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Even darker would have been Jerusalem in Jesus' time.

Blasphemy would have to be against God. The truth never can be that. That we disagree doesn't make me evil. I try hard to be Christlike, but that makes me all the more glad for the Atonement.

Paul didn't attack the law, but its abuse. The law cannot save you, Christ can. Obedience, though, is critical to Salvation.

Start here with this explanation:

Legalism's root word, "law" (Greek homos), is very frequent in the New Testament, and may sometimes connote legalism. In 1921, Ernest De Witt Burton stated that in Gal. 2:16, "nomou is here evidently used ... in its legalistic sense, denoting divine law viewed as a purely legalistic system made up of statutes, on the basis of obedience or disobedience to which men are approved or condemned as a matter of debt without grace. This is divine law as the legalist defined it."[1]

The Greek of Paul's day lacked any term corresponding to the distinct position of "legalism", "legalist", or "legalistic", leading C.E.B. Cranfield to commend "the possibility that Pauline statements which at first sight seem to disparage the law, were really directed not against the law itself but against that misunderstanding and misuse of it for which we now have a convenient terminology" (legalism).[2]

Messianic Jewish Bible translator David H. Stern cited these two scholars to support the translation framework that often "'nomos' means 'legalism' and not God's Torah", especially in Paul's constructs erga nomou (literally "works of law", rendered by Stern "legalistic observance of Torah commands") and upo nomon (literally "under law", rendered by Stern by 13 words, "in subjection to the system which results from perverting the Torah into legalism").[3]

You'd enjoy reading the whole thing, although it isn't complete or completely accurate, but the Greek language information is correct.

Restornu, I pinged you because your pinglist might find this interesting.