus’ death is also a result of the unfairness of his trial.

²³ One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him;

²⁴ Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking.

²⁵ So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

²⁶ Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.”

So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas. (Oxford Bible page 1904).

Shortly after, Jesus compares himself to the true vine, signifying the end of his lowly, ascribed status, and now is this prophet of a new religious tradition.    

The last teaching foretells the death of Jesus as the death of the son of man.  By washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus prepares his disciples for the undertaking of their lifetimes since as a son of God, Jesus does not require that his disciples take off their sandals, for this symbolic act is not what God would have wanted from him, and Jesus never required that anyone follow his teachings.  As described by Exodus when Moses encountered the voice of God from the burning bush, by washing their feet, a very menial task, Jesus instructs his disciples that it is for his father and themselves so that they can wash each other’s feet, treating each other with respect and each other as though they are father.  Having cleansed feet suggests indirectly that the house of God is everywhere, unlike only the cave where Moses encounters Elohim.  This part of the narrative connects to the abandonment of Jesus by the disciples that occurs after the last teaching, because even though Jesus says to them where he is going they cannot follow, the disciples could not make everyone else realize in time that Jesus is a good man, that he is who he says he is, and what he preaches it does not desecrate God.  Jesus creates a drive and ambition in his disciples for them to spread his word though they were not prepared to defend the son of God right away, it would just take some time.  The reader is also unprepared for when Jesus becomes crucified, dead, and resurrected.

The last teaching echoes the beginning of the narrative in the Gospel of John when we read that someone greater than John, who by many is considered a prophet, will arrive.  In this last, verbal teaching, Jesus makes use of the symbology of vines that held significance to the Jewish and Jesus’ communities.   The vine has held mystical meaning that goes back to the time of Joseph when he lived in Egypt after he had interpreted the dreams of a chef and a cup-bearer.  Jesus uses this motif as a means of explaining himself to someone who barely knows him even though his disciples do know him.  Hidden within the farewell, Jesus implores for help in what to do but his disciples have misunderstood the message’s hidden meaning.  In answering who Jesus is we must answer who his Father is, and in answering who we are, we must know Jesus, the passage suggests, which we do not. 

            Jesus stressed the importance of egalitarianism in his last teaching in a world of inequality, unfair laws, and misrepresentations of good people because of religious doctrine, ascribed or attained status.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus combined many Jewish teachings with some of his own when he spoke to his disciples during the last supper.  He preached to them so that his disciples could judge themselves and mark progress after he was dead.  The climax of the Gospel of John was when Jesus gives his last verbal teaching to the Apostles, using Freytag’s Pyramid, because after that, Jesus is arrested and sent to trial during the falling action that occurred because what Jesus said in the Last Supper, and the conclusion of the story occurs after Jesus is crucified when he is resurrected, being seen by Mary and a few of his disciples talking on a road—that they could not really identify Jesus despite talking with him.

Works Cited

The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version With The Apocrypha. Ed.

Coogan D., Michael. Pub: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.

A Poem from Someone who Looks Back and Sees Paths that Might have Existed

Let it be forgiven the physical violence made against you. I have forgiven you my Specter though you haven’t sought me. I supposed I might’ve cried when I read the Gospels; I did not know the pain I had been through by the man's corporeal that was much less than His. We live by comparisons but not a higher language exists that can carry my meaning higher— for after all I am no poet, and I did not know a branch on the vine is but a path that could have been taken that we’d not be together in the end but my plans of being are in the past. Burned into my mind, years after separation and stinging words, your Specter witnessed Winter’s delay in our small homes far away. Yearning for homeostasis while we nightmarishly share in macroscopic parallels. Unrequited, you and I, though among pseudo-friends who desire us who perceive you and them as Doppelgangers of what we were meant to be, and interiorly they want you to be coupled in the same way as we were for my surveillance cannot ascribe retribution, reprimand, or punish the understanding we sought and could not reach: what racism exists we have soaked up like a sponge though as ignorant zombies no Doctors exist for there to be a cure.

"Every Individual" ~ Daniel Apatiga

Common sense was once a good term and an entire book was written about the subject and the author was Thomas Paine. And he believed that the human individual does not understand what falsities he has ascribed to when the individual talks about the goodness of the many. But now it is overused by people who have a false idea of what common sense really means. Here's why I think the phrase, "common sense," does not always accurately depict the situation or solve it effectively in day-to-day social multimedia. "Common Sense", by Thomas Paine, was written during the revolution and during that time, slavery was normal, government was seen as the epitome of human failure, and that the good times were the times when there were no leaders. Centuries later, we now think government, if run by ethical and altruistic people, can get large for government should be like the most ethical government ever. It is not a corporate-government nor a dictatorship, for government is best when democracy is exercised to the fullest. If the government is used properly, the betterment of society can be accomplished by implementing creative ideas by creative people that make society better for everyone.

Common sense is not about understanding human motives; it does not represent the goodness of every individual. The original concept of common sense was that the goodness of the individual is often marginalized by the goodness of the pack. However, the goodness of the pack was defined as not including our neighbors. This is because a pack-like mentality has been found to erode individuals' behavior with falsehoods, misrepresentations of the "other," and the spreading of truths that are really untrue. Common sense is not about looking at the best solutions for solving problems like world-overpopulation, immigration, and illegal immigration, since the solutions offered to you ignore the desires and wishes of the increasingly close "other." This other is not someone who exists to the mind of the Nativist who fully subscribe to "Common Sense" as detailed by T.P., and therefore, common sense makes perfect sense to the user who says "that's common sense!" when in fact a better solution exists. Common sense places the goodness of the many over the goodness of the individual, but any attempt at redefining the pack as inclusive lowers the goodness of the pack because the individual divides the pack. Common sense proprietors see individuals as those who do not see the full picture, often, and therefore, any inclination that a better solution exists are unfathomable or dangerous to them. The usage of "common sense" hopes that the reader listens to your fear and anger that is a hope that you will convince the pack to agree: we are all afraid and fearful of the "other." Common sense does not take into account the emotions of individuals who see the best solution, whatever that might be, which is a win-win for everyone. The solution would not be from a close-minded group, e.g. the K.K.K. and the Nazi-USA movement that sees only a win-lose solution that really is a lose-lose for everyone. Indeed, anyone who is creative can come up with a better solution than that, but Artful people are those who are in charge of their minds, emotions, and are confident. I don't know how else to say this, but white-racist, Constitutionalist America is a dying breed, because they defined "common sense" inaccurately. They see the individual as non-creative and as making up the pack and therefore, the pack as missing the point often when a single person speaks for them. My argument is that a single person cannot understand the needs of the many without first being in-tune with himself. My argument suggests those who do not believe in "common sense" do in fact believe in humanity, and that those who say the phrase do not believe in the other's humanity. If you are listening to a person in-tune with themselves, they try to convey meaning and show you how it is rather than make you infer, deduce, and extrapolate what the individual says "makes common sense" since the phrase is inherently exclusive.

"I would tell you if I were not afraid" ~ a poem.

I wrote a poem
because I thought I'd forget about tomorrow.
What they tell you in the tabloids about love
it's wrong.
I am not shy but I am afraid.
I am not in touching distance
but I am here.
I am uncaring
for you are not beside me.
I did not fight
the future conflicts.
I did not command you
to be with me.
I did not give you
my inner thoughts.
I did not compromise
my desire in light of you.
I did not respect you
that fateful time.
I did not convince my Dad
and his wife
that you're the one.
The news is run for them.
.

Gregory of Nyssa and What We May Infer about his Interpretive Community

Daniel Alexander Apatiga

Prof. Lori Branch

Engl: 3140, Sect. 1

Oct. 23rd, 2016

Gregory of Nyssa and What We May Infer about his Interpretive Community

            Gregory of Nyssa (or G.O.N.) offers many interpretations of the divine from the life of Moses.  This suggests that the Christian interpretive community he belonged to was interested in unpacking the deeply hidden symbology from within the Scriptures of Exodus, whose story of Moses parallels in many ways the gospels that narrate the life of Jesus.  At that time, Christians were less likely to have been born Jews than they had been at the founding of Christianity, and so they would not necessarily have been raised to be knowledgeable about Moses’s life.  This was because a limited number of manuscripts existed and the printing press had not been invented by Gutenberg yet (which was in 1440 C.E.).  Also, legally, only monks and literate members of church could have access to the manuscripts transcribed from the Septugint L.X.X. of the stories of Moses.  Finally, the genealogy of Christianity could finally trace itself back thousands of years to the time of Moses when he contributed to its authority.   For these reasons, G.O.N. may have spread the idea that Moses was a monumental figure, though not the son of God, for those who might be converted to Christian ideology from paganism.

            A problem existed in the early Christian community: was the divine something magical, or was it explainable?  G.O.N. believed that the divine could not be mistaken as being finite or limited in nature—it was infinitely “good.”  That is because he believed evil was limited by virtue, which is good, and the divine is good (G.O.N., page 5).  He defends his reasoning by examining the symbology of Moses’ miracles: the finding of Moses by the daughter of the Pharoah at the river bank; the symbol of the staff becoming a snake and then eating the other staffs that became snakes; how the plagues were proverbial in symbology; why the tall mountain was high where Moses communicated with God; how he defined a foreigner and how he thought Christians should deal with them; how we might learn about fleeing from battle and the bigger picture; what paradoxes were encountered when seeking the divine; and what are the problems with pleasure seeking?  In a macroscopic parallel sort of way, Jesus was a lot like Moses in that his father was absent from his life.  G.O.N. rightly notices that “…[Moses] did not choose the things considered glorious by the pagans, nor did he any longer recognize as his mother that wise woman by whom he had been adopted, but he returned to his natural mother and attached himself to his own kinsmen” (G.O.N., page 9).  Next, the symbol of the staff had been missed, according to G.O.N..  His interpretation suggests that the staff itself was solid and lifeless, and when it became a snake it was like the serpent in the story of Adam and Eve.  So why would the divine provide something like this to Moses?  G.O.N. believed that conquering evil requires evil, and Moses showed this by having Moses’ staff that became a snake eat the other snakes that the pagan sorcerers conjured.  Jesus, though in many ways was an impressive prophet in stature who did not deal with battles and wars the same way that Moses did, because even though he lost the battle of his life, he won the war without lifting a finger.  In that way, Moses was at first gentle to his oppressers.  Satirically, G.O.N. possibly recognized that the Kings and despots in power wanted a bloodier and a literal alternative than what Jesus taught.  But without Moses, Jesus would not have been possible.  Next, the plague of the frogs is symbolic in itself because “being a man by nature and becoming a beast by passion, this kind of person exhibits an amphibious form of life ambiguous in nature.  In addition, one will also find the evidences of such an illness not only on the bed, but also on the table and in the storeroom and throughout the house” (G.O.N., page 50).  Jesus never used a plague against his enemies except in his parable against the priests of the synagogue, perhaps, and the use of magic in curing the sick and diseased (since we do not know how he accomplished those tasks other than from the divine), which were by comparison, harmless but hurtful to himself.  G.O.N. further states, “let us not draw the conclusion that these distresses upon those who deserved them came directly from God, but rather let us observe that each man makes his own plagues when through his own free will he inclines toward these painful experiences” (G.O.N., page 55).  The moral of the death of the newborn, a plague, is according to G.O.N., “when through virtue one comes to grips with any evil, he must completely destroy the first beginnings of evil (G.O.N., page 57).  On the same page, he says of the Pharoah’s murderous intent, “neither of these things would develop of itself, but anger produces murder and lust produces adultery” that were later inscribed by the divine as commandments, notably.  Regarding the lamb’s blood that was painted on top of each doorway of the Israelites, G.O.N. argues that “no opposition from the blood resists his entrance: that is to say, faith in Christ does not ally itself with those of such a disposition” (G.O.N., page 59).  On the same page and rather darkly, G.O.N. states of the divine that “…the firstfruits of the Egyptian children [must be destroyed] so that evil, in being destroyed at its beginning, might come to an end.” However, Jesus would not have made such a logical leap.  I have issues with the lesson that G.O.N. extrapolates here, since the Holocaust of the Jews made by Nazi Germany was precisely because of this logic.  Lastly, the eleventh plague—the collapsing of the Red sea on the chariots is in itself symbolic for a different reason: “if… we by ourselves are too weak to give the victory to what is righteous, since the bad is stronger in its attacks and rejects the rule of truth, we must flee as quickly as possible (in accordance with the historical example) from the conflict to the greater and higher teaching of the mysteries” and he later states, “…let us reprove the teachers of evil for their wicked use of instruction”  (G.O.N., page 36).  Jesus, though, did not seek the consequence of this despite being a Jew, and was condemned to his death by crucifixion, resurrection, and later ascension into heaven.  Next, G.O.N. believed that the concept of a foreigner or an alien should be limited to those who do not believe in the word of Christ (aka. Christians), because the concept of the other is a person who is a non-believer. This is directly from the ten commandments that defined worshipers of the divine as having only one God.  Next, a paradox exists when seeking the divine: G.O.N. states that “…every concept which comes from some comprehensible image by an approximate understanding and by guessing at the divine nature constitutes an idol of God and does not proclaim God” (G.O.N., page 81).  Finally, pleasure seeking, according to G.O.N., should be abhorred, because “…the person who lacks moderation is a libertine, and he who goes beyond moderation has his conscience branded…” (G.O.N., page 121).

Like Jesus, Moses sought truth for it is “…always the same, neither increasing nor diminishing, immutable to all change whether to better or to worse (for it is far removed from the inferior and it has no superior), standing in need of nothing else, alone desirable, participated in by all but not lessened by their participation---this is truly real being” (G.O.N., page 38).  Yet, in terms of the search for perfection, which is good, and thus, a part of the divine, Moses differs from Jesus.  If we believe G.O.N.’s interpretation of the life of Moses, because the apostle Mathew states Jesus as saying, ‘Therefore be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect’” (G.O.N., page 6).  On that same page, G.O.N. states “…the perfection of human nature consists perhaps in its very growth in goodness.”  G.O.N. believed that the life of Jesus perhaps could not be interpreted without first interpreting the life of Moses. 

   Gregory of Nyssa.  The Life of Moses.  HarperCollins, 2006. Print.