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Galatians: introductions through chapter 2
2023.06.02 18:13 bikingfencer Galatians: introductions through chapter 2
Galatians
From The Interpreters’ Bible:
"Introduction
-1. Occasion and Purpose
Conservative preachers were persuading the Galatians that faith was not enough to make sure of God’s kingdom. Besides believing that Jesus was the Messiah, one must join the Jewish nation, observe the laws and customs of Moses, and refuse to eat with the Gentiles (2:11-14, 4:10). One must have Christ and Moses, faith and law. Paul insisted that it must be either Moses or Christ. (5:2-6). [Mind you, the congregations were literally segregated at meals according to whether the male members’ foreskins were circumcised; compare with the trouble regarding the allocations between the two groups of widows reported in Acts.]
Not content with raising doubts concerning the sufficiency of Christ, the Judaizers attacked Paul’s credentials. They said that he had not been one of the original apostles, and that he was distorting the gospel which Peter and John and James the Lord’s brother were preaching. They declared that his proposal to abandon the law of Moses was contrary to the teaching of Jesus, and they insinuated that he had taken this radical step to please men with the specious promise of cheap admission to God’s kingdom (1:10). If he were allowed to have his way, men would believe and be baptized but keep on sinning, deluding themselves that the Christian sacraments would save them. Claiming to rise above Moses and the prophets, they would debase faith into magic, liberty into license, making Christ the abettor of sin (2:17). The Judaizers were alarmed lest Paul bring down God’s wrath and delay the kingdom. They had not shared the emotion of a catastrophic conversion like Paul’s, and they found it hard to understand when he talked about a new power which overcame sin and brought righteousness better than the best that the law could produce.
Another party attacked Paul from the opposite side. Influenced by the pagan notion that religion transcends ethics and is separable from morality, they wanted to abandon the Old Testament and its prophetic insights. They could not see how Paul’s demand to crucify one’s old sinful nature and produce the fruit of the Spirit could be anything but a new form of slavery to law (2:19-20, 5:14, 2-24). They accused him of rebuilding the old legalism, and some said that he was still preaching circumcision (2:18; 5:11). Whereas the Judaizers rejected Paul’s gospel because they believed it contrary to the teaching of the original apostles, these antilegalists felt that he was so subservient to the apostles as to endanger the freedom of the Christian Movement.
Actually Paul had risen above both legalism and sacramentarianism ... his faith was qualitatively different from mere assent to a creed (5:6). He was living on the plateau of the Spirit, where life was so free that men needed no law to say ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not’ (5:22-24). But this rarefied atmosphere was hard to breathe, and neither side could understand him. The conservatives were watching for moral lapses… and the radicals blamed him for slowing the progress of Christianity by refusing to cut it loose from Judaism and its nationalistic religious imperialism.” (Stamm, TIB 1953, vol. X pp. 430)
Paul’s defense of his gospel and apostleship was the more difficult because he had to maintain his right to go directly to Christ without the mediation of Peter and the rest, but had to do it in such a way as not to split the church and break the continuity of his gospel with the Old Testament and the apostolic traditions about Jesus and his teaching. …
To this end Paul gave an account of his relations with the Jerusalem church during the seventeen years that followed his conversion (1:11-2:14). Instead of going to Jerusalem he went to Arabia, presumably to preach (1:17). After a time he returned to Damascus, and only three years later did he go to see Peter. Even then he stayed only fifteen days and saw no other apostle except James the Lord’s brother (1:18-20). Then he left for Syria and Cilicia, and not until another fourteen years had passed did he visit Jerusalem again. This time it was in response to a revelation from his Lord, and not to a summons by the authorities in the Hoy City.
Paul emphasizes that neither visit implied an admission that his gospel needed the apostolic stamp to make it valid. His purpose was to get the apostles to treat the uncircumcised Gentile Christians as their equals in the church (2:2). Making a test case of Titus, he won his point (2:3-5). The apostles agreed that a Gentile could join the church by faith without first becoming a member of the synagogue by circumcision. … They … recognize[d] that his mission to the Gentiles was on the same footing as theirs to the Jews – only he was to remember the poor (2:7-10). So far was Paul from being subordinated that when Peter came to Antioch and wavered on eating with the Gentile Christians, Paul did not hesitate to rebuke him in public (2:11-14). (Stamm, 1953, TIB vol. X pp. 430-431)
Paul’s defense of his apostolic commission involved the question: What is the seat of authority in religion? A Jewish rabbi debating the application of the kosher laws would quote the authority of Moses and the fathers in support of his view. Jewish tradition declared that God delivered the law to Moses, and Moses to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the men of the Great Synagogue, and that they had handed it down through an unbroken rabbinical succession to the present. If Paul had been a Christian rabbi, he could have treated the Sermon on the Mount as a new law from a new Sinai, which God had delivered to Jesus, and Jesus to Peter, and Peter to Paul, and Paul to Timothy and Titus, and so on through an unbroken apostolic succession until the second coming of Christ. Instead of taking his problems directly to this Lord in prayer, he would ask, ‘What does Peter say that Jesus did and said about it?’ And if Peter or the other apostles happened not to have a pronouncement from Jesus on a given subject, they would need to apply some other saying to his by reasoning from analogy. This would turn the gospel into a system of legalism, with casuistry for its guide, making Jesus a second Moses – a prophet who lived and died in a dim and distant past and left only a written code to guide the future. Jesus would not have been the living Lord, personally present in his church in every age as the daily companion of his members. That is why Paul insisted that Christ must not be confused or combined with Moses, but must be all in all.
The Judaizers assumed that God had revealed to Moses all of his will, and nothing but this will, for all time, changeless and unchangeable; and that death was the penalty for tampering with it. The rest of the scriptures and the oral tradition which developed and applied them were believed to be implicit in the Pentateuch as an oak in an acorn. The first duty of the teacher was to transmit the Torah exactly as he had received it from the men of old. Only then might he give his own opinion, which must never contradict but always be validated by the authority of the past. When authorities differed, the teacher must labor to reconcile them. Elaborate rules of interpretation were devised to help decide cases not covered by specific provision in the scripture. These rules made it possible to apply a changeless revelation to changing conditions, but they also presented a dilemma. The interpreter might modernize by reading into his Bible ideas that were not in the minds of its writers, or he might quench his own creative insights by fearing to go beyond what was written. Those who modernized the Old Testament were beset with the perils of incipient Gnosticism, while those who, like the Sadducees, accepted nothing but the written Torah could misuse it to obstruct social and religious progress. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 431-432)
To submit to circumcision would have betrayed the truth of the gospel because it contradicted the principle that all is of grace and grace is for all (2:5). Perpetuated in the church of Christ, the kosher code and other Jewish customs would have destroyed the fellowship. Few things could have hurt the feelings and heaped more indignity upon the Gentiles than the spiritual snobbery of refusing to eat with them.
The tragedy of division was proportional to the sincerity of men’s scruples. The Jews were brought up to believe that eating with Gentiles was a flagrant violation of God’s revealed will which would bring down his terrible wrath. How strongly both sides felt appears in Paul’s account of the stormy conference at Jerusalem and the angry dispute that followed it at Antioch (2:1-14). Paul claimed that refusal to eat with a Gentile brother would deny that the grace of Christ was sufficient to make him worthy of the kingdom. If all men were sons of God through Christ, there could be no classes of Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female (3:26-28). What mattered was neither circumcision not uncircumcision, but only faith and a new act of creation by the Spirit (5:6; 6”15). (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
Church unity was essential to the success of Christian missions. Friction between Aramaic and Greek-speaking Jewish Christians in Palestine had to be eliminated (Acts 6:1). The death of Stephen and a special vision to Peter were required to convince the conservatives of the propriety of admitting the Gentiles on an equality with the Jews; and even Peter was amazed that God had given them the same gift of the Spirit (Act 11: 1-18). This hesitation was potentially fatal to the spread of Christianity beyond Palestine. Many Gentiles had been attracted by the pure monotheism and high morality of Judaism but were not willing to break with their native culture by submitting to the painful initiatory rite and social stigma of being a Jew…. Had the church kept circumcision as a requirement for membership, it could not have freed itself from Jewish nationalism.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
III. Some Characteristics of Paul’s Thinking
… “the law” of which Paul is speaking does not coincide with “law” in a twentieth-century state with representative government. His Greek word was νομος [nomos], an inadequate translation of the Hebrew “Torah,” which included much more than “law” as we use the term. [When “תורה ThORaH” appears in the text I translate it as “Instruction” – its literal definition - capitalized.] Torah was teaching on any subject concerning the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. Since the Jews did not divide life into two compartments labeled “religious” and “secular,” their law covered both their spiritual and their civil life. Nor did Paul and his fellow Jews think in terms of “nature” and the “natural law.” They believed that everything that happened was God’s doing, directly or by his permission. The messiah was expected to restore the ancient theocracy with its power over both civil and religious affairs.
The Gentiles too were accustomed to state regulation of religion and priestly control of civil affairs. The Greek city-states had always managed the relations of their citizens with the gods, and Alexander the Great prepared the way for religious imperialism. When he invaded Asia, he consolidated his power by the ancient Oriental idea that the ruler was a god or a son of God. His successors, in their endless wars over the fragments of his empire, adopted the same device. Posing as “savior-gods,” they liberated their victims by enslaving them. The Romans did likewise, believing that the safety of their empire depended upon correct legal relations with the gods who had founded it. … Each city had its temple dedicated to the emperor, and its patriotic priests to see that everyone burned incense before his statue. Having done this, the worshiper was free under Roman ‘tolerance’ to adopt any other legal religion. … Whether salvation was offered in the name of the ancient gods of the Orient, or of Greece, or of the emperor of Rome, or of Yahweh the theocratic king of the Jews, the favor of the deity was thought to depend upon obedience to his law.
One did not therefore have to be a Jew to be a legalist in religion. … Since Paul’s first converts were drawn from Gentiles who had been attending the synagogues, it is easy to see how Gentile Christians could be a zealous to add Moses to Christ as the most conservative Jew.
This is what gave the Judaizers their hold in Galatia. The rivalry between the synagogue, which was engaged in winning men to worship the God of Moses, and the church, which was preaching the God who had revealed himself in Christ Jesus, was bound to raise the issue of legalism and stir up doubts about the sufficiency of Christ.
Gentile and Jewish Christians alike would regard Paul’s preaching of salvation apart from the merit acquired by obedience to law as a violently revolutionary doctrine. Fidelity to his declaration of religious independence from all mediating rulers and priesthoods required a spiritual maturity of which most who heard his preaching were not yet capable. … Paul’s gospel has always been in danger of being stifled by those who would treat the teachings of Jesus as laws to be enforced by a hierarchy. (Stamm, TIB 1953, X pp. 434-435)
V. Environment of Paul’s Churches in Galatia
The conclusion concerning the destination of the epistle does not involve the essentials of its religious message, but it does affect our understanding of certain passages, such as 3:1 and 41:12, 20.
From the earliest times that part of the world had been swept by the cross tides of migration and struggle for empire. The third millennium found the Hittites in possession. In the second millennium the Greeks and Phrygians came spilling over from Europe, and in the first millennium the remaining power of the Hittites was swept away by Babylon and Persia. Then came the turn of the Asiatic tide into Europe, only to be swept back again by Alexander the Great. But the Greek cities with which he and his successors dotted the map of Asia were like anthills destined to be leveled by Oriental reaction.
About 278 B.C. new turmoil came with the Gauls, who were shunted from Greece and crossed into Asia to overrun Phrygia. Gradually the Greek kings succeeded in pushing them up into the central highlands, where they established themselves in the region of Ancyra. Thus located, they constituted a perpetually disturbing element, raiding the Greek cities and furnishing soldiers now to one, and now to another of the rival kings. Then in 121 B.C. came the Romans to 'set free' Galatia by making it a part of their own Empire. By 40 B.C. there were three kingdoms, with capitals at Ancyra, Pisidian Antioch, and Iconium. Four years later Lycaonia and Galatia were given to Amyntas the king of Pisidia. He added Pamphylia and part of Cilicia to his kingdom. But he was killed in 25 B.C., and the Romans made his dominion into the province of Galatia, which was thus much larger than the territory inhabited by the Gauls. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 437-438)
War and slavery, poverty, disease, and famine made life hard and uncertain. In religion and philosophy men were confused by this meeting of East and West. But man’s extremity was Paul’s opportunity. The soil of the centuries had been plowed and harrowed for his new, revolutionary gospel of grace and freedom.
Not all, however, were ready for this freedom. The old religions with prestige and authority seemed safer. Most Jews preferred Moses, and among the Gentiles the hold of the Great Mother Cybele of Phrygia was not easily shaken. Paul’s converts, bringing their former ideas and customs with them, were all too ready to reshape his gospel into a combination of Christ with their ancient laws and rituals. The old religions were especially tenacious in the small villages, whose inhabitants spoke the native languages and were inaccessible to the Greek-speaking Paul. To this gravitational attraction of the indigenous cults was added the more sophisticated syncretism of the city dwellers, pulling Paul’s churches away from his gospel when the moral demands of his faith and the responsibilities of his freedom became irksome. This was the root of the trouble in Galatia. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 438)
VI. Date and Place of Writing
Some consider it the earliest of Paul’s extant letters and place it in 49 … In support of this date it is said that Paul, who had come from Perga by boat, was met by messengers from Galatia, who had taken the shorter route by land. They reported the disturbance which had arisen in his churches soon after his departure. He could not go back immediately to straighten things out in person, because he saw that he would have to settle the matter first in Jerusalem, whence the troublemakers had come. So he wrote a letter.
But … [w]e do not know that the trouble in Galatia was stirred up by emissaries from the church in Jerusalem … Moreover, this solution overlooks the crux of the issue between Paul and the legalists. His contention was that neither circumcision nor the observance of any other law was the basis of salvation, but only faith in God’s grace through Christ. … On the matter of kosher customs, as on every other question, he directed men to the mind and Spirit of Christ, and not to law, either Mosaic or apostolic. That mind was a Spirit of edification which abstained voluntarily from all that defiled or offended.
We may say that the situation [in Galatia] was different – that in Macedonia it was persecution from outside by Jews who were trying to prevent Paul’s preaching, whereas in Galatia it was trouble inside the church created by legalistic Christians who were proposing to change his teaching; that in one case the issue was justification by faith, and in the other faithfulness while waiting for the day of the Lord.
The letter to the Romans, written during the three months in Greece mentioned in Acts 20:2-3, is our earliest commentary on Galatians. In it the relation between the law and the gospel is set forth in the perspective of Paul’s further experience. The brevity and storminess of Galatians gives way to a more complete and calmly reasoned presentation of his gospel. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 438 - 439)
At Corinth, as in Galatia, Paul had to defend his right to be an apostle against opponents heartless enough to turn against him the cruel belief that physical illness was a sign of God’s disfavor … and they charged him with being a crafty man-pleaser … He exhorts his converts to put away childish things and grow up in faith, hope and love…
Most childish of all were the factions incipient in Galatia, and actual in Corinth … He abandoned the kosher customs and all other artificial distinctions between Jews and Gentiles and laid the emphasis where it belonged – upon the necessity for God’s people to establish and maintain a higher morality and spiritual life… He substituted a catholic spirit for partisan loyalties ... (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 440-441)
VII. Authorship and Attestation
If Paul wrote anything that goes under his name, it was Galatians, Romans, and the letters to Corinth. … F.C. Baur and his followers tried to show that the letters ascribed to Paul were the product of a second-century conflict between a Judaist party and the liberals in the church, and that they were written by Paulinists who used his name and authority to promote their own ideas.
[But] the earliest mention of the epistle by name occurs in the canon of the Gnostic heretic Marcion (ca. [approximately] 144). He put it first in his list of ten letters of Paul. A generation later the orthodox Muratorian canon (ca. 185) listed it as the sixth of Paul’s letters. … While the first explicit reference to Galatians as a letter of Paul is as late as the middle of the second century … the authors of Ephesians and the Gospel of John knew it; and Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians quoted it. Revelation, I Peter, Hebrew, I Clement, and Ignatius show acquaintance with it; and there is evidence that the writer of the Epistle of James knew Galatians, as did the authors of II Peter and the Pastoral epistle, and Justin Martyr and Athenagoras. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 441-442)
VIII. Text and Transmission
Although the epistle was composed neither carelessly nor hastily, the anxiety and emotional stress under which Paul dictated his cascading thoughts have produced some involved and obscure sentences … and a number of abrupt transitions… These have been a standing invitation to scribal clarification. … Paul’s debate with his critics takes the form of a diatribe, which is characterized by quotations from past or anticipated objectors and rapid-fire answers to them. Paul did not use quotation marks, and this accounts for the difficulty in 2:14-15 of deciding where his speech to Peter ends. The numerous allusions to person and places, events and teachings, with which Paul assumed his readers to be acquainted, are another source of difficulty. All theses factors operated to produce the numerous variations in the text of Galatians." (Stamm, 1953, TIB p. 442)
From Adam Clarke’s Commentaryi :
"The authenticity of this epistle is ably vindicated by Dr. Paley: the principal part of his arguments I shall here introduce …
'Section I.
As Judea was the scene of the Christian history; as the author and preachers of Christianity were Jews; as the religion itself acknowledged and was founded upon the Jewish religion, in contra distinction to every other religion, then professed among mankind: it was not to be wondered at, that some its teachers should carry it out in the world rather as a sect and modification of Judaism, than as a separate original revelation; or that they should invite their proselytes to those observances in which they lived themselves. ... I … think that those pretensions of Judaism were much more likely to be insisted upon, whilst the Jews continued a nation, than after their fall and dispersion; while Jerusalem and the temple stood, than after the destruction brought upon them by the Roman arms, the fatal cessation of the sacrifice and the priesthood, the humiliating loss of their country, and, with it, of the great rites and symbols of their institution. It should seem, therefore, from the nature of the subject and the situation of the parties, that this controversy was carried on in the interval between the preaching of Christianity to the Gentiles, and the invasion of Titus: and that our present epistle ... must be referred to the same period.
… the epistle supposes that certain designing adherents of the Jewish law had crept into the churches of Galatia; and had been endeavouring, and but too successfully, to persuade the Galatic converts, that they had been taught the new religion imperfectly, and at second hand; that the founder of their church himself possessed only an inferior and disputed commission, the seat of truth and authority being in the apostles and elders of Jerusalem; moreover, that whatever he might profess among them, he had himself, at other times and in other places, given way to the doctrine of circumcision. The epistle is unintelligible without supposing all this. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 361)
Section VII.
This epistle goes farther than any of St. Paul’s epistles; for it avows in direct terms the supersession of the Jewish law, as an instrument of salvation, even to the Jews themselves. Not only were the Gentiles exempt from its authority, but even the Jews were no longer either to place any dependency upon it, or consider themselves as subject to it on a religious account. "Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto faith which should afterward be revealed: wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but, after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." (Chap. [chapter] iii. 23-25) This was undoubtedly spoken of Jews, and to Jews. … What then should be the conduct of a Jew (for such St. Paul was) who preached this doctrine? To be consistent with himself, either he would no longer comply, in his own person, with the directions of the law; or, if he did comply, it would be some other reason than any confidence which he placed in its efficacy, as a religious institution. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II pp. 366-367)
Preface
The religion of the ancient Galatae was extremely corrupt and superstitious: and they are said to have worshipped the mother of the gods, under the name of Agdistis; and to have offered human sacrifices of the prisoners they took in war.
They are mentioned by historians as a tall and valiant people, who went nearly naked; and used for arms only a sword and buckler. The impetuosity of their attack is stated to have been irresistible…’” (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 369)
From The New Jerome Biblical Commentaryii
"Introduction
The Galatai, originally an Indo-Aryan tribe of Asia, were related to the Celts or Gauls (“who in their own language are called Keltae, but in ours Galli”) ... About 279 BC some of them invaded the lower Danube area and Macedonia, descending even into the Gk [Greek] peninsula. After they were stopped by the Aetolians in 278, a remnant fled across the Hellespont into Asia Minor …
Occasion and Purpose
… He … stoutly maintained that the gospel he had preached, without the observance of the Mosaic practices, was the only correct view of Christianity … Gal [Galatians] thus became the first expose` of Paul’s teaching about justification by grace through faith apart from deeds prescribed by the law; it is Paul’s manifesto about Christian freedom.
... Who were the agitators in Galatia? … they are best identified as Jewish Christians of Palestine, of an even stricter Jewish background than Peter, Paul, or James, or even of the ‘false brethren' (2:4) of Jerusalem, whom Paul had encountered there. (The account in Acts 15:5 would identify the latter as ‘believers who had belonged to the sect of the Pharisees.’) … The agitators in Galatia were Judaizers, who insisted not on the observance of the whole Mosaic law, but at least on circumcision and the observance of some other Jewish practices. Paul for this reason warned the Gentile Christians of Galatia that their fascination with ‘circumcision’ would oblige them to keep ‘the whole law’ (5:3). The agitators may have been syncretists of some sort: Christians of Jewish perhaps Essene, background, affected by some Anatolian influences. … (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 1990, TNJBC pp. 780-781) END NOTES
i The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The text carefully printed from the most correct copies of the present Authorized Version. Including the marginal readings and parallel texts. With a Commentary and Critical Notes. Designed as a help to a better understanding of the sacred writings. By Adam Clarke, LL.D. F.S.A. M.R.I.A. With a complete alphabetical index. Royal Octavo Stereotype Edition. Vol. II. [Vol. VI together with the O.T.] New York, Published by J. Emory and B. Waugh, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the conference office, 13 Crosby-Street. J. Collord, Printer. 1831.
ii The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Union Theological Seminary, New York; NY, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. (emeritus) Catholic University of America, Washington, DC; Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (emeritus) The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC, with a foreword by His Eminence Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, S.J.; Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990
Chapter One
…
Chapter Two
-16. And since [וכיון, VeKhayVahN] that know, we, that [כי, KeeY] the ’ahDahM [“man”, Adam] is not made righteous in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction [Torah, law],
rather in belief of the Anointed [המשיח, HahMahSheeY-ahH, the Messiah, the Christ] YayShOo`ah [“Savior”, Jesus],
believe, also we, in Anointed YayShOo`ah,
to sake we are made righteous from inside belief in Anointed,
and not in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction,
that yes, in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction is not made righteous any [כל, KahL] flesh.
The life that I live now in flesh, I live them in the belief of Son [of] the Gods that loved me and delivered up [ומסר, OoMahÇahR] himself in my behalf [בעדי, Bah`ahDeeY].
is not if [it] is possible to become righteous upon hand of the Instruction, see, that the Anointed died to nothing [לשוא, LahShahVe’]?
An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible
submitted by bikingfencer to biblestudy [link] [comments]
Paul can be forgiven for equating the destruction of Israel with the end of the world. Everyone who loves Israel wants to save her, the controversy between the Judaizers and Paul was over how to do it.The Gospel of Paul
From The Interpreters’ Bible:
"Introduction
-1. Occasion and Purpose
Conservative preachers were persuading the Galatians that faith was not enough to make sure of God’s kingdom. Besides believing that Jesus was the Messiah, one must join the Jewish nation, observe the laws and customs of Moses, and refuse to eat with the Gentiles (2:11-14, 4:10). One must have Christ and Moses, faith and law. Paul insisted that it must be either Moses or Christ. (5:2-6). [Mind you, the congregations were literally segregated at meals according to whether the male members’ foreskins were circumcised; compare with the trouble regarding the allocations between the two groups of widows reported in Acts.]
Not content with raising doubts concerning the sufficiency of Christ, the Judaizers attacked Paul’s credentials. They said that he had not been one of the original apostles, and that he was distorting the gospel which Peter and John and James the Lord’s brother were preaching. They declared that his proposal to abandon the law of Moses was contrary to the teaching of Jesus, and they insinuated that he had taken this radical step to please men with the specious promise of cheap admission to God’s kingdom (1:10). If he were allowed to have his way, men would believe and be baptized but keep on sinning, deluding themselves that the Christian sacraments would save them. Claiming to rise above Moses and the prophets, they would debase faith into magic, liberty into license, making Christ the abettor of sin (2:17). The Judaizers were alarmed lest Paul bring down God’s wrath and delay the kingdom. They had not shared the emotion of a catastrophic conversion like Paul’s, and they found it hard to understand when he talked about a new power which overcame sin and brought righteousness better than the best that the law could produce.
Another party attacked Paul from the opposite side. Influenced by the pagan notion that religion transcends ethics and is separable from morality, they wanted to abandon the Old Testament and its prophetic insights. They could not see how Paul’s demand to crucify one’s old sinful nature and produce the fruit of the Spirit could be anything but a new form of slavery to law (2:19-20, 5:14, 2-24). They accused him of rebuilding the old legalism, and some said that he was still preaching circumcision (2:18; 5:11). Whereas the Judaizers rejected Paul’s gospel because they believed it contrary to the teaching of the original apostles, these antilegalists felt that he was so subservient to the apostles as to endanger the freedom of the Christian Movement.
Actually Paul had risen above both legalism and sacramentarianism ... his faith was qualitatively different from mere assent to a creed (5:6). He was living on the plateau of the Spirit, where life was so free that men needed no law to say ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not’ (5:22-24). But this rarefied atmosphere was hard to breathe, and neither side could understand him. The conservatives were watching for moral lapses… and the radicals blamed him for slowing the progress of Christianity by refusing to cut it loose from Judaism and its nationalistic religious imperialism.” (Stamm, TIB 1953, vol. X pp. 430)
Paul’s defense of his gospel and apostleship was the more difficult because he had to maintain his right to go directly to Christ without the mediation of Peter and the rest, but had to do it in such a way as not to split the church and break the continuity of his gospel with the Old Testament and the apostolic traditions about Jesus and his teaching. …
To this end Paul gave an account of his relations with the Jerusalem church during the seventeen years that followed his conversion (1:11-2:14). Instead of going to Jerusalem he went to Arabia, presumably to preach (1:17). After a time he returned to Damascus, and only three years later did he go to see Peter. Even then he stayed only fifteen days and saw no other apostle except James the Lord’s brother (1:18-20). Then he left for Syria and Cilicia, and not until another fourteen years had passed did he visit Jerusalem again. This time it was in response to a revelation from his Lord, and not to a summons by the authorities in the Hoy City.
Paul emphasizes that neither visit implied an admission that his gospel needed the apostolic stamp to make it valid. His purpose was to get the apostles to treat the uncircumcised Gentile Christians as their equals in the church (2:2). Making a test case of Titus, he won his point (2:3-5). The apostles agreed that a Gentile could join the church by faith without first becoming a member of the synagogue by circumcision. … They … recognize[d] that his mission to the Gentiles was on the same footing as theirs to the Jews – only he was to remember the poor (2:7-10). So far was Paul from being subordinated that when Peter came to Antioch and wavered on eating with the Gentile Christians, Paul did not hesitate to rebuke him in public (2:11-14). (Stamm, 1953, TIB vol. X pp. 430-431)
Paul’s defense of his apostolic commission involved the question: What is the seat of authority in religion? A Jewish rabbi debating the application of the kosher laws would quote the authority of Moses and the fathers in support of his view. Jewish tradition declared that God delivered the law to Moses, and Moses to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the men of the Great Synagogue, and that they had handed it down through an unbroken rabbinical succession to the present. If Paul had been a Christian rabbi, he could have treated the Sermon on the Mount as a new law from a new Sinai, which God had delivered to Jesus, and Jesus to Peter, and Peter to Paul, and Paul to Timothy and Titus, and so on through an unbroken apostolic succession until the second coming of Christ. Instead of taking his problems directly to this Lord in prayer, he would ask, ‘What does Peter say that Jesus did and said about it?’ And if Peter or the other apostles happened not to have a pronouncement from Jesus on a given subject, they would need to apply some other saying to his by reasoning from analogy. This would turn the gospel into a system of legalism, with casuistry for its guide, making Jesus a second Moses – a prophet who lived and died in a dim and distant past and left only a written code to guide the future. Jesus would not have been the living Lord, personally present in his church in every age as the daily companion of his members. That is why Paul insisted that Christ must not be confused or combined with Moses, but must be all in all.
The Judaizers assumed that God had revealed to Moses all of his will, and nothing but this will, for all time, changeless and unchangeable; and that death was the penalty for tampering with it. The rest of the scriptures and the oral tradition which developed and applied them were believed to be implicit in the Pentateuch as an oak in an acorn. The first duty of the teacher was to transmit the Torah exactly as he had received it from the men of old. Only then might he give his own opinion, which must never contradict but always be validated by the authority of the past. When authorities differed, the teacher must labor to reconcile them. Elaborate rules of interpretation were devised to help decide cases not covered by specific provision in the scripture. These rules made it possible to apply a changeless revelation to changing conditions, but they also presented a dilemma. The interpreter might modernize by reading into his Bible ideas that were not in the minds of its writers, or he might quench his own creative insights by fearing to go beyond what was written. Those who modernized the Old Testament were beset with the perils of incipient Gnosticism, while those who, like the Sadducees, accepted nothing but the written Torah could misuse it to obstruct social and religious progress. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 431-432)
To submit to circumcision would have betrayed the truth of the gospel because it contradicted the principle that all is of grace and grace is for all (2:5). Perpetuated in the church of Christ, the kosher code and other Jewish customs would have destroyed the fellowship. Few things could have hurt the feelings and heaped more indignity upon the Gentiles than the spiritual snobbery of refusing to eat with them.
The tragedy of division was proportional to the sincerity of men’s scruples. The Jews were brought up to believe that eating with Gentiles was a flagrant violation of God’s revealed will which would bring down his terrible wrath. How strongly both sides felt appears in Paul’s account of the stormy conference at Jerusalem and the angry dispute that followed it at Antioch (2:1-14). Paul claimed that refusal to eat with a Gentile brother would deny that the grace of Christ was sufficient to make him worthy of the kingdom. If all men were sons of God through Christ, there could be no classes of Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female (3:26-28). What mattered was neither circumcision not uncircumcision, but only faith and a new act of creation by the Spirit (5:6; 6”15). (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
Church unity was essential to the success of Christian missions. Friction between Aramaic and Greek-speaking Jewish Christians in Palestine had to be eliminated (Acts 6:1). The death of Stephen and a special vision to Peter were required to convince the conservatives of the propriety of admitting the Gentiles on an equality with the Jews; and even Peter was amazed that God had given them the same gift of the Spirit (Act 11: 1-18). This hesitation was potentially fatal to the spread of Christianity beyond Palestine. Many Gentiles had been attracted by the pure monotheism and high morality of Judaism but were not willing to break with their native culture by submitting to the painful initiatory rite and social stigma of being a Jew…. Had the church kept circumcision as a requirement for membership, it could not have freed itself from Jewish nationalism.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
III. Some Characteristics of Paul’s Thinking
… “the law” of which Paul is speaking does not coincide with “law” in a twentieth-century state with representative government. His Greek word was νομος [nomos], an inadequate translation of the Hebrew “Torah,” which included much more than “law” as we use the term. [When “תורה ThORaH” appears in the text I translate it as “Instruction” – its literal definition - capitalized.] Torah was teaching on any subject concerning the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. Since the Jews did not divide life into two compartments labeled “religious” and “secular,” their law covered both their spiritual and their civil life. Nor did Paul and his fellow Jews think in terms of “nature” and the “natural law.” They believed that everything that happened was God’s doing, directly or by his permission. The messiah was expected to restore the ancient theocracy with its power over both civil and religious affairs.
The Gentiles too were accustomed to state regulation of religion and priestly control of civil affairs. The Greek city-states had always managed the relations of their citizens with the gods, and Alexander the Great prepared the way for religious imperialism. When he invaded Asia, he consolidated his power by the ancient Oriental idea that the ruler was a god or a son of God. His successors, in their endless wars over the fragments of his empire, adopted the same device. Posing as “savior-gods,” they liberated their victims by enslaving them. The Romans did likewise, believing that the safety of their empire depended upon correct legal relations with the gods who had founded it. … Each city had its temple dedicated to the emperor, and its patriotic priests to see that everyone burned incense before his statue. Having done this, the worshiper was free under Roman ‘tolerance’ to adopt any other legal religion. … Whether salvation was offered in the name of the ancient gods of the Orient, or of Greece, or of the emperor of Rome, or of Yahweh the theocratic king of the Jews, the favor of the deity was thought to depend upon obedience to his law.
One did not therefore have to be a Jew to be a legalist in religion. … Since Paul’s first converts were drawn from Gentiles who had been attending the synagogues, it is easy to see how Gentile Christians could be a zealous to add Moses to Christ as the most conservative Jew.
This is what gave the Judaizers their hold in Galatia. The rivalry between the synagogue, which was engaged in winning men to worship the God of Moses, and the church, which was preaching the God who had revealed himself in Christ Jesus, was bound to raise the issue of legalism and stir up doubts about the sufficiency of Christ.
Gentile and Jewish Christians alike would regard Paul’s preaching of salvation apart from the merit acquired by obedience to law as a violently revolutionary doctrine. Fidelity to his declaration of religious independence from all mediating rulers and priesthoods required a spiritual maturity of which most who heard his preaching were not yet capable. … Paul’s gospel has always been in danger of being stifled by those who would treat the teachings of Jesus as laws to be enforced by a hierarchy. (Stamm, TIB 1953, X pp. 434-435)
V. Environment of Paul’s Churches in Galatia
The conclusion concerning the destination of the epistle does not involve the essentials of its religious message, but it does affect our understanding of certain passages, such as 3:1 and 41:12, 20.
From the earliest times that part of the world had been swept by the cross tides of migration and struggle for empire. The third millennium found the Hittites in possession. In the second millennium the Greeks and Phrygians came spilling over from Europe, and in the first millennium the remaining power of the Hittites was swept away by Babylon and Persia. Then came the turn of the Asiatic tide into Europe, only to be swept back again by Alexander the Great. But the Greek cities with which he and his successors dotted the map of Asia were like anthills destined to be leveled by Oriental reaction.
About 278 B.C. new turmoil came with the Gauls, who were shunted from Greece and crossed into Asia to overrun Phrygia. Gradually the Greek kings succeeded in pushing them up into the central highlands, where they established themselves in the region of Ancyra. Thus located, they constituted a perpetually disturbing element, raiding the Greek cities and furnishing soldiers now to one, and now to another of the rival kings. Then in 121 B.C. came the Romans to 'set free' Galatia by making it a part of their own Empire. By 40 B.C. there were three kingdoms, with capitals at Ancyra, Pisidian Antioch, and Iconium. Four years later Lycaonia and Galatia were given to Amyntas the king of Pisidia. He added Pamphylia and part of Cilicia to his kingdom. But he was killed in 25 B.C., and the Romans made his dominion into the province of Galatia, which was thus much larger than the territory inhabited by the Gauls. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 437-438)
War and slavery, poverty, disease, and famine made life hard and uncertain. In religion and philosophy men were confused by this meeting of East and West. But man’s extremity was Paul’s opportunity. The soil of the centuries had been plowed and harrowed for his new, revolutionary gospel of grace and freedom.
Not all, however, were ready for this freedom. The old religions with prestige and authority seemed safer. Most Jews preferred Moses, and among the Gentiles the hold of the Great Mother Cybele of Phrygia was not easily shaken. Paul’s converts, bringing their former ideas and customs with them, were all too ready to reshape his gospel into a combination of Christ with their ancient laws and rituals. The old religions were especially tenacious in the small villages, whose inhabitants spoke the native languages and were inaccessible to the Greek-speaking Paul. To this gravitational attraction of the indigenous cults was added the more sophisticated syncretism of the city dwellers, pulling Paul’s churches away from his gospel when the moral demands of his faith and the responsibilities of his freedom became irksome. This was the root of the trouble in Galatia. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 438)
VI. Date and Place of Writing
Some consider it the earliest of Paul’s extant letters and place it in 49 … In support of this date it is said that Paul, who had come from Perga by boat, was met by messengers from Galatia, who had taken the shorter route by land. They reported the disturbance which had arisen in his churches soon after his departure. He could not go back immediately to straighten things out in person, because he saw that he would have to settle the matter first in Jerusalem, whence the troublemakers had come. So he wrote a letter.
But … [w]e do not know that the trouble in Galatia was stirred up by emissaries from the church in Jerusalem … Moreover, this solution overlooks the crux of the issue between Paul and the legalists. His contention was that neither circumcision nor the observance of any other law was the basis of salvation, but only faith in God’s grace through Christ. … On the matter of kosher customs, as on every other question, he directed men to the mind and Spirit of Christ, and not to law, either Mosaic or apostolic. That mind was a Spirit of edification which abstained voluntarily from all that defiled or offended.
We may say that the situation [in Galatia] was different – that in Macedonia it was persecution from outside by Jews who were trying to prevent Paul’s preaching, whereas in Galatia it was trouble inside the church created by legalistic Christians who were proposing to change his teaching; that in one case the issue was justification by faith, and in the other faithfulness while waiting for the day of the Lord.
The letter to the Romans, written during the three months in Greece mentioned in Acts 20:2-3, is our earliest commentary on Galatians. In it the relation between the law and the gospel is set forth in the perspective of Paul’s further experience. The brevity and storminess of Galatians gives way to a more complete and calmly reasoned presentation of his gospel. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 438 - 439)
At Corinth, as in Galatia, Paul had to defend his right to be an apostle against opponents heartless enough to turn against him the cruel belief that physical illness was a sign of God’s disfavor … and they charged him with being a crafty man-pleaser … He exhorts his converts to put away childish things and grow up in faith, hope and love…
Most childish of all were the factions incipient in Galatia, and actual in Corinth … He abandoned the kosher customs and all other artificial distinctions between Jews and Gentiles and laid the emphasis where it belonged – upon the necessity for God’s people to establish and maintain a higher morality and spiritual life… He substituted a catholic spirit for partisan loyalties ... (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 440-441)
VII. Authorship and Attestation
If Paul wrote anything that goes under his name, it was Galatians, Romans, and the letters to Corinth. … F.C. Baur and his followers tried to show that the letters ascribed to Paul were the product of a second-century conflict between a Judaist party and the liberals in the church, and that they were written by Paulinists who used his name and authority to promote their own ideas.
[But] the earliest mention of the epistle by name occurs in the canon of the Gnostic heretic Marcion (ca. [approximately] 144). He put it first in his list of ten letters of Paul. A generation later the orthodox Muratorian canon (ca. 185) listed it as the sixth of Paul’s letters. … While the first explicit reference to Galatians as a letter of Paul is as late as the middle of the second century … the authors of Ephesians and the Gospel of John knew it; and Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians quoted it. Revelation, I Peter, Hebrew, I Clement, and Ignatius show acquaintance with it; and there is evidence that the writer of the Epistle of James knew Galatians, as did the authors of II Peter and the Pastoral epistle, and Justin Martyr and Athenagoras. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 441-442)
VIII. Text and Transmission
Although the epistle was composed neither carelessly nor hastily, the anxiety and emotional stress under which Paul dictated his cascading thoughts have produced some involved and obscure sentences … and a number of abrupt transitions… These have been a standing invitation to scribal clarification. … Paul’s debate with his critics takes the form of a diatribe, which is characterized by quotations from past or anticipated objectors and rapid-fire answers to them. Paul did not use quotation marks, and this accounts for the difficulty in 2:14-15 of deciding where his speech to Peter ends. The numerous allusions to person and places, events and teachings, with which Paul assumed his readers to be acquainted, are another source of difficulty. All theses factors operated to produce the numerous variations in the text of Galatians." (Stamm, 1953, TIB p. 442)
From Adam Clarke’s Commentaryi :
"The authenticity of this epistle is ably vindicated by Dr. Paley: the principal part of his arguments I shall here introduce …
'Section I.
As Judea was the scene of the Christian history; as the author and preachers of Christianity were Jews; as the religion itself acknowledged and was founded upon the Jewish religion, in contra distinction to every other religion, then professed among mankind: it was not to be wondered at, that some its teachers should carry it out in the world rather as a sect and modification of Judaism, than as a separate original revelation; or that they should invite their proselytes to those observances in which they lived themselves. ... I … think that those pretensions of Judaism were much more likely to be insisted upon, whilst the Jews continued a nation, than after their fall and dispersion; while Jerusalem and the temple stood, than after the destruction brought upon them by the Roman arms, the fatal cessation of the sacrifice and the priesthood, the humiliating loss of their country, and, with it, of the great rites and symbols of their institution. It should seem, therefore, from the nature of the subject and the situation of the parties, that this controversy was carried on in the interval between the preaching of Christianity to the Gentiles, and the invasion of Titus: and that our present epistle ... must be referred to the same period.
… the epistle supposes that certain designing adherents of the Jewish law had crept into the churches of Galatia; and had been endeavouring, and but too successfully, to persuade the Galatic converts, that they had been taught the new religion imperfectly, and at second hand; that the founder of their church himself possessed only an inferior and disputed commission, the seat of truth and authority being in the apostles and elders of Jerusalem; moreover, that whatever he might profess among them, he had himself, at other times and in other places, given way to the doctrine of circumcision. The epistle is unintelligible without supposing all this. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 361)
Section VII.
This epistle goes farther than any of St. Paul’s epistles; for it avows in direct terms the supersession of the Jewish law, as an instrument of salvation, even to the Jews themselves. Not only were the Gentiles exempt from its authority, but even the Jews were no longer either to place any dependency upon it, or consider themselves as subject to it on a religious account. "Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto faith which should afterward be revealed: wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but, after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." (Chap. [chapter] iii. 23-25) This was undoubtedly spoken of Jews, and to Jews. … What then should be the conduct of a Jew (for such St. Paul was) who preached this doctrine? To be consistent with himself, either he would no longer comply, in his own person, with the directions of the law; or, if he did comply, it would be some other reason than any confidence which he placed in its efficacy, as a religious institution. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II pp. 366-367)
Preface
The religion of the ancient Galatae was extremely corrupt and superstitious: and they are said to have worshipped the mother of the gods, under the name of Agdistis; and to have offered human sacrifices of the prisoners they took in war.
They are mentioned by historians as a tall and valiant people, who went nearly naked; and used for arms only a sword and buckler. The impetuosity of their attack is stated to have been irresistible…’” (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 369)
From The New Jerome Biblical Commentaryii
"Introduction
The Galatai, originally an Indo-Aryan tribe of Asia, were related to the Celts or Gauls (“who in their own language are called Keltae, but in ours Galli”) ... About 279 BC some of them invaded the lower Danube area and Macedonia, descending even into the Gk [Greek] peninsula. After they were stopped by the Aetolians in 278, a remnant fled across the Hellespont into Asia Minor …
Occasion and Purpose
… He … stoutly maintained that the gospel he had preached, without the observance of the Mosaic practices, was the only correct view of Christianity … Gal [Galatians] thus became the first expose` of Paul’s teaching about justification by grace through faith apart from deeds prescribed by the law; it is Paul’s manifesto about Christian freedom.
... Who were the agitators in Galatia? … they are best identified as Jewish Christians of Palestine, of an even stricter Jewish background than Peter, Paul, or James, or even of the ‘false brethren' (2:4) of Jerusalem, whom Paul had encountered there. (The account in Acts 15:5 would identify the latter as ‘believers who had belonged to the sect of the Pharisees.’) … The agitators in Galatia were Judaizers, who insisted not on the observance of the whole Mosaic law, but at least on circumcision and the observance of some other Jewish practices. Paul for this reason warned the Gentile Christians of Galatia that their fascination with ‘circumcision’ would oblige them to keep ‘the whole law’ (5:3). The agitators may have been syncretists of some sort: Christians of Jewish perhaps Essene, background, affected by some Anatolian influences. … (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 1990, TNJBC pp. 780-781) END NOTES
i The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The text carefully printed from the most correct copies of the present Authorized Version. Including the marginal readings and parallel texts. With a Commentary and Critical Notes. Designed as a help to a better understanding of the sacred writings. By Adam Clarke, LL.D. F.S.A. M.R.I.A. With a complete alphabetical index. Royal Octavo Stereotype Edition. Vol. II. [Vol. VI together with the O.T.] New York, Published by J. Emory and B. Waugh, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the conference office, 13 Crosby-Street. J. Collord, Printer. 1831.
ii The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Union Theological Seminary, New York; NY, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. (emeritus) Catholic University of America, Washington, DC; Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (emeritus) The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC, with a foreword by His Eminence Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, S.J.; Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990
Chapter One
…
…Tiding of [בשורת, BeSOoRahTh, Gospel] one
[verses 6-10]
……………………………………………
How [כיצד, KaYTsahD] was [היה, HahYaH] Shah`OoL [“Lender”, Saul, Paul] to become a Sent Forth [Apostle]
[verses 11 to end of chapter]
Chapter Two
…Sending forth of Shah’OoL required upon hands of the Sent Forth
[verses 1-10]
...…………………………………………
The YeHOo-DeeYM [“YHVH-ites”, Judeans] and the nations, righteous from inside belief
[verses 11 to end of chapter]
-16. And since [וכיון, VeKhayVahN] that know, we, that [כי, KeeY] the ’ahDahM [“man”, Adam] is not made righteous in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction [Torah, law],
rather in belief of the Anointed [המשיח, HahMahSheeY-ahH, the Messiah, the Christ] YayShOo`ah [“Savior”, Jesus],
believe, also we, in Anointed YayShOo`ah,
to sake we are made righteous from inside belief in Anointed,
and not in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction,
that yes, in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction is not made righteous any [כל, KahL] flesh.
“As a Pharisee, Paul had been taught that works of law were deeds done in obedience to the Torah, contrasted with things done according to one’s own will. The object of this obedience was to render oneself acceptable to God – to ‘justify’ oneself. Having found this impossible, Paul reinforced the evidence from his own experience by Ps. [Psalm] 143:2, where the sinner prays God not to enter into judgment with him because in God’s sight no man living is righteous. Into this passage from the LXX [The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible] Paul inserted ‘by works of law,’ and wrote σαρξ [sarx], ‘flesh,’ instead of ζων [zon], ‘one living.’ This quotation warns us against setting Paul’s salvation by grace over against Judaism in such a way as to obscure the fact that the Jews depended also upon God’s lovingkindness and tender mercies (I Kings 8:46; Job 10:14-15; 14:3-4; Prov. [Proverbs] 20:9; Eccl. [Ecclesiasticus] 7:20; Mal. [Malachi] 3:2; Dan. [Daniel] 9:18).” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 483)-19. I died according to [לגבי, LeGahBaY] the Instruction, because of [בגלל, BeeGLahL] the Instruction, in order [כדי, KeDaY] that I will live to God.
“Justified is a metaphor from the law court. The Greek verb is δικαιοω [dikaioo], the noun δικαιοσουνη [dikaiosoune’], the adjective δικαιος [dikaios]. The common root is δικ [dik] as in δεικνυμι [deiknumi], ‘point out,’ ‘show.’ The words formed on this root point to a norm or standard to which persons and things must conform in order to be ‘right.’ The English ‘right’ expresses the same idea, being derived from the Anglo-Saxon ‘richt,’ which means ‘straight,’ not crooked, ‘upright,’ not oblique. The verb δικαιοω means ‘I think it right.’ A man is δικαιος, ‘right’ when he conforms to the standard of acceptable character and conduct, and δικαιοσυνη, ‘righteousness,’ ‘justice,’ is the state or quality of this conformity. In the LXX these Greek words translate a group of Hebrew words formed on the root צדק [TsehDehQ], and in Latin the corresponding terms are justifico, justus, and justificatio. In all four languages the common idea is the norm by which persons and things are to be tested. Thus in Hebrew a wall is ‘righteous’ when it conforms to the plumb line, a man when he does God’s will.
From earliest boyhood Paul had tried to be righteous. But there came a terrible day when he said ‘I will covet’ to the law’s ‘Thou shalt not,’ and in that defiance he had fallen out of right relation to God and into the ‘wrath,’ where he ‘died’ spiritually… Thenceforth all his efforts, however strenuous, to get ‘right’ with God were thwarted by the weakness of his sinful human nature, the ‘flesh’ (σαρξ) [sarx]. That experience of futility led him to say that a man is not justified by works ‘of law.’” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 483)
[Actually Paul changed his point of view as a result of his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, not as a result of intellectual contemplation. His many failures hitherto had not led him to this conclusion. The description of Paul in the preceding paragraph is a fiction.]“In the eyes of the psalmists and rabbis this was blasphemously revolutionary. Resting on God’s covenant with Abraham, they held it axiomatic that the ‘righteous’ man who had conscientiously done his part deserved to be vindicated before a wicked world; otherwise God could not be righteous. … In Judaism God was thought of as forgiving only repentant sinners who followed their repentance with right living …
The theological expression for this conception of salvation is ‘justification by faith.’ Unfortunately this Latin word does not make plain Paul’s underlying religious experience, which was a change of status through faith from a wrong to a ‘right’ relationship with God… It conceals from the English reader the fact that the Greek word also means ‘righteousness.’ … (observe the ASV [American Standard Version] mg. [marginal note], ‘accounted righteous’).
But ‘reckoned’ and ‘accounted’ expose Paul’s thought to misinterpretation by suggesting a legal fiction which God adopted to escape the contradiction between his acceptance of sinners and his own righteousness and justice.
On the other hand, Paul’s term, in the passive, cannot be translated by ‘made righteous’ without misrepresenting him. In baptism he had ‘died with Christ’ to sin. By this definition the Christian is a person who does not sin! And yet Paul does not say that he is sinless, but that he must not sin. … This laid him open to a charge of self contradiction; sinless and yet not sinless, righteous and unrighteous, just and unjust at the same time. Some interpreters have labeled it ‘paradox,’ but such a superficial dismissal of the problem is religiously barren and worse than useless.
The extreme difficulty of understanding Paul on this matter has led to a distinction between ‘justification’ and ‘sanctification,’ which obscures Paul’s urgency to be now, at this very moment, what God in accepting him says he is: a righteous man in Christ Jesus. Justification is reduced to a forensic declaration by which God acquits and accepts the guilty criminal, and sanctification is viewed as a leisurely process of becoming the kind of person posited by that declaration. This makes perfection seem far less urgent than Paul conceived it, and permits the spiritual inertia of human nature to continue its habit of separating religion from ethics. To prevent this misunderstanding it is necessary to keep in mind the root meaning of ‘righteousness’ in δικαιοω and its cognates.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 484-485)
“… The Pharisees taught that the Torah was the life element of the Jews; all who obeyed would live, those who did not would die (Deut. [Deuteronomy] 30:11-20).” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 488-489)-20. With the Anointed I was crucified, and no more I live, rather the Anointed lives in me.
The life that I live now in flesh, I live them in the belief of Son [of] the Gods that loved me and delivered up [ומסר, OoMahÇahR] himself in my behalf [בעדי, Bah`ahDeeY].
“The danger was that Paul’s Gentile converts might claim freedom in Christ but reject the cross-bearing that made it possible. Lacking the momentum of moral discipline under Moses, which prepared Paul to make right use of his freedom, they might imagine that his dying and rising with Christ was a magical way of immortalizing themselves by sacramental absorption of Christ’s divine substance in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The church has always been tempted to take Paul’s crucifixion with Christ in a symbolic sense only, or as an experience at baptism which is sacramentally automatic. It has also been tempted to reduce Paul’s ‘faith’ to bare belief and assent to his doctrine, and to equate his ‘righteousness’ with a fictitious imputation by a Judge made lenient by Christ’s death.-21. I do not nullify [מבטל, MeBahTayL] [את, ’ehTh (indicator of direct object; no English equivalent)] mercy [of] Gods;
Against these caricatures of ‘justification by faith,’ Paul’s whole life and all his letters are a standing protest. He never allows us to forget that to be crucified with Christ is to share the motives, the purposes, and the way of life that led Jesus to the Cross; to take up vicariously the burden of the sins of others, forgiving and loving instead of condemning them; to make oneself the slave of every man; to create unity and harmony by reconciling man to God and man to his fellow men; to pray without ceasing ‘Thy will be done’; to consign one’s life to God, walking by faith where one cannot see; and finally to leave this earth with the prayer ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’
… When Christ the Spirit came to live in Paul … Paul was guided at each step, in each new circumstance, to answer for himself the question: What would Jesus have me do? And the answer was always this: Rely solely on God’s grace through Christ, count others better than yourself, and make yourself everybody’s slave after the manner of the Son of God who loved you and gave himself for you.
… The phrase εν σαρκι [en sarki] … means, lit. [literally], in the flesh. Someday – Paul hoped it would be soon – this would be changed into a body like that of the risen Christ, which belonged to the realm of Spirit.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 490-493)
“Christ lives in me: The perfection of Christian life is expressed here … it reshapes human beings anew, supplying them with a new principle of activity on the ontological1 level of their very beings.” (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 1990, TNJBC p. 785)
is not if [it] is possible to become righteous upon hand of the Instruction, see, that the Anointed died to nothing [לשוא, LahShahVe’]?
“It is not I, he says, who am nullifying the grace of God by abandoning the law which is his grace-gift to Israel, but those who insist on retaining that law in addition to the grace which he has now manifested in Christ.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 495)Footnotes 1 Ontological - relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being
An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible
2023.06.02 17:41 bikingfencer Galatians - introductions through chapter 2
Galatians
From The Interpreters’ Bible:
"Introduction
-1. Occasion and Purpose
Conservative preachers were persuading the Galatians that faith was not enough to make sure of God’s kingdom. Besides believing that Jesus was the Messiah, one must join the Jewish nation, observe the laws and customs of Moses, and refuse to eat with the Gentiles (2:11-14, 4:10). One must have Christ and Moses, faith and law. Paul insisted that it must be either Moses or Christ. (5:2-6). [Mind you, the congregations were literally segregated at meals according to whether the male members’ foreskins were circumcised; compare with the trouble regarding the allocations between the two groups of widows reported in Acts.]
Not content with raising doubts concerning the sufficiency of Christ, the Judaizers attacked Paul’s credentials. They said that he had not been one of the original apostles, and that he was distorting the gospel which Peter and John and James the Lord’s brother were preaching. They declared that his proposal to abandon the law of Moses was contrary to the teaching of Jesus, and they insinuated that he had taken this radical step to please men with the specious promise of cheap admission to God’s kingdom (1:10). If he were allowed to have his way, men would believe and be baptized but keep on sinning, deluding themselves that the Christian sacraments would save them. Claiming to rise above Moses and the prophets, they would debase faith into magic, liberty into license, making Christ the abettor of sin (2:17). The Judaizers were alarmed lest Paul bring down God’s wrath and delay the kingdom. They had not shared the emotion of a catastrophic conversion like Paul’s, and they found it hard to understand when he talked about a new power which overcame sin and brought righteousness better than the best that the law could produce.
Another party attacked Paul from the opposite side. Influenced by the pagan notion that religion transcends ethics and is separable from morality, they wanted to abandon the Old Testament and its prophetic insights. They could not see how Paul’s demand to crucify one’s old sinful nature and produce the fruit of the Spirit could be anything but a new form of slavery to law (2:19-20, 5:14, 2-24). They accused him of rebuilding the old legalism, and some said that he was still preaching circumcision (2:18; 5:11). Whereas the Judaizers rejected Paul’s gospel because they believed it contrary to the teaching of the original apostles, these antilegalists felt that he was so subservient to the apostles as to endanger the freedom of the Christian Movement.
Actually Paul had risen above both legalism and sacramentarianism ... his faith was qualitatively different from mere assent to a creed (5:6). He was living on the plateau of the Spirit, where life was so free that men needed no law to say ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not’ (5:22-24). But this rarefied atmosphere was hard to breathe, and neither side could understand him. The conservatives were watching for moral lapses… and the radicals blamed him for slowing the progress of Christianity by refusing to cut it loose from Judaism and its nationalistic religious imperialism.” (Stamm, TIB 1953, vol. X pp. 430)
Paul’s defense of his gospel and apostleship was the more difficult because he had to maintain his right to go directly to Christ without the mediation of Peter and the rest, but had to do it in such a way as not to split the church and break the continuity of his gospel with the Old Testament and the apostolic traditions about Jesus and his teaching. …
To this end Paul gave an account of his relations with the Jerusalem church during the seventeen years that followed his conversion (1:11-2:14). Instead of going to Jerusalem he went to Arabia, presumably to preach (1:17). After a time he returned to Damascus, and only three years later did he go to see Peter. Even then he stayed only fifteen days and saw no other apostle except James the Lord’s brother (1:18-20). Then he left for Syria and Cilicia, and not until another fourteen years had passed did he visit Jerusalem again. This time it was in response to a revelation from his Lord, and not to a summons by the authorities in the Hoy City.
Paul emphasizes that neither visit implied an admission that his gospel needed the apostolic stamp to make it valid. His purpose was to get the apostles to treat the uncircumcised Gentile Christians as their equals in the church (2:2). Making a test case of Titus, he won his point (2:3-5). The apostles agreed that a Gentile could join the church by faith without first becoming a member of the synagogue by circumcision. … They … recognize[d] that his mission to the Gentiles was on the same footing as theirs to the Jews – only he was to remember the poor (2:7-10). So far was Paul from being subordinated that when Peter came to Antioch and wavered on eating with the Gentile Christians, Paul did not hesitate to rebuke him in public (2:11-14). (Stamm, 1953, TIB vol. X pp. 430-431)
Paul’s defense of his apostolic commission involved the question: What is the seat of authority in religion? A Jewish rabbi debating the application of the kosher laws would quote the authority of Moses and the fathers in support of his view. Jewish tradition declared that God delivered the law to Moses, and Moses to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the men of the Great Synagogue, and that they had handed it down through an unbroken rabbinical succession to the present. If Paul had been a Christian rabbi, he could have treated the Sermon on the Mount as a new law from a new Sinai, which God had delivered to Jesus, and Jesus to Peter, and Peter to Paul, and Paul to Timothy and Titus, and so on through an unbroken apostolic succession until the second coming of Christ. Instead of taking his problems directly to this Lord in prayer, he would ask, ‘What does Peter say that Jesus did and said about it?’ And if Peter or the other apostles happened not to have a pronouncement from Jesus on a given subject, they would need to apply some other saying to his by reasoning from analogy. This would turn the gospel into a system of legalism, with casuistry for its guide, making Jesus a second Moses – a prophet who lived and died in a dim and distant past and left only a written code to guide the future. Jesus would not have been the living Lord, personally present in his church in every age as the daily companion of his members. That is why Paul insisted that Christ must not be confused or combined with Moses, but must be all in all.
The Judaizers assumed that God had revealed to Moses all of his will, and nothing but this will, for all time, changeless and unchangeable; and that death was the penalty for tampering with it. The rest of the scriptures and the oral tradition which developed and applied them were believed to be implicit in the Pentateuch as an oak in an acorn. The first duty of the teacher was to transmit the Torah exactly as he had received it from the men of old. Only then might he give his own opinion, which must never contradict but always be validated by the authority of the past. When authorities differed, the teacher must labor to reconcile them. Elaborate rules of interpretation were devised to help decide cases not covered by specific provision in the scripture. These rules made it possible to apply a changeless revelation to changing conditions, but they also presented a dilemma. The interpreter might modernize by reading into his Bible ideas that were not in the minds of its writers, or he might quench his own creative insights by fearing to go beyond what was written. Those who modernized the Old Testament were beset with the perils of incipient Gnosticism, while those who, like the Sadducees, accepted nothing but the written Torah could misuse it to obstruct social and religious progress. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 431-432)
To submit to circumcision would have betrayed the truth of the gospel because it contradicted the principle that all is of grace and grace is for all (2:5). Perpetuated in the church of Christ, the kosher code and other Jewish customs would have destroyed the fellowship. Few things could have hurt the feelings and heaped more indignity upon the Gentiles than the spiritual snobbery of refusing to eat with them.
The tragedy of division was proportional to the sincerity of men’s scruples. The Jews were brought up to believe that eating with Gentiles was a flagrant violation of God’s revealed will which would bring down his terrible wrath. How strongly both sides felt appears in Paul’s account of the stormy conference at Jerusalem and the angry dispute that followed it at Antioch (2:1-14). Paul claimed that refusal to eat with a Gentile brother would deny that the grace of Christ was sufficient to make him worthy of the kingdom. If all men were sons of God through Christ, there could be no classes of Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female (3:26-28). What mattered was neither circumcision not uncircumcision, but only faith and a new act of creation by the Spirit (5:6; 6”15). (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
Church unity was essential to the success of Christian missions. Friction between Aramaic and Greek-speaking Jewish Christians in Palestine had to be eliminated (Acts 6:1). The death of Stephen and a special vision to Peter were required to convince the conservatives of the propriety of admitting the Gentiles on an equality with the Jews; and even Peter was amazed that God had given them the same gift of the Spirit (Act 11: 1-18). This hesitation was potentially fatal to the spread of Christianity beyond Palestine. Many Gentiles had been attracted by the pure monotheism and high morality of Judaism but were not willing to break with their native culture by submitting to the painful initiatory rite and social stigma of being a Jew…. Had the church kept circumcision as a requirement for membership, it could not have freed itself from Jewish nationalism.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
III. Some Characteristics of Paul’s Thinking
… “the law” of which Paul is speaking does not coincide with “law” in a twentieth-century state with representative government. His Greek word was νομος [nomos], an inadequate translation of the Hebrew “Torah,” which included much more than “law” as we use the term. [When “תורה ThORaH” appears in the text I translate it as “Instruction” – its literal definition - capitalized.] Torah was teaching on any subject concerning the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. Since the Jews did not divide life into two compartments labeled “religious” and “secular,” their law covered both their spiritual and their civil life. Nor did Paul and his fellow Jews think in terms of “nature” and the “natural law.” They believed that everything that happened was God’s doing, directly or by his permission. The messiah was expected to restore the ancient theocracy with its power over both civil and religious affairs.
The Gentiles too were accustomed to state regulation of religion and priestly control of civil affairs. The Greek city-states had always managed the relations of their citizens with the gods, and Alexander the Great prepared the way for religious imperialism. When he invaded Asia, he consolidated his power by the ancient Oriental idea that the ruler was a god or a son of God. His successors, in their endless wars over the fragments of his empire, adopted the same device. Posing as “savior-gods,” they liberated their victims by enslaving them. The Romans did likewise, believing that the safety of their empire depended upon correct legal relations with the gods who had founded it. … Each city had its temple dedicated to the emperor, and its patriotic priests to see that everyone burned incense before his statue. Having done this, the worshiper was free under Roman ‘tolerance’ to adopt any other legal religion. … Whether salvation was offered in the name of the ancient gods of the Orient, or of Greece, or of the emperor of Rome, or of Yahweh the theocratic king of the Jews, the favor of the deity was thought to depend upon obedience to his law.
One did not therefore have to be a Jew to be a legalist in religion. … Since Paul’s first converts were drawn from Gentiles who had been attending the synagogues, it is easy to see how Gentile Christians could be a zealous to add Moses to Christ as the most conservative Jew.
This is what gave the Judaizers their hold in Galatia. The rivalry between the synagogue, which was engaged in winning men to worship the God of Moses, and the church, which was preaching the God who had revealed himself in Christ Jesus, was bound to raise the issue of legalism and stir up doubts about the sufficiency of Christ.
Gentile and Jewish Christians alike would regard Paul’s preaching of salvation apart from the merit acquired by obedience to law as a violently revolutionary doctrine. Fidelity to his declaration of religious independence from all mediating rulers and priesthoods required a spiritual maturity of which most who heard his preaching were not yet capable. … Paul’s gospel has always been in danger of being stifled by those who would treat the teachings of Jesus as laws to be enforced by a hierarchy. (Stamm, TIB 1953, X pp. 434-435)
V. Environment of Paul’s Churches in Galatia
The conclusion concerning the destination of the epistle does not involve the essentials of its religious message, but it does affect our understanding of certain passages, such as 3:1 and 41:12, 20.
From the earliest times that part of the world had been swept by the cross tides of migration and struggle for empire. The third millennium found the Hittites in possession. In the second millennium the Greeks and Phrygians came spilling over from Europe, and in the first millennium the remaining power of the Hittites was swept away by Babylon and Persia. Then came the turn of the Asiatic tide into Europe, only to be swept back again by Alexander the Great. But the Greek cities with which he and his successors dotted the map of Asia were like anthills destined to be leveled by Oriental reaction.
About 278 B.C. new turmoil came with the Gauls, who were shunted from Greece and crossed into Asia to overrun Phrygia. Gradually the Greek kings succeeded in pushing them up into the central highlands, where they established themselves in the region of Ancyra. Thus located, they constituted a perpetually disturbing element, raiding the Greek cities and furnishing soldiers now to one, and now to another of the rival kings. Then in 121 B.C. came the Romans to 'set free' Galatia by making it a part of their own Empire. By 40 B.C. there were three kingdoms, with capitals at Ancyra, Pisidian Antioch, and Iconium. Four years later Lycaonia and Galatia were given to Amyntas the king of Pisidia. He added Pamphylia and part of Cilicia to his kingdom. But he was killed in 25 B.C., and the Romans made his dominion into the province of Galatia, which was thus much larger than the territory inhabited by the Gauls. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 437-438)
War and slavery, poverty, disease, and famine made life hard and uncertain. In religion and philosophy men were confused by this meeting of East and West. But man’s extremity was Paul’s opportunity. The soil of the centuries had been plowed and harrowed for his new, revolutionary gospel of grace and freedom.
Not all, however, were ready for this freedom. The old religions with prestige and authority seemed safer. Most Jews preferred Moses, and among the Gentiles the hold of the Great Mother Cybele of Phrygia was not easily shaken. Paul’s converts, bringing their former ideas and customs with them, were all too ready to reshape his gospel into a combination of Christ with their ancient laws and rituals. The old religions were especially tenacious in the small villages, whose inhabitants spoke the native languages and were inaccessible to the Greek-speaking Paul. To this gravitational attraction of the indigenous cults was added the more sophisticated syncretism of the city dwellers, pulling Paul’s churches away from his gospel when the moral demands of his faith and the responsibilities of his freedom became irksome. This was the root of the trouble in Galatia. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 438)
VI. Date and Place of Writing
Some consider it the earliest of Paul’s extant letters and place it in 49 … In support of this date it is said that Paul, who had come from Perga by boat, was met by messengers from Galatia, who had taken the shorter route by land. They reported the disturbance which had arisen in his churches soon after his departure. He could not go back immediately to straighten things out in person, because he saw that he would have to settle the matter first in Jerusalem, whence the troublemakers had come. So he wrote a letter.
But … [w]e do not know that the trouble in Galatia was stirred up by emissaries from the church in Jerusalem … Moreover, this solution overlooks the crux of the issue between Paul and the legalists. His contention was that neither circumcision nor the observance of any other law was the basis of salvation, but only faith in God’s grace through Christ. … On the matter of kosher customs, as on every other question, he directed men to the mind and Spirit of Christ, and not to law, either Mosaic or apostolic. That mind was a Spirit of edification which abstained voluntarily from all that defiled or offended.
We may say that the situation [in Galatia] was different – that in Macedonia it was persecution from outside by Jews who were trying to prevent Paul’s preaching, whereas in Galatia it was trouble inside the church created by legalistic Christians who were proposing to change his teaching; that in one case the issue was justification by faith, and in the other faithfulness while waiting for the day of the Lord.
The letter to the Romans, written during the three months in Greece mentioned in Acts 20:2-3, is our earliest commentary on Galatians. In it the relation between the law and the gospel is set forth in the perspective of Paul’s further experience. The brevity and storminess of Galatians gives way to a more complete and calmly reasoned presentation of his gospel. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 438 - 439)
At Corinth, as in Galatia, Paul had to defend his right to be an apostle against opponents heartless enough to turn against him the cruel belief that physical illness was a sign of God’s disfavor … and they charged him with being a crafty man-pleaser … He exhorts his converts to put away childish things and grow up in faith, hope and love…
Most childish of all were the factions incipient in Galatia, and actual in Corinth … He abandoned the kosher customs and all other artificial distinctions between Jews and Gentiles and laid the emphasis where it belonged – upon the necessity for God’s people to establish and maintain a higher morality and spiritual life… He substituted a catholic spirit for partisan loyalties ... (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 440-441)
VII. Authorship and Attestation
If Paul wrote anything that goes under his name, it was Galatians, Romans, and the letters to Corinth. … F.C. Baur and his followers tried to show that the letters ascribed to Paul were the product of a second-century conflict between a Judaist party and the liberals in the church, and that they were written by Paulinists who used his name and authority to promote their own ideas.
[But] the earliest mention of the epistle by name occurs in the canon of the Gnostic heretic Marcion (ca. [approximately] 144). He put it first in his list of ten letters of Paul. A generation later the orthodox Muratorian canon (ca. 185) listed it as the sixth of Paul’s letters. … While the first explicit reference to Galatians as a letter of Paul is as late as the middle of the second century … the authors of Ephesians and the Gospel of John knew it; and Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians quoted it. Revelation, I Peter, Hebrew, I Clement, and Ignatius show acquaintance with it; and there is evidence that the writer of the Epistle of James knew Galatians, as did the authors of II Peter and the Pastoral epistle, and Justin Martyr and Athenagoras. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 441-442)
VIII. Text and Transmission
Although the epistle was composed neither carelessly nor hastily, the anxiety and emotional stress under which Paul dictated his cascading thoughts have produced some involved and obscure sentences … and a number of abrupt transitions… These have been a standing invitation to scribal clarification. … Paul’s debate with his critics takes the form of a diatribe, which is characterized by quotations from past or anticipated objectors and rapid-fire answers to them. Paul did not use quotation marks, and this accounts for the difficulty in 2:14-15 of deciding where his speech to Peter ends. The numerous allusions to person and places, events and teachings, with which Paul assumed his readers to be acquainted, are another source of difficulty. All theses factors operated to produce the numerous variations in the text of Galatians." (Stamm, 1953, TIB p. 442)
From Adam Clarke’s Commentaryi :
"The authenticity of this epistle is ably vindicated by Dr. Paley: the principal part of his arguments I shall here introduce …
'Section I.
As Judea was the scene of the Christian history; as the author and preachers of Christianity were Jews; as the religion itself acknowledged and was founded upon the Jewish religion, in contra distinction to every other religion, then professed among mankind: it was not to be wondered at, that some its teachers should carry it out in the world rather as a sect and modification of Judaism, than as a separate original revelation; or that they should invite their proselytes to those observances in which they lived themselves. ... I … think that those pretensions of Judaism were much more likely to be insisted upon, whilst the Jews continued a nation, than after their fall and dispersion; while Jerusalem and the temple stood, than after the destruction brought upon them by the Roman arms, the fatal cessation of the sacrifice and the priesthood, the humiliating loss of their country, and, with it, of the great rites and symbols of their institution. It should seem, therefore, from the nature of the subject and the situation of the parties, that this controversy was carried on in the interval between the preaching of Christianity to the Gentiles, and the invasion of Titus: and that our present epistle ... must be referred to the same period.
… the epistle supposes that certain designing adherents of the Jewish law had crept into the churches of Galatia; and had been endeavouring, and but too successfully, to persuade the Galatic converts, that they had been taught the new religion imperfectly, and at second hand; that the founder of their church himself possessed only an inferior and disputed commission, the seat of truth and authority being in the apostles and elders of Jerusalem; moreover, that whatever he might profess among them, he had himself, at other times and in other places, given way to the doctrine of circumcision. The epistle is unintelligible without supposing all this. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 361)
Section VII.
This epistle goes farther than any of St. Paul’s epistles; for it avows in direct terms the supersession of the Jewish law, as an instrument of salvation, even to the Jews themselves. Not only were the Gentiles exempt from its authority, but even the Jews were no longer either to place any dependency upon it, or consider themselves as subject to it on a religious account. "Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto faith which should afterward be revealed: wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but, after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." (Chap. [chapter] iii. 23-25) This was undoubtedly spoken of Jews, and to Jews. … What then should be the conduct of a Jew (for such St. Paul was) who preached this doctrine? To be consistent with himself, either he would no longer comply, in his own person, with the directions of the law; or, if he did comply, it would be some other reason than any confidence which he placed in its efficacy, as a religious institution. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II pp. 366-367)
Preface
The religion of the ancient Galatae was extremely corrupt and superstitious: and they are said to have worshipped the mother of the gods, under the name of Agdistis; and to have offered human sacrifices of the prisoners they took in war.
They are mentioned by historians as a tall and valiant people, who went nearly naked; and used for arms only a sword and buckler. The impetuosity of their attack is stated to have been irresistible…’” (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 369)
From The New Jerome Biblical Commentaryii
"Introduction
The Galatai, originally an Indo-Aryan tribe of Asia, were related to the Celts or Gauls (“who in their own language are called Keltae, but in ours Galli”) ... About 279 BC some of them invaded the lower Danube area and Macedonia, descending even into the Gk [Greek] peninsula. After they were stopped by the Aetolians in 278, a remnant fled across the Hellespont into Asia Minor …
Occasion and Purpose
… He … stoutly maintained that the gospel he had preached, without the observance of the Mosaic practices, was the only correct view of Christianity … Gal [Galatians] thus became the first expose` of Paul’s teaching about justification by grace through faith apart from deeds prescribed by the law; it is Paul’s manifesto about Christian freedom.
... Who were the agitators in Galatia? … they are best identified as Jewish Christians of Palestine, of an even stricter Jewish background than Peter, Paul, or James, or even of the ‘false brethren' (2:4) of Jerusalem, whom Paul had encountered there. (The account in Acts 15:5 would identify the latter as ‘believers who had belonged to the sect of the Pharisees.’) … The agitators in Galatia were Judaizers, who insisted not on the observance of the whole Mosaic law, but at least on circumcision and the observance of some other Jewish practices. Paul for this reason warned the Gentile Christians of Galatia that their fascination with ‘circumcision’ would oblige them to keep ‘the whole law’ (5:3). The agitators may have been syncretists of some sort: Christians of Jewish perhaps Essene, background, affected by some Anatolian influences. … (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 1990, TNJBC pp. 780-781) END NOTES
i The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The text carefully printed from the most correct copies of the present Authorized Version. Including the marginal readings and parallel texts. With a Commentary and Critical Notes. Designed as a help to a better understanding of the sacred writings. By Adam Clarke, LL.D. F.S.A. M.R.I.A. With a complete alphabetical index. Royal Octavo Stereotype Edition. Vol. II. [Vol. VI together with the O.T.] New York, Published by J. Emory and B. Waugh, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the conference office, 13 Crosby-Street. J. Collord, Printer. 1831.
ii The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Union Theological Seminary, New York; NY, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. (emeritus) Catholic University of America, Washington, DC; Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (emeritus) The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC, with a foreword by His Eminence Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, S.J.; Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990
Chapter One
…
Chapter Two
-16. And since [וכיון, VeKhayVahN] that know, we, that [כי, KeeY] the ’ahDahM [“man”, Adam] is not made righteous in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction [Torah, law],
rather in belief of the Anointed [המשיח, HahMahSheeY-ahH, the Messiah, the Christ] YayShOo`ah [“Savior”, Jesus],
believe, also we, in Anointed YayShOo`ah,
to sake we are made righteous from inside belief in Anointed,
and not in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction,
that yes, in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction is not made righteous any [כל, KahL] flesh.
The life that I live now in flesh, I live them in the belief of Son [of] the Gods that loved me and delivered up [ומסר, OoMahÇahR] himself in my behalf [בעדי, Bah`ahDeeY].
is not if [it] is possible to become righteous upon hand of the Instruction, see, that the Anointed died to nothing [לשוא, LahShahVe’]?
An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible
submitted by bikingfencer to bikingfencer [link] [comments]
Paul can be forgiven for equating the destruction of Israel with the end of the world. Everyone who loves Israel wants to save her, the controversy between the Judaizers and Paul was over how to do it.The Gospel of Paul
From The Interpreters’ Bible:
"Introduction
-1. Occasion and Purpose
Conservative preachers were persuading the Galatians that faith was not enough to make sure of God’s kingdom. Besides believing that Jesus was the Messiah, one must join the Jewish nation, observe the laws and customs of Moses, and refuse to eat with the Gentiles (2:11-14, 4:10). One must have Christ and Moses, faith and law. Paul insisted that it must be either Moses or Christ. (5:2-6). [Mind you, the congregations were literally segregated at meals according to whether the male members’ foreskins were circumcised; compare with the trouble regarding the allocations between the two groups of widows reported in Acts.]
Not content with raising doubts concerning the sufficiency of Christ, the Judaizers attacked Paul’s credentials. They said that he had not been one of the original apostles, and that he was distorting the gospel which Peter and John and James the Lord’s brother were preaching. They declared that his proposal to abandon the law of Moses was contrary to the teaching of Jesus, and they insinuated that he had taken this radical step to please men with the specious promise of cheap admission to God’s kingdom (1:10). If he were allowed to have his way, men would believe and be baptized but keep on sinning, deluding themselves that the Christian sacraments would save them. Claiming to rise above Moses and the prophets, they would debase faith into magic, liberty into license, making Christ the abettor of sin (2:17). The Judaizers were alarmed lest Paul bring down God’s wrath and delay the kingdom. They had not shared the emotion of a catastrophic conversion like Paul’s, and they found it hard to understand when he talked about a new power which overcame sin and brought righteousness better than the best that the law could produce.
Another party attacked Paul from the opposite side. Influenced by the pagan notion that religion transcends ethics and is separable from morality, they wanted to abandon the Old Testament and its prophetic insights. They could not see how Paul’s demand to crucify one’s old sinful nature and produce the fruit of the Spirit could be anything but a new form of slavery to law (2:19-20, 5:14, 2-24). They accused him of rebuilding the old legalism, and some said that he was still preaching circumcision (2:18; 5:11). Whereas the Judaizers rejected Paul’s gospel because they believed it contrary to the teaching of the original apostles, these antilegalists felt that he was so subservient to the apostles as to endanger the freedom of the Christian Movement.
Actually Paul had risen above both legalism and sacramentarianism ... his faith was qualitatively different from mere assent to a creed (5:6). He was living on the plateau of the Spirit, where life was so free that men needed no law to say ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not’ (5:22-24). But this rarefied atmosphere was hard to breathe, and neither side could understand him. The conservatives were watching for moral lapses… and the radicals blamed him for slowing the progress of Christianity by refusing to cut it loose from Judaism and its nationalistic religious imperialism.” (Stamm, TIB 1953, vol. X pp. 430)
Paul’s defense of his gospel and apostleship was the more difficult because he had to maintain his right to go directly to Christ without the mediation of Peter and the rest, but had to do it in such a way as not to split the church and break the continuity of his gospel with the Old Testament and the apostolic traditions about Jesus and his teaching. …
To this end Paul gave an account of his relations with the Jerusalem church during the seventeen years that followed his conversion (1:11-2:14). Instead of going to Jerusalem he went to Arabia, presumably to preach (1:17). After a time he returned to Damascus, and only three years later did he go to see Peter. Even then he stayed only fifteen days and saw no other apostle except James the Lord’s brother (1:18-20). Then he left for Syria and Cilicia, and not until another fourteen years had passed did he visit Jerusalem again. This time it was in response to a revelation from his Lord, and not to a summons by the authorities in the Hoy City.
Paul emphasizes that neither visit implied an admission that his gospel needed the apostolic stamp to make it valid. His purpose was to get the apostles to treat the uncircumcised Gentile Christians as their equals in the church (2:2). Making a test case of Titus, he won his point (2:3-5). The apostles agreed that a Gentile could join the church by faith without first becoming a member of the synagogue by circumcision. … They … recognize[d] that his mission to the Gentiles was on the same footing as theirs to the Jews – only he was to remember the poor (2:7-10). So far was Paul from being subordinated that when Peter came to Antioch and wavered on eating with the Gentile Christians, Paul did not hesitate to rebuke him in public (2:11-14). (Stamm, 1953, TIB vol. X pp. 430-431)
Paul’s defense of his apostolic commission involved the question: What is the seat of authority in religion? A Jewish rabbi debating the application of the kosher laws would quote the authority of Moses and the fathers in support of his view. Jewish tradition declared that God delivered the law to Moses, and Moses to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the men of the Great Synagogue, and that they had handed it down through an unbroken rabbinical succession to the present. If Paul had been a Christian rabbi, he could have treated the Sermon on the Mount as a new law from a new Sinai, which God had delivered to Jesus, and Jesus to Peter, and Peter to Paul, and Paul to Timothy and Titus, and so on through an unbroken apostolic succession until the second coming of Christ. Instead of taking his problems directly to this Lord in prayer, he would ask, ‘What does Peter say that Jesus did and said about it?’ And if Peter or the other apostles happened not to have a pronouncement from Jesus on a given subject, they would need to apply some other saying to his by reasoning from analogy. This would turn the gospel into a system of legalism, with casuistry for its guide, making Jesus a second Moses – a prophet who lived and died in a dim and distant past and left only a written code to guide the future. Jesus would not have been the living Lord, personally present in his church in every age as the daily companion of his members. That is why Paul insisted that Christ must not be confused or combined with Moses, but must be all in all.
The Judaizers assumed that God had revealed to Moses all of his will, and nothing but this will, for all time, changeless and unchangeable; and that death was the penalty for tampering with it. The rest of the scriptures and the oral tradition which developed and applied them were believed to be implicit in the Pentateuch as an oak in an acorn. The first duty of the teacher was to transmit the Torah exactly as he had received it from the men of old. Only then might he give his own opinion, which must never contradict but always be validated by the authority of the past. When authorities differed, the teacher must labor to reconcile them. Elaborate rules of interpretation were devised to help decide cases not covered by specific provision in the scripture. These rules made it possible to apply a changeless revelation to changing conditions, but they also presented a dilemma. The interpreter might modernize by reading into his Bible ideas that were not in the minds of its writers, or he might quench his own creative insights by fearing to go beyond what was written. Those who modernized the Old Testament were beset with the perils of incipient Gnosticism, while those who, like the Sadducees, accepted nothing but the written Torah could misuse it to obstruct social and religious progress. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 431-432)
To submit to circumcision would have betrayed the truth of the gospel because it contradicted the principle that all is of grace and grace is for all (2:5). Perpetuated in the church of Christ, the kosher code and other Jewish customs would have destroyed the fellowship. Few things could have hurt the feelings and heaped more indignity upon the Gentiles than the spiritual snobbery of refusing to eat with them.
The tragedy of division was proportional to the sincerity of men’s scruples. The Jews were brought up to believe that eating with Gentiles was a flagrant violation of God’s revealed will which would bring down his terrible wrath. How strongly both sides felt appears in Paul’s account of the stormy conference at Jerusalem and the angry dispute that followed it at Antioch (2:1-14). Paul claimed that refusal to eat with a Gentile brother would deny that the grace of Christ was sufficient to make him worthy of the kingdom. If all men were sons of God through Christ, there could be no classes of Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female (3:26-28). What mattered was neither circumcision not uncircumcision, but only faith and a new act of creation by the Spirit (5:6; 6”15). (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
Church unity was essential to the success of Christian missions. Friction between Aramaic and Greek-speaking Jewish Christians in Palestine had to be eliminated (Acts 6:1). The death of Stephen and a special vision to Peter were required to convince the conservatives of the propriety of admitting the Gentiles on an equality with the Jews; and even Peter was amazed that God had given them the same gift of the Spirit (Act 11: 1-18). This hesitation was potentially fatal to the spread of Christianity beyond Palestine. Many Gentiles had been attracted by the pure monotheism and high morality of Judaism but were not willing to break with their native culture by submitting to the painful initiatory rite and social stigma of being a Jew…. Had the church kept circumcision as a requirement for membership, it could not have freed itself from Jewish nationalism.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 433)
III. Some Characteristics of Paul’s Thinking
… “the law” of which Paul is speaking does not coincide with “law” in a twentieth-century state with representative government. His Greek word was νομος [nomos], an inadequate translation of the Hebrew “Torah,” which included much more than “law” as we use the term. [When “תורה ThORaH” appears in the text I translate it as “Instruction” – its literal definition - capitalized.] Torah was teaching on any subject concerning the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. Since the Jews did not divide life into two compartments labeled “religious” and “secular,” their law covered both their spiritual and their civil life. Nor did Paul and his fellow Jews think in terms of “nature” and the “natural law.” They believed that everything that happened was God’s doing, directly or by his permission. The messiah was expected to restore the ancient theocracy with its power over both civil and religious affairs.
The Gentiles too were accustomed to state regulation of religion and priestly control of civil affairs. The Greek city-states had always managed the relations of their citizens with the gods, and Alexander the Great prepared the way for religious imperialism. When he invaded Asia, he consolidated his power by the ancient Oriental idea that the ruler was a god or a son of God. His successors, in their endless wars over the fragments of his empire, adopted the same device. Posing as “savior-gods,” they liberated their victims by enslaving them. The Romans did likewise, believing that the safety of their empire depended upon correct legal relations with the gods who had founded it. … Each city had its temple dedicated to the emperor, and its patriotic priests to see that everyone burned incense before his statue. Having done this, the worshiper was free under Roman ‘tolerance’ to adopt any other legal religion. … Whether salvation was offered in the name of the ancient gods of the Orient, or of Greece, or of the emperor of Rome, or of Yahweh the theocratic king of the Jews, the favor of the deity was thought to depend upon obedience to his law.
One did not therefore have to be a Jew to be a legalist in religion. … Since Paul’s first converts were drawn from Gentiles who had been attending the synagogues, it is easy to see how Gentile Christians could be a zealous to add Moses to Christ as the most conservative Jew.
This is what gave the Judaizers their hold in Galatia. The rivalry between the synagogue, which was engaged in winning men to worship the God of Moses, and the church, which was preaching the God who had revealed himself in Christ Jesus, was bound to raise the issue of legalism and stir up doubts about the sufficiency of Christ.
Gentile and Jewish Christians alike would regard Paul’s preaching of salvation apart from the merit acquired by obedience to law as a violently revolutionary doctrine. Fidelity to his declaration of religious independence from all mediating rulers and priesthoods required a spiritual maturity of which most who heard his preaching were not yet capable. … Paul’s gospel has always been in danger of being stifled by those who would treat the teachings of Jesus as laws to be enforced by a hierarchy. (Stamm, TIB 1953, X pp. 434-435)
V. Environment of Paul’s Churches in Galatia
The conclusion concerning the destination of the epistle does not involve the essentials of its religious message, but it does affect our understanding of certain passages, such as 3:1 and 41:12, 20.
From the earliest times that part of the world had been swept by the cross tides of migration and struggle for empire. The third millennium found the Hittites in possession. In the second millennium the Greeks and Phrygians came spilling over from Europe, and in the first millennium the remaining power of the Hittites was swept away by Babylon and Persia. Then came the turn of the Asiatic tide into Europe, only to be swept back again by Alexander the Great. But the Greek cities with which he and his successors dotted the map of Asia were like anthills destined to be leveled by Oriental reaction.
About 278 B.C. new turmoil came with the Gauls, who were shunted from Greece and crossed into Asia to overrun Phrygia. Gradually the Greek kings succeeded in pushing them up into the central highlands, where they established themselves in the region of Ancyra. Thus located, they constituted a perpetually disturbing element, raiding the Greek cities and furnishing soldiers now to one, and now to another of the rival kings. Then in 121 B.C. came the Romans to 'set free' Galatia by making it a part of their own Empire. By 40 B.C. there were three kingdoms, with capitals at Ancyra, Pisidian Antioch, and Iconium. Four years later Lycaonia and Galatia were given to Amyntas the king of Pisidia. He added Pamphylia and part of Cilicia to his kingdom. But he was killed in 25 B.C., and the Romans made his dominion into the province of Galatia, which was thus much larger than the territory inhabited by the Gauls. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 437-438)
War and slavery, poverty, disease, and famine made life hard and uncertain. In religion and philosophy men were confused by this meeting of East and West. But man’s extremity was Paul’s opportunity. The soil of the centuries had been plowed and harrowed for his new, revolutionary gospel of grace and freedom.
Not all, however, were ready for this freedom. The old religions with prestige and authority seemed safer. Most Jews preferred Moses, and among the Gentiles the hold of the Great Mother Cybele of Phrygia was not easily shaken. Paul’s converts, bringing their former ideas and customs with them, were all too ready to reshape his gospel into a combination of Christ with their ancient laws and rituals. The old religions were especially tenacious in the small villages, whose inhabitants spoke the native languages and were inaccessible to the Greek-speaking Paul. To this gravitational attraction of the indigenous cults was added the more sophisticated syncretism of the city dwellers, pulling Paul’s churches away from his gospel when the moral demands of his faith and the responsibilities of his freedom became irksome. This was the root of the trouble in Galatia. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 438)
VI. Date and Place of Writing
Some consider it the earliest of Paul’s extant letters and place it in 49 … In support of this date it is said that Paul, who had come from Perga by boat, was met by messengers from Galatia, who had taken the shorter route by land. They reported the disturbance which had arisen in his churches soon after his departure. He could not go back immediately to straighten things out in person, because he saw that he would have to settle the matter first in Jerusalem, whence the troublemakers had come. So he wrote a letter.
But … [w]e do not know that the trouble in Galatia was stirred up by emissaries from the church in Jerusalem … Moreover, this solution overlooks the crux of the issue between Paul and the legalists. His contention was that neither circumcision nor the observance of any other law was the basis of salvation, but only faith in God’s grace through Christ. … On the matter of kosher customs, as on every other question, he directed men to the mind and Spirit of Christ, and not to law, either Mosaic or apostolic. That mind was a Spirit of edification which abstained voluntarily from all that defiled or offended.
We may say that the situation [in Galatia] was different – that in Macedonia it was persecution from outside by Jews who were trying to prevent Paul’s preaching, whereas in Galatia it was trouble inside the church created by legalistic Christians who were proposing to change his teaching; that in one case the issue was justification by faith, and in the other faithfulness while waiting for the day of the Lord.
The letter to the Romans, written during the three months in Greece mentioned in Acts 20:2-3, is our earliest commentary on Galatians. In it the relation between the law and the gospel is set forth in the perspective of Paul’s further experience. The brevity and storminess of Galatians gives way to a more complete and calmly reasoned presentation of his gospel. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 438 - 439)
At Corinth, as in Galatia, Paul had to defend his right to be an apostle against opponents heartless enough to turn against him the cruel belief that physical illness was a sign of God’s disfavor … and they charged him with being a crafty man-pleaser … He exhorts his converts to put away childish things and grow up in faith, hope and love…
Most childish of all were the factions incipient in Galatia, and actual in Corinth … He abandoned the kosher customs and all other artificial distinctions between Jews and Gentiles and laid the emphasis where it belonged – upon the necessity for God’s people to establish and maintain a higher morality and spiritual life… He substituted a catholic spirit for partisan loyalties ... (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 440-441)
VII. Authorship and Attestation
If Paul wrote anything that goes under his name, it was Galatians, Romans, and the letters to Corinth. … F.C. Baur and his followers tried to show that the letters ascribed to Paul were the product of a second-century conflict between a Judaist party and the liberals in the church, and that they were written by Paulinists who used his name and authority to promote their own ideas.
[But] the earliest mention of the epistle by name occurs in the canon of the Gnostic heretic Marcion (ca. [approximately] 144). He put it first in his list of ten letters of Paul. A generation later the orthodox Muratorian canon (ca. 185) listed it as the sixth of Paul’s letters. … While the first explicit reference to Galatians as a letter of Paul is as late as the middle of the second century … the authors of Ephesians and the Gospel of John knew it; and Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians quoted it. Revelation, I Peter, Hebrew, I Clement, and Ignatius show acquaintance with it; and there is evidence that the writer of the Epistle of James knew Galatians, as did the authors of II Peter and the Pastoral epistle, and Justin Martyr and Athenagoras. (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 441-442)
VIII. Text and Transmission
Although the epistle was composed neither carelessly nor hastily, the anxiety and emotional stress under which Paul dictated his cascading thoughts have produced some involved and obscure sentences … and a number of abrupt transitions… These have been a standing invitation to scribal clarification. … Paul’s debate with his critics takes the form of a diatribe, which is characterized by quotations from past or anticipated objectors and rapid-fire answers to them. Paul did not use quotation marks, and this accounts for the difficulty in 2:14-15 of deciding where his speech to Peter ends. The numerous allusions to person and places, events and teachings, with which Paul assumed his readers to be acquainted, are another source of difficulty. All theses factors operated to produce the numerous variations in the text of Galatians." (Stamm, 1953, TIB p. 442)
From Adam Clarke’s Commentaryi :
"The authenticity of this epistle is ably vindicated by Dr. Paley: the principal part of his arguments I shall here introduce …
'Section I.
As Judea was the scene of the Christian history; as the author and preachers of Christianity were Jews; as the religion itself acknowledged and was founded upon the Jewish religion, in contra distinction to every other religion, then professed among mankind: it was not to be wondered at, that some its teachers should carry it out in the world rather as a sect and modification of Judaism, than as a separate original revelation; or that they should invite their proselytes to those observances in which they lived themselves. ... I … think that those pretensions of Judaism were much more likely to be insisted upon, whilst the Jews continued a nation, than after their fall and dispersion; while Jerusalem and the temple stood, than after the destruction brought upon them by the Roman arms, the fatal cessation of the sacrifice and the priesthood, the humiliating loss of their country, and, with it, of the great rites and symbols of their institution. It should seem, therefore, from the nature of the subject and the situation of the parties, that this controversy was carried on in the interval between the preaching of Christianity to the Gentiles, and the invasion of Titus: and that our present epistle ... must be referred to the same period.
… the epistle supposes that certain designing adherents of the Jewish law had crept into the churches of Galatia; and had been endeavouring, and but too successfully, to persuade the Galatic converts, that they had been taught the new religion imperfectly, and at second hand; that the founder of their church himself possessed only an inferior and disputed commission, the seat of truth and authority being in the apostles and elders of Jerusalem; moreover, that whatever he might profess among them, he had himself, at other times and in other places, given way to the doctrine of circumcision. The epistle is unintelligible without supposing all this. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 361)
Section VII.
This epistle goes farther than any of St. Paul’s epistles; for it avows in direct terms the supersession of the Jewish law, as an instrument of salvation, even to the Jews themselves. Not only were the Gentiles exempt from its authority, but even the Jews were no longer either to place any dependency upon it, or consider themselves as subject to it on a religious account. "Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto faith which should afterward be revealed: wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but, after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." (Chap. [chapter] iii. 23-25) This was undoubtedly spoken of Jews, and to Jews. … What then should be the conduct of a Jew (for such St. Paul was) who preached this doctrine? To be consistent with himself, either he would no longer comply, in his own person, with the directions of the law; or, if he did comply, it would be some other reason than any confidence which he placed in its efficacy, as a religious institution. (Clarke, 1831, vol. II pp. 366-367)
Preface
The religion of the ancient Galatae was extremely corrupt and superstitious: and they are said to have worshipped the mother of the gods, under the name of Agdistis; and to have offered human sacrifices of the prisoners they took in war.
They are mentioned by historians as a tall and valiant people, who went nearly naked; and used for arms only a sword and buckler. The impetuosity of their attack is stated to have been irresistible…’” (Clarke, 1831, vol. II p. 369)
From The New Jerome Biblical Commentaryii
"Introduction
The Galatai, originally an Indo-Aryan tribe of Asia, were related to the Celts or Gauls (“who in their own language are called Keltae, but in ours Galli”) ... About 279 BC some of them invaded the lower Danube area and Macedonia, descending even into the Gk [Greek] peninsula. After they were stopped by the Aetolians in 278, a remnant fled across the Hellespont into Asia Minor …
Occasion and Purpose
… He … stoutly maintained that the gospel he had preached, without the observance of the Mosaic practices, was the only correct view of Christianity … Gal [Galatians] thus became the first expose` of Paul’s teaching about justification by grace through faith apart from deeds prescribed by the law; it is Paul’s manifesto about Christian freedom.
... Who were the agitators in Galatia? … they are best identified as Jewish Christians of Palestine, of an even stricter Jewish background than Peter, Paul, or James, or even of the ‘false brethren' (2:4) of Jerusalem, whom Paul had encountered there. (The account in Acts 15:5 would identify the latter as ‘believers who had belonged to the sect of the Pharisees.’) … The agitators in Galatia were Judaizers, who insisted not on the observance of the whole Mosaic law, but at least on circumcision and the observance of some other Jewish practices. Paul for this reason warned the Gentile Christians of Galatia that their fascination with ‘circumcision’ would oblige them to keep ‘the whole law’ (5:3). The agitators may have been syncretists of some sort: Christians of Jewish perhaps Essene, background, affected by some Anatolian influences. … (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 1990, TNJBC pp. 780-781) END NOTES
i The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The text carefully printed from the most correct copies of the present Authorized Version. Including the marginal readings and parallel texts. With a Commentary and Critical Notes. Designed as a help to a better understanding of the sacred writings. By Adam Clarke, LL.D. F.S.A. M.R.I.A. With a complete alphabetical index. Royal Octavo Stereotype Edition. Vol. II. [Vol. VI together with the O.T.] New York, Published by J. Emory and B. Waugh, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the conference office, 13 Crosby-Street. J. Collord, Printer. 1831.
ii The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Union Theological Seminary, New York; NY, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. (emeritus) Catholic University of America, Washington, DC; Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (emeritus) The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC, with a foreword by His Eminence Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, S.J.; Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990
Chapter One
…
…Tiding of [בשורת, BeSOoRahTh, Gospel] one
[verses 6-10]
……………………………………………
How [כיצד, KaYTsahD] was [היה, HahYaH] Shah`OoL [“Lender”, Saul, Paul] to become a Sent Forth [Apostle]
[verses 11 to end of chapter]
Chapter Two
…Sending forth of Shah’OoL required upon hands of the Sent Forth
[verses 1-10]
...…………………………………………
The YeHOo-DeeYM [“YHVH-ites”, Judeans] and the nations, righteous from inside belief
[verses 11 to end of chapter]
-16. And since [וכיון, VeKhayVahN] that know, we, that [כי, KeeY] the ’ahDahM [“man”, Adam] is not made righteous in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction [Torah, law],
rather in belief of the Anointed [המשיח, HahMahSheeY-ahH, the Messiah, the Christ] YayShOo`ah [“Savior”, Jesus],
believe, also we, in Anointed YayShOo`ah,
to sake we are made righteous from inside belief in Anointed,
and not in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction,
that yes, in realizing commandments [of] the Instruction is not made righteous any [כל, KahL] flesh.
“As a Pharisee, Paul had been taught that works of law were deeds done in obedience to the Torah, contrasted with things done according to one’s own will. The object of this obedience was to render oneself acceptable to God – to ‘justify’ oneself. Having found this impossible, Paul reinforced the evidence from his own experience by Ps. [Psalm] 143:2, where the sinner prays God not to enter into judgment with him because in God’s sight no man living is righteous. Into this passage from the LXX [The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible] Paul inserted ‘by works of law,’ and wrote σαρξ [sarx], ‘flesh,’ instead of ζων [zon], ‘one living.’ This quotation warns us against setting Paul’s salvation by grace over against Judaism in such a way as to obscure the fact that the Jews depended also upon God’s lovingkindness and tender mercies (I Kings 8:46; Job 10:14-15; 14:3-4; Prov. [Proverbs] 20:9; Eccl. [Ecclesiasticus] 7:20; Mal. [Malachi] 3:2; Dan. [Daniel] 9:18).” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 483)-19. I died according to [לגבי, LeGahBaY] the Instruction, because of [בגלל, BeeGLahL] the Instruction, in order [כדי, KeDaY] that I will live to God.
“Justified is a metaphor from the law court. The Greek verb is δικαιοω [dikaioo], the noun δικαιοσουνη [dikaiosoune’], the adjective δικαιος [dikaios]. The common root is δικ [dik] as in δεικνυμι [deiknumi], ‘point out,’ ‘show.’ The words formed on this root point to a norm or standard to which persons and things must conform in order to be ‘right.’ The English ‘right’ expresses the same idea, being derived from the Anglo-Saxon ‘richt,’ which means ‘straight,’ not crooked, ‘upright,’ not oblique. The verb δικαιοω means ‘I think it right.’ A man is δικαιος, ‘right’ when he conforms to the standard of acceptable character and conduct, and δικαιοσυνη, ‘righteousness,’ ‘justice,’ is the state or quality of this conformity. In the LXX these Greek words translate a group of Hebrew words formed on the root צדק [TsehDehQ], and in Latin the corresponding terms are justifico, justus, and justificatio. In all four languages the common idea is the norm by which persons and things are to be tested. Thus in Hebrew a wall is ‘righteous’ when it conforms to the plumb line, a man when he does God’s will.
From earliest boyhood Paul had tried to be righteous. But there came a terrible day when he said ‘I will covet’ to the law’s ‘Thou shalt not,’ and in that defiance he had fallen out of right relation to God and into the ‘wrath,’ where he ‘died’ spiritually… Thenceforth all his efforts, however strenuous, to get ‘right’ with God were thwarted by the weakness of his sinful human nature, the ‘flesh’ (σαρξ) [sarx]. That experience of futility led him to say that a man is not justified by works ‘of law.’” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 483)
[Actually Paul changed his point of view as a result of his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, not as a result of intellectual contemplation. His many failures hitherto had not led him to this conclusion. The description of Paul in the preceding paragraph is a fiction.]“In the eyes of the psalmists and rabbis this was blasphemously revolutionary. Resting on God’s covenant with Abraham, they held it axiomatic that the ‘righteous’ man who had conscientiously done his part deserved to be vindicated before a wicked world; otherwise God could not be righteous. … In Judaism God was thought of as forgiving only repentant sinners who followed their repentance with right living …
The theological expression for this conception of salvation is ‘justification by faith.’ Unfortunately this Latin word does not make plain Paul’s underlying religious experience, which was a change of status through faith from a wrong to a ‘right’ relationship with God… It conceals from the English reader the fact that the Greek word also means ‘righteousness.’ … (observe the ASV [American Standard Version] mg. [marginal note], ‘accounted righteous’).
But ‘reckoned’ and ‘accounted’ expose Paul’s thought to misinterpretation by suggesting a legal fiction which God adopted to escape the contradiction between his acceptance of sinners and his own righteousness and justice.
On the other hand, Paul’s term, in the passive, cannot be translated by ‘made righteous’ without misrepresenting him. In baptism he had ‘died with Christ’ to sin. By this definition the Christian is a person who does not sin! And yet Paul does not say that he is sinless, but that he must not sin. … This laid him open to a charge of self contradiction; sinless and yet not sinless, righteous and unrighteous, just and unjust at the same time. Some interpreters have labeled it ‘paradox,’ but such a superficial dismissal of the problem is religiously barren and worse than useless.
The extreme difficulty of understanding Paul on this matter has led to a distinction between ‘justification’ and ‘sanctification,’ which obscures Paul’s urgency to be now, at this very moment, what God in accepting him says he is: a righteous man in Christ Jesus. Justification is reduced to a forensic declaration by which God acquits and accepts the guilty criminal, and sanctification is viewed as a leisurely process of becoming the kind of person posited by that declaration. This makes perfection seem far less urgent than Paul conceived it, and permits the spiritual inertia of human nature to continue its habit of separating religion from ethics. To prevent this misunderstanding it is necessary to keep in mind the root meaning of ‘righteousness’ in δικαιοω and its cognates.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 484-485)
“… The Pharisees taught that the Torah was the life element of the Jews; all who obeyed would live, those who did not would die (Deut. [Deuteronomy] 30:11-20).” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 488-489)-20. With the Anointed I was crucified, and no more I live, rather the Anointed lives in me.
The life that I live now in flesh, I live them in the belief of Son [of] the Gods that loved me and delivered up [ומסר, OoMahÇahR] himself in my behalf [בעדי, Bah`ahDeeY].
“The danger was that Paul’s Gentile converts might claim freedom in Christ but reject the cross-bearing that made it possible. Lacking the momentum of moral discipline under Moses, which prepared Paul to make right use of his freedom, they might imagine that his dying and rising with Christ was a magical way of immortalizing themselves by sacramental absorption of Christ’s divine substance in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The church has always been tempted to take Paul’s crucifixion with Christ in a symbolic sense only, or as an experience at baptism which is sacramentally automatic. It has also been tempted to reduce Paul’s ‘faith’ to bare belief and assent to his doctrine, and to equate his ‘righteousness’ with a fictitious imputation by a Judge made lenient by Christ’s death.-21. I do not nullify [מבטל, MeBahTayL] [את, ’ehTh (indicator of direct object; no English equivalent)] mercy [of] Gods;
Against these caricatures of ‘justification by faith,’ Paul’s whole life and all his letters are a standing protest. He never allows us to forget that to be crucified with Christ is to share the motives, the purposes, and the way of life that led Jesus to the Cross; to take up vicariously the burden of the sins of others, forgiving and loving instead of condemning them; to make oneself the slave of every man; to create unity and harmony by reconciling man to God and man to his fellow men; to pray without ceasing ‘Thy will be done’; to consign one’s life to God, walking by faith where one cannot see; and finally to leave this earth with the prayer ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’
… When Christ the Spirit came to live in Paul … Paul was guided at each step, in each new circumstance, to answer for himself the question: What would Jesus have me do? And the answer was always this: Rely solely on God’s grace through Christ, count others better than yourself, and make yourself everybody’s slave after the manner of the Son of God who loved you and gave himself for you.
… The phrase εν σαρκι [en sarki] … means, lit. [literally], in the flesh. Someday – Paul hoped it would be soon – this would be changed into a body like that of the risen Christ, which belonged to the realm of Spirit.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X pp. 490-493)
“Christ lives in me: The perfection of Christian life is expressed here … it reshapes human beings anew, supplying them with a new principle of activity on the ontological1 level of their very beings.” (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, 1990, TNJBC p. 785)
is not if [it] is possible to become righteous upon hand of the Instruction, see, that the Anointed died to nothing [לשוא, LahShahVe’]?
“It is not I, he says, who am nullifying the grace of God by abandoning the law which is his grace-gift to Israel, but those who insist on retaining that law in addition to the grace which he has now manifested in Christ.” (Stamm, 1953, TIB X p. 495)Footnotes 1 Ontological - relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being
An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible
2023.06.02 17:30 Huckleberry-Hiker The Historic Circle Tours of Glacier National Park
Almost immediately after Glacier was established as a national park, Louis W. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway, began building a series of hotels, chalets and tent camps throughout the park. The buildings were modeled on traditional Swiss architecture, and were part of Hill's strategy to portray Glacier as the "American Alps" or "America's Switzerland." The accommodations would in-turn help the railway promote tourism to the new national park, while at the same time promote their rail line as the primary mode of travel to the park. This would also allow them to compete against their chief rivals; the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Northern Pacific Railway, who were already transporting tourists to Banff and Yellowstone by that time.
The Belton Chalet in West Glacier, and the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier Park were the first two hotels to be constructed by Great Northern. Both acted as gateways from railroad depots to the interior of the park. Between 1910 and 1915 the railway also constructed eight Swiss-style backcountry chalet complexes, each connected by a network of trails. The complexes were strategically located at Two Medicine Lake, Cut Bank, St. Mary, Sun Point, Granite Park, Many Glacier, Gunsight Lake and Sperry Glacier. Tent camps were also established at Red Eagle Lake, Cosley Lake, Fifty Mountain and Goat Haunt. The chalet and tent camps were located roughly 10-18 miles apart. During their prime most of the chalet camps could host between 100 and 150 guests per night. Hill would explain to newspaper reporters that the “lodges would be located only far enough apart so that the man on foot even could make the trip and obtain sleeping accommodations,” and that “hotel accommodations of a more prestigious type or tents for the most modest could also be furnished.”
As construction on the new chalets progressed through the early 1910s, the railway also constructed the trails that would connect each of them by foot or horse travel. Because of a lack of federal funds, the Great Northern Railway assumed financial responsibility for all trail construction during this time period, but was eventually reimbursed as funding became available. Some of the earliest trails developed by the railway included Swiftcurrent Pass, Gunsight Pass, Mt. Henry, Red Gap Pass, Gable Pass, Triple Divide Pass, Piegan Pass, Pitamakan Pass and the St. Mary Lake trails. Many of these early trails were routed along Indian paths, prospector trails or old game trails. Great Northern would continue to improve or construct new trails within the park into the early 1920s. As the network of trails expanded, organized tours by horse concessionaires began to emerge. In 1915 the Park Saddle Horse Company became the sole concessionaire for the park, and began organizing a series of guided tours that utilized the existing network of chalets and trails. This included the North Circle, South Circle and Inside Trail trips, which encompassed roughly 163 miles of trails, each of which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The company also offered the Logan Pass Triangle Trail trip, which traversed across the heart of the park utilizing routes from the other tours, as well as the now abandoned Logan Pass Trail. The concessionaire offered a variety of options, from half-day excursions to extended trips lasting up to two weeks. Most of the so-called circle tours, however, lasted between three and five days. During the 1920 season the company charged roughly $4.00 per person, per day to take one of its saddle-horse tours.
The park visitors that took these tours were “guided by ‘cowboys,’ lunched near glacial lakes and then dined in comfort on Chinese linen and blue willow china”. Park rules dictated that the Park Saddle Horse Company had to furnish at least one guide for each ten tourists on a trip. Parties could reach as large as 180 people and 200 horses. It’s estimated that the concessionaire used more than 1000 horses during its peak, with at least one source estimating as many as 1500 head of horses. The 1922 park brochure bragged that there were "more saddle horses used in Glacier than in any other similar recreational area in the world". From everything I’ve read that record has never been surpassed.
The saddle-horse tours were the dominant method of seeing the park until the Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed in 1933. Although the tours continued for another ten seasons, they came to a permanent end after the 1942 season when America became fully involved in World War II.
** This article is an adaptation from my book, "Ramble On: How Hiking Became One of the Most Popular Outdoor Activities in the World", which chronicles the rich and compelling history of hiking.
submitted by Huckleberry-Hiker to GlacierNationalPark [link] [comments]
The Belton Chalet in West Glacier, and the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier Park were the first two hotels to be constructed by Great Northern. Both acted as gateways from railroad depots to the interior of the park. Between 1910 and 1915 the railway also constructed eight Swiss-style backcountry chalet complexes, each connected by a network of trails. The complexes were strategically located at Two Medicine Lake, Cut Bank, St. Mary, Sun Point, Granite Park, Many Glacier, Gunsight Lake and Sperry Glacier. Tent camps were also established at Red Eagle Lake, Cosley Lake, Fifty Mountain and Goat Haunt. The chalet and tent camps were located roughly 10-18 miles apart. During their prime most of the chalet camps could host between 100 and 150 guests per night. Hill would explain to newspaper reporters that the “lodges would be located only far enough apart so that the man on foot even could make the trip and obtain sleeping accommodations,” and that “hotel accommodations of a more prestigious type or tents for the most modest could also be furnished.”
As construction on the new chalets progressed through the early 1910s, the railway also constructed the trails that would connect each of them by foot or horse travel. Because of a lack of federal funds, the Great Northern Railway assumed financial responsibility for all trail construction during this time period, but was eventually reimbursed as funding became available. Some of the earliest trails developed by the railway included Swiftcurrent Pass, Gunsight Pass, Mt. Henry, Red Gap Pass, Gable Pass, Triple Divide Pass, Piegan Pass, Pitamakan Pass and the St. Mary Lake trails. Many of these early trails were routed along Indian paths, prospector trails or old game trails. Great Northern would continue to improve or construct new trails within the park into the early 1920s. As the network of trails expanded, organized tours by horse concessionaires began to emerge. In 1915 the Park Saddle Horse Company became the sole concessionaire for the park, and began organizing a series of guided tours that utilized the existing network of chalets and trails. This included the North Circle, South Circle and Inside Trail trips, which encompassed roughly 163 miles of trails, each of which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The company also offered the Logan Pass Triangle Trail trip, which traversed across the heart of the park utilizing routes from the other tours, as well as the now abandoned Logan Pass Trail. The concessionaire offered a variety of options, from half-day excursions to extended trips lasting up to two weeks. Most of the so-called circle tours, however, lasted between three and five days. During the 1920 season the company charged roughly $4.00 per person, per day to take one of its saddle-horse tours.
The park visitors that took these tours were “guided by ‘cowboys,’ lunched near glacial lakes and then dined in comfort on Chinese linen and blue willow china”. Park rules dictated that the Park Saddle Horse Company had to furnish at least one guide for each ten tourists on a trip. Parties could reach as large as 180 people and 200 horses. It’s estimated that the concessionaire used more than 1000 horses during its peak, with at least one source estimating as many as 1500 head of horses. The 1922 park brochure bragged that there were "more saddle horses used in Glacier than in any other similar recreational area in the world". From everything I’ve read that record has never been surpassed.
The saddle-horse tours were the dominant method of seeing the park until the Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed in 1933. Although the tours continued for another ten seasons, they came to a permanent end after the 1942 season when America became fully involved in World War II.
** This article is an adaptation from my book, "Ramble On: How Hiking Became One of the Most Popular Outdoor Activities in the World", which chronicles the rich and compelling history of hiking.
2023.06.02 17:24 Worth-Drawing-27 Safety near Braddock Road Metro/Alexandria (shootings?)
My gf and I (both 20sF) are moving to Alexandria and have just signed a lease at the asher apartments near the Braddock Road Metro. We weren't able to see the unit/area in person before we signed the lease but it seemed nice so we went on with it. I definitely should have done more due diligence.
I've started following nova and some alexandria news boards and have been seeing a lot of news about shootings/shots fired near the public housing in that area. Maybe not a *lot* of news, but definitely more than I expected in the last month alone.
Is this a legitimate concern for residents in the area or am I getting too wound up from the news? My gf has lived in cities all her life and accepts that it's just the reality, but I'm feeling worried about it. Is the area pretty safe to walk/commute in spite of the shootings? Sorry if this comes off as super sheltered and please tell me if i'm being silly.
submitted by Worth-Drawing-27 to nova [link] [comments]
I've started following nova and some alexandria news boards and have been seeing a lot of news about shootings/shots fired near the public housing in that area. Maybe not a *lot* of news, but definitely more than I expected in the last month alone.
Is this a legitimate concern for residents in the area or am I getting too wound up from the news? My gf has lived in cities all her life and accepts that it's just the reality, but I'm feeling worried about it. Is the area pretty safe to walk/commute in spite of the shootings? Sorry if this comes off as super sheltered and please tell me if i'm being silly.
2023.06.02 17:10 Wapulatus Respect Beast I, Goetia (Fate/Grand Order)
"Then I shall show you. The end of your journey. The demise of human history that will redo this planet. The moment my great undertaking is completed!"
Goetia
♫ Shikisai ~The Time of Parting Hath Come~ ♫This thread is a collaboration with InverseFlash and rsthethird, who helped with feat-gathering, as well as Proletlariet, who helped with formatting. Thanks!
Background
The King of Mages, Solomon, gathered 72 demons in his life that he fashioned into "a system to promote reason in humans"--a sort of magical logic network. After some time, the demons gained self-awareness and merged into a collective being.
This being, the amalgamation of the 72 Demons, became known as Goetia.
When Solomon died, the demons were sealed away inside his corpse. The awakened Goetia at first assumed Solomon's identity. Through his eyes, they witnessed the extent of human suffering that Solomon, for all the king's vast power, had failed to address. They became disillusioned with their host, and hatched a plan to remake the world without its imperfections by travelling back in time.
Source Guide
Relevant Scaling:
- List of Servants
- If I name a character, it can be found here. I will not be linking a respect thread for every individual character mentioned in this thread due to the sheer number of Servants/characters Goetia and Demon Pillars interact with.
- Mash Kyrielight
- Beast II - Tiamat
- Beast VII - U-Olga Marie
- Rayshifting: Chaldea's method of time travel. It works by transforming the time traveler's body into 'Spiritrons', and then sending them backwards in time. Spiritrons being a form of energy/particle formed from a person's soul
- Sheba: An observational lens that can sense the near-future, and could give Chaldea detailed information from inside of a bubble that absorbed all forms of normal radiation
- See the Fate Franchise Hub Post for a more extensive list of Fate related terms
King of Mages - "Solomon"
"Plead for help. Raise your mewling voice. For it is the time for you to drown in the sea of anguish! Behold this festival of flame that set ablaze the altar, rendered in its resplendence!"♫ The Time of Coronation Hath Come ♫
Prior to revealing himself, Goetia posed as King Solomon while possessing his corpse..
Controlling Solomon granted Goetia a variety of abilities, namely the class container of "Grand", which allowed him to outclass any normal Servant by virtue of this.
Physical Feats/Power
- Manifested himself after his own death via his own will, and therefore doesn't need to rely on any sort of magical energy support like normal Servants
- Mordred claims his power exceeds that of a dragon, with Shakesphere going on to say he has 'infinite' magical energy, although he's likely exaggerating
- Tamamo-No-Mae claims that, even if she got all nine of her tails and became "a great demon strong enough to destroy the multiverse" that "[Solomon] is a threat threat enough to rival" her in that state
- When comparing him as Solomon to the Beast of the Seventh Singularity (later revealed to be Tiamat), the Lion King flips around the idea of who might be more of a threat to humanity
- Command spells wouldn't work on Solomon
- Engages with an extensive fight with Mash, hurting her with an attack
- Takes a blow from Mash that 'reaches the core of [his] body'
Clairvoyance
It has been said that Solomon's clairvoyance can see through the past and the future.
Because Clairvoyance is a skill furnished on the flesh, Goetia can also use it.
- Claims that he can 'see everything' and 'all possible futures', but cannot track things which exist outside of time
- [Limit] Even with his Clairvoyance, he didn't foresee the appearance of the Beast of the Seventh Singularity, Tiamat
- Goetia used Solomon's clairvoyance to perceive all human suffering in the past, present, and future
- Solomon sent one of his rings over 3,000 years into the future to act as a catalyst for his own summoning as a Heroic Spirit, putting into motion the events that would lead to Goetia's defeat
- Solomon used his Clairvoyance shortly before turning into a human with no powers to foresee the Incineration of Humanity in 2018 from 2004
- Gives him an unobstructed view of the past and future, as well as x-ray vision
Magecraft / Magic
Offensive- Solomon/Goetia can summon any of the 72 Demon God Pillars at will, described as him projecting them out from his inner world to the outside world
- Anderson is astonished at how badly he's hurt blocking just a single one of his attack spells
- A second spell rips Anderson into hundreds of pieces and then burns him into a crisp
- Goetia incinerates all living things on the planet at once just with his gaze, a feat characters in the story assumed he would need a powerful technique to accomplish
- Uses magic similar to a Rayshift to transport himself to the London Singularity
- Generates a field around himself that passively blocks Sheba's ability to observe him, as well as Romani's ability to communicate via hologram
- His field blocks Chaldeas' ability to Rayshift Fujimaru and Mash out of London
- Likely broke the seal binding Tiamat out of existence, though Ishtar notes that human mages might have done it
- Inserts images into Mash and Ritsuka's heads while they're mid-Rayshift
- Has a countermeasure that prevents using magic to predict his actions
- Has the ability to hasten his magical incantations, create magical constructs, and make magical territories via Solomon's class skills
- Goetia has nine of Solomon's 10 Rings. If all 10 were brought together, Solomon/Goetia would invalidate any magecraft used by mankind against him and put them under his control
Evil Eye
Curse- Solomon has become a walking curse, such that saying his name or looking him in the eye will remove a person's soul and imprison it
- By just looking at him, Mash begins to quake in fear for reasons she can't explain. Her soul might have been imprisoned in the false reality forever if a friend's out of character behavior hadn't tipped her off
- Tamamo with two of her tails believes she'd be vulnerable to the curse
- A person who's been afflicted with the Evil Eye has trouble remembering Solomon's appearance, and even video recordings of him are covered in static
- Even a drawn picture of Solomon can inflict the Evil Eye without special anti-curse precautions
- To escape, the soul must complete a set of trials within seven days, or death ensues
- Only the soul is imprisoned in the false reality, while the body remains behind. The soul experiences time at a much longer rate in the false world than the body does in the real one with seven days for the soul being equal to one for the body
- The prison's trials drag in fragments of the souls of the prisoner's acquaintances to serve as obstacles, it can do this even to heroic spirits, who have superhumanly powerful souls
Beast I - Goetia
"Well, I will rid myself of the title "King of Mages.”♫ Shikisai ~The Time of Parting Hath Come~ ♫
"There's no more need for deception. I had no name, but if you want to call me something, call me this:"
"I am the one who shall attain true wisdom, as was desired of me. I am the one who shall devour you to reach a new height, and create a new planet."
"I am the one who shall gather 72 curses, and set flame to all of history. I am the Ritual for the Incineration of Humanity."
"I am Goetia, the King of Demon Gods."
The form Goetia takes after he abandons Solomon's corpse partway through the final battle.
His body is a central core surrounded by the 72 "Demon Pillars" that comprise him.
Collective
General Power and Information- Hid in Solomon's body for three thousand years in Ars Paulina without any adverse effects due to the passage of time
- Is a "living summoning spell" that hid itself in Solomon's corpse and later gained a will of its own and physically incarnated as a Beast
- Describes himself as a higher-dimensional being that no longer requires flesh or blood. Due to being Solomon's familiars, he shared in Solomon's Clairvoyance
- Due to being an amalgamation of the 72 Demon Gods, which each have individual personalities, Goetia's personality will mirror that of someone who interacts with him on a surface level
- His existence is fixed, meaning he's immune to 'instant death' effects as well as temporal effects, like the paradoxes generated by incinerating human history
- A weakened Beast VII, or the Foreign God, is stated to be the most powerful thing Chaldea has faced since Goetia, with her magical energy being called a "third class planet" to Goetia's "second class planet"
- Moves so fast he appears to teleport next to Solomon, before bloodying him with a barrage of punches and bombarding him with energy projectiles from his arms
- [Weakened] Ritsuka has trouble blocking his blows with Mash's shield, but can do so long enough for Goetia to die due to Ars Nova
- [Weakened] Knocked back by a Command Spell amplified punch from Ritsuka
The entire space of Solomon's temple gives Da Vinci the same Beast Class reading she saw from Tiamat.
- Goetia's Beast Class Skill, Nega Summon, allows him to negate through "invalidation, invincible, absorption, reduction" any attacks or Noble Phantasms generated by Heroic Spirits, although this skill was nullified by King Solomon's actions at the end of the Final Singularity
- The Evils of Humanity, or Beasts, are summoned in a chain, meaning that Goetia's manifestation heralded the appearance of other Beasts
Individual Demon Pillars
Power- Demon Pillars give off more magical energy than Servants or Phantasmals
- Demon Pillars are weaker while outside of Solomon's Temple, due to their cells dying off
- Demon Pillars have a "Spirit Core" like Servants, as well as innate magical energy, which can be used to fuel other spells (such as one to create pancakes) if defeated
- Require groups of Servants to defeat under normal conditions
- They have comparable power to Kingu during the Babylonian Singularity
- A Demon Pillar is compared to the energy output of a Servant empowering themselves with a Holy Grail
- Eight Demon God Pillars wrapping around the Chaldea building deal catastrophic damage to it and nearly destroy it
- Groups of them tear through the stone and marble of Solomon's throne when called to Goetia, reducing it to ruins
- Erupts out of the floor in a metal observation room, then attacks and absorbs a number of researchers
Demon Pillars attack in a number of ways:
- Various forms of spontaneous explosions that can cover multiples of meters
- Energy blasts that erupt from the ground
- Large storms of smoke that cover the battlefield
- Lasers, presumably fired from their eyes
- An attack from four Demon Pillars oneshot Kintoki, Tamamo, and Shakesphere
- Hurts and sends Robin Hood and Helena Blatvasky flying
- Spits out flames hot enough to burn Oda NobunagaFGO
- Draws blood on Fergus Lily, hurting him, although he's defeated in the overall fight against Astolfo, D'Eon, and Fergus
- Bloodies Wu Zetian with an attack
Favorable Interactions
- One takes a bullet from Francis Drake and continues to fight Mash, Ritsuka, and allies, although it loses the overall battle
- Li Shuwen has trouble injecting them with chi attacks, mostly due to their size
- Robin Hood's 'Yew Bow' and Elizabeth Bathory's weaponized singing don't do anything to them
- Tesla's Noble Phantasm, 'System Keranos', doesn't appear to do much to them, neither does a combined attack from Tesla and Edison's Noble Phantasms
- Lancer Li Shuwen breaks his spear on one
- Cursed Arm and Serenity have no means of harming them, even with Serenity's poison
- Oda Nobunaga's special attacks and bullets have no effect on Demon God Pillars
- Takes a hit from three bullets fired from EMIYA Alter and doesn't seem bothered by it moments later
- A Demon Pillar in its humanoid form take a blast of magic from the Queen of Sheba and is fine
- Takes fire produced by Chacha's abilities and fights Ritsuka, Okita, Nobunaga, and Hijikata, although it ultimately loses the fight
- A recreation of the Demon God Pillars gets bombarded with meteors from outer space by Astrea's Noble Phantasm, and continues to fight with Grey and Astrea, with Astrea commenting it was just as strong as the originals
- A suicide Noble Phantasm release from Arjuna kills twenty-eight of them
- Altera destroys one with Teardrop Photon Ray
- Mordred destroys one with Clarent Blood Arthur
- Bedivere takes out three pillars with an activation of his Noble Phantasm
- Okita Souji slices apart several pillars
- Edmond Dantes was able to take out a pillar by himself
- Ritsuka and his allies (in this case EMIYA Alter and Artoria Alter) were able to kill a Demon God Pillar
- One is defeated by Gawain, although Ritsuka notes it seemed particularly weak
Immortality
- The 72 Demon Gods are all part of the same magecraft ritual associated with Solomon, so as long as Solomon exists, they'll continue to exist even if destroyed
- After Mash kills Flauros, he instantly re-appears, with Mash describing this as an entirely new separate entity being born, and not some form of regeneration or resurrection
- Killing all 72 at once would be required to actually kill them for good
- Creating new demon pillars to replace fallen ones does draw away power from the center of Solomon's Temple, giving Chaldea entryway to the center of Ars Paulina
- Nightingale claims that killing them for good would require destroying all of Ars Paulina
- Even after escaping the Temple of Time and losing their proper immortality, individual demon pillars live for over 3,000 years to plot against Ritsuka
- Demon Pillars can fuse with Heroic Spirits, even against their will
- When Phenex did this with Scheherazade,, the two could trade places and transform into one another
- A Heroic Spirit temporarily integrated into Goetia's hivemind via this process gained access to information he could use to calculate out events related to the Incineration of Humanity
- Merging with a Heroic Spirit gives a Demon Pillar protection from its skills, such as Scheherazade's inability to be killed by Kings
- A number of Demon God Pillars were able to escape the Temple of Time's destruction while leaving ripples in space-time, this being an extradimensional space outside of time
- A number of Demon God Pillars demonstrate the ability to possess humans
- As of the events of Lady Reines' Case Files, Ritsuka has killed so many Demon Pillars that just inserting information about him into facsimiles of them cause them to get significantly weaker
King of Humans - Goetia
"The Demon Gods have burned away. My temple is destroyed. My grand plan for the Incineration of Human Order dies with me. But, I will at least deny you this final victory. Let us begin... Master of Chaldea. I shall annihilate you, and all you've achieved, with my own hands."♫ GRAND LAST BATTLE ♫
Despite Ars Nova ending Solomon's spell that bound the 72 Demons together, Goetia manages to linger long enough for one last fight. However, in this weakened state he can be defeated by a punch from Ritsuka.
Noble Phantasms
Ars Almadel Salomonis: The Time of Birth has Come, He is the One who Masters All
"Then I shall show you. The end of your journey. The demise of human history that will redo this planet. The moment my great undertaking is completed! Third Noble Phantasm, deploy. The Time of Birth has Come, He is the One who Masters All. Now, burn up like trash!"
"Ars Almadel Salomonis!"
- Rank: EX
- Type: Anti-Unit/Anti-Human Order Noble Phantasm
- Range: ?
- Maximum target: ? person
Goetia is able to manipulate this belt of light in order to collect, accelerate and converge portions of it, travelling through the timestream or otherwise influencing it.
Singularities
For his plan to work, Goetia needed to make cause and effect stop working, so he can set fire to multiple periods of time in history at the same time.
He enables this by destabilizing human history with Singularities. These are turning points in human history that he's sent Holy Grails (powerful magic artifacts) to change important historical events.
Reference of what Holy Grails can do
Creation
- Singularities are key turning points in human history that have been interfered with, causing aberrations in the timestream. Goetia's Incineration of Humanity involved seven primary Singularities
- Resolving individual singularities will not fix the timestream. Only resolving all seven will set things right
- Solomon caused some Singularities by sending his Demon Pillars to different eras to directly alter historical events
- Solomon sent one of these grails directly backwards through time to Babylon, and and removing it is especially necessary to keep human history from burning
- Goetia's singularities had such a profound effect on human history that it rippled to other timelines, and caused singularities to still pop up after he was defeated
- Singularities are cut off from the rest of the timeline, existing apart from the past or the future
- Singularities are immune to time paradoxes, so Ritsuka and Mash fighting soldiers in the past doesn't have any adverse affects
- Singularities are bound to a specific area, which can vary between the size of a city to the entire United States
Once human history is destabilized, Goetia 'sets fire' to every moment of it and lets it burn. The energy is then collected as "Spiritrons" (magical energy) and raw heat.
Of course, this has catastrophic affects on the timeline.
- Chaldeas lost its ability to sense the future, or detect the outside world - this was because there was no more outside world to detect, as Goetia's Incineration of Humanity destroyed the timeline
- Despite being able to Rayshift to different points in time, Chaldea can only travel between Singularities because the rest of the timeline has been eradicated
- The Incineration of Humanity also affected The Land of Shadows, a realm described as being sundered from the mortal world
- The Incineration of Humanity burned all biological matter on Earth across all points in time as fuel to reset the universe
- Goetia needed to create Singularities to in order to weaken "the strength of human history" enough to carry out the Incineration of Humanity. Singularities break up the timeline into fractured chunks, allowing for the paradox necessary to incinerate matter during all points in its existence
Finally, this energy is then channeled into Goetia's temple, and refined into bands of light that he can control and release at will. Either as weapons, or as fuel to for his ultimate goal: time travel to the creation of the Earth.
- Each Singularity Ritsuka and company travel to have a series of light bands encircling the sky present. These are around the size of North America
- These bands of light are the manifestation of Goetia's Noble Phantasm locking the rotation of the planet in place for the Incineration of Humanity
- Each individual band of light has comparable heat output to Artoria Alter's Holy Sword. The Noble Phantasm manifests hundreds of millions of them at once
- Ushiwakamaru Alter claims the band of light are the only thing that could destroy Tiamat's corrupted ocean
- One of the Demon Pillars claims it could be used to incinernate all the Heroic Spirits summoned to fight in the Temple of Time
- The bands of light could burn away the outer layers of the planet. Mash says nothing on Earth could match their energy output
- Manifests as a beam of light from the sky that clashes with Mash wielding Lord Camelot. While Mash is able to block the attack, it still vaporizes her through her shield
- After Goetia is defeated, the bands of light start to release their energy into the atmosphere with nobody to control them. Da Vinci says the effect of this would be like a supernova
- The magical energy circulated between the Trees of Emptiness, and channeled into the Atlantis Lostbelt to summon the Foreign God had already built up to the same level of power as the Bands of Light prior Chaldea entering it
- [Limit] Even if they were collected and used to attack Chaos, the Bands of Light wouldn't be able to destroy it
Ars Paulina: The Time of Crowning has Come, He is the One who Begins All
- Rank: A
- Type: Anti-World Noble Phantasm
- Range: 999
- Maximum target: ? person
Reality Marbles are essentially self-contained dimensions that 'paint over the world' in a given area. Here's a better schematic explaining what they do.
Physical Structure and Location
- His temple resides outside of time, and can only be found by tracking back its location from the Seventh Grail
- Chaldea pinpointing its location by analyzing Goetia's Seventh Grail also opens a back door for Goetia to locate him in turn, and it begins to pull him out of the timeline to itself
- Described as a "miniature model of the universe" containing no other celestial bodies, about the size of a cell when compared to the universe proper
- The temple lacks a concept of time. This property facilitated the Incineration of Humanity
- A recreation of the Temple is too cold for normal life to survive in it
- The route to the throne itself is blocked by a swirling tempest of "incalculable" amounts of magical energy, with Da Vinci believing Chaldea had to destroy areas around it to have a chance of getting through
- The temple has a similar composition as the Greater Grail of Fuyuki. It is made up of of Solomon's magic circuits, which form a small self-contained universe
- The throne is a giant magic summoning circle with planetary magecraft at its core
Ars Nova
- Rank: D
- Type: Anti-Unit Noble Phantasm
- Range: -
- Maximum target: 1 person
- Goetia prepared his endgoal feat from the Incineration of Humanity as a 'virtual Noble Phantasm' due to not knowing the purpose or how to activate the original
- This ultimate feat, which he would use all the energy collected by Ars Almadel Salomonis to accomplish, would have him travel 4.6 billion years into the past to the birth of the planet, where he would then change the starting conditions of the world so that death did not exist, with him supplanting the planet with his own body
- By having all his ten rings present between those worn by Goetia and himself, Solomon can recreate the legend of him giving all his rings back to God
- After using it, everything related to Solomon is wiped from existence and rendered inert. This includes Goetia himself as Solomon brought the Demon Gods together, as well as Solomon's rings, and Solmon's ability to be summoned as a Heroic Spirit
- Although this doesn't instantly kill Goetia, the Demon Pillars that make him up finally start to die for good, and start separating from the collective
Individual Demon Pillars - Unique Abilities
Flauros
- Flauros can change his shape between a human form, Lev Lainur, and his true Demon Pillar formFGO
- Lev has a spell similar to a Command Spell, controlling Caligula's actionsFGO
- Helped create SHEBA under Goetia's guidance, which is a failsafe to detect and act against Demon Pillars that go rogue from Goetia's collective, SHEBA is an observational lens that can sense the near-future, and could give Chaldea detailed information from inside of a bubble that absorbed all forms of normal radiation
Andras
After separating from Goetia, Andras gained a self-awareness and will to live, and escaped from the Temple of Time near-death, but died afterwards. Even then, its 'vindictive desires' remained as a corpse that could maintain a being by fusing to a Heroic Spirit, summoning and doing so with Chacha and Hijikata to create a singularity-like space.- The space created by Andras is completely disconnected from the past or future, and time inside of it doesn't progress, having carved the space out of time itself, or at least travelled to an existing space like this
- Nobukatsu used him in a ritual to summon a demonic castle where nothing inside can die, so that he and Nobunaga can live forever inside. It disappears when Andras is defeated
- Summons waves of corpses to fight Ritsuka and allies
Bael
- Somehow hacked into Ritsuka's Rayshift coordinates, which made all of his servants rayshifted with him go off in random directions and himself to spawn in hundreds of feet into the air
- While believing itself to be the heroic spirit Moriarty, Bael somehow fights Chaldea and disappears like a Heroic Spirit, only to re-appear as a demon pillar
- Learned how to fuse together Phantom and Heroic spirits, though Phantom Spirits cannot normally be summoned as complete entities
- Fused together being from multiple legends to create Hessian Lobo, granting it composite abilities such as the Invisible Man's invisibility
- Fused Moriarty with Der Freischütz, giving his weapon supernatural accuracy on the 7th shot, something that could even apply to objects as large as a meteor to make it strike Earth
- Moriarty uses this method to absorb the defeated Sherlock Holmes
Phenex
- As the Demon God of Death, he isn't detected by Chaldea's scans for life because he's technically dead
- Despite being killed by Ritsuka and his allies, re-appears later in the body of a nearby corpse, transforming back into its demonic form
- Constantly regenerates from being attacked by D'Eon, Fergus, and Astolfo
- Endures Caladbolg's vortex, which destroyed a floating island big enough to house an entire forest and a mountain
- [Limit] Is hit with Wu Zeitan's Noble Phantasm, and still fights while being afflicted with it
- The attack works by keeping Phenex in "state of both life and death", allowing Phenex to finally be weakenedand then killed
- Despite all of the above, it still has enough strength to try and attack Scheherazade, although it's killed with one last burst from Fergus' sword
"Huh, who would have known? ...Tragically short, and yet, strangely fascinating... So, this is what human life is..."
2023.06.02 17:06 Akfanboy project poppy ch 1
I sighed. So I'm gonna get reassigned huh? I'm not apart of the c.i.a's gun running, drug peddling, and the guerilla warfare division anymore eh? I guess I'll miss air america flights. I then recalibrated my prosthetic right arm using a Philips head screw driver. Open close. Open, close.
After a couple of seconds my arm was finally done recalibrating. I'm gonna miss my friends. But I'll never miss the humid areas of laos, Vietnam, and some parts of china. The golden triangle is so goddamned hot. Honestly I don't know if it's secretly a promotion or a demotion. Or possibly I'm gonna get fired, and killed.
I'll get my name scraped out of the national files. If I get fired the chances of getting dragged into a blacksite is high, and I'll get tripped by the guys on one of the blacksites.
Oh god. I remember the LSD torture. It's like being awake but not in control. It's like being stuck as a backseat driver as people do unspeakable stuff to me. Oh boy if the public knows about the MK ultra test 2 oh boy. The people are gonna riot. It's already 2040.
The world is on edge, and under foreign influence for over a decade now. From the end of the 20's intergalactic travelers, and companies came, and control most of the world's nations within just a span of two years. They have the guts to exploit our resources, and don't give a damn about what happens to us. They care about profits. Except for the 8 major powers most of the world is under alien control. The only nations that aren't under alien control are russia, china, The U.S.A, great Britain with their manpower advantage given Australia is a British vassal state, France, Canada, Israel, and lastly an unlikely power the African union made out of 7 of the most powerful nations in Africa before the arrival of the outsiders are the only remaining independent countries.
Most of the intelligence agencies are currently working together dealing drugs with the outsiders who visit us, giving weapons to guerilla fighters, and getting weapons from the outside. Ships from an unlikely ally an independent economic alliance of nations named the syndicate allows to us to get some weapons. As long as we sell them drugs, and perishables from earth. It turns out the syndicate likes drugs, coffee, and other stuff native to earth.
Some of our intelligence guys are chatting with the aliens. The guys who are exploiting our resources are called the consortium. They are a consort of companies, and a league that agrees on how to manipulate markets. These guys are basically the more unhinged version of the wall street guys, and a mix of the c.i.a.
I sighed. "This is gonna be a long day ahead of me."
I then smoked a cigar. The cigar calmed my nerves as I inhaled the nicotine. The addictive substance relaxes me. Plus lung cancer isn't a problem anymore considering we now have a solution on how to cure it. The alien companies gave us some of their tech to show their so called sympathy before they flooded economies with consumer goods from their companies, and controlled almost all of earths economies.
"So agent smith. This is your new partner." A c.i.a handler said to me.
I spat out some ash from my mouth, and complained. "The fuck are you giving me a newbie as a partner? And what the hell am I gonna to do to need a new partner. Rodriguez already was fine yet I'm stuck with a newbie?"
The handler laughed. "Oh heavens no. This is an a.i. Codename poppy. She's your new partner in crime. Because we are gonna send you as a diplomatic bodyguard to the syndicate."
"Oh hi! I'm poppy I'm an artificial intelligence created by the c.i.a, m.i.6, the g.r.u, the s.s.m, mossad, and the s.s.a." The human looking robot said.
The voice kinda sounds synthetic, and the tone is too happy. I kinda hate it. I hate that it gives off happy go lucky vibes. I don't mean to be a grouch but the happy go lucky guys always die first. It's kinda ironic in a fucked up way.
So this thing is an a.i kinda like g.w. An a.i made by the c.i.a. G.W have made the internet more tolerable, and friendly due to context. People back then always manipulated facts into their political goals, and ideals. People get the facts misconstrued for political reasons.
G.W was made after a game character that was so prophetic about the world in the future. M.G.S 2: Sons of liberty. It has the same function as g.w from mgs2. It gives facts in a non biased way. In a way where people don't get their feelings hurt when something is given to them in a factual, and non biased ways.
People used to manipulate facts for political correctness. Hiding the fact that they misinterpret the meaning of those words. The internet used to be a toxic, and a fucked up place before g.w. Like Jesus Christ the goddamn internet was filled with incels, and attention seekers using facts and misusing them for internet clout. It was a place where no one is invalidated but nobody was right. G.w put an end to that era. G.w is now living in a secluded server thanking us for it's creation. It was phased out after it asked to be replaced by another one because it was sick, and tired of correcting people that get the facts misconstrued. It got to the point that it begged the c.i.a, and annoyed the c.i.a to the point that it wanted to be put in a secluded server so it could live it's remaining days in relative leisure just because it begged the c.i.a director so many times that he would get spam calls from the a.i using his official phone number even in the middle of the night for three straight years.
Anyways back to discussion.
"So you're one of those advanced a.i's like g.w?" I asked just to be sure I'm not paired with a dumb a.i.
"Yup. I even passed the Turing test in flying colors. I can feel emotions, do something out of spite or anger, and can think for myself." Poppy said with a dog like innocence.
"So what can you do?" I asked.
"Well. I can fly planes, use guns even those that people can't use due to physiological differences, and hack computers without being near the target. I'm basically just an a.i that can be a jack of all traits if given a chance." Poppy said.
"Fine. But you'll do it my way or the high way." I told poppy with a commanding tone.
Poppy laughed. "Okay boomer."
I sighed. This is gonna be a long day. I'm old as shit but not a boomer.
"Woah. You guys are already going along greatly. Great for you." The handler snickered.
He then left, and left me with poppy.
I'm fucked. "So I'm gonna brief you about the world poppy. Through a song."
I then sang bo burnham's how the world works song.
"Hey, kids Today, we're gonna learn about the world The world that's around us is pretty amazing But how does it work? It must be complicated The secret is the world can only work When everything works together"
"A bee drinks from a flower And leaves with its pollen A squirrel in a tree spreads the seeds that have fallen Everything works together"
"The biggest elephant, the littlest fly The gophers underground, the birds in the sky And every single cricket, every fish in the sea"
"Gives what they can and gets what they need That is how the world works That is how the world works"
"From A to Zebra To the worms in the dirt That's how it works Hey everyone"
I then pulled out a sock, and made it into a puppet.
"Look who stopped by to say "hello" It's Socko Hey! Where you been, Socko?"
"I've been where I always am when you're not wearing me on your hand In a frightening, liminal space between states of being Not quite dead, not quite alive It's similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis"
"Socko, we were just talking about the world and how it works!"
"Boy, that sounds complicated! Do you have anything you'd wanna teach us about the world?"
"I wouldn't say anything that you Probably haven't already said yourself"
"I don't know about that, Socko How about you give it a try?"
"All right!"
"The simple narrative taught in every history class Is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist Don't you know the world is built with blood? And genocide and exploitation"
"The global network of capital essentially functions To separate the worker from the means of production And the FBI killed Martin Luther King Private property's inherently theft"
"And neoliberal fascists are destroying the left And every politician, every cop on the street Protects the interests of the pedophilic corporate elite"
"That is how the world works (really?) That is how the world works Genocide the Natives, say you got to it first"
"That's how it works"
"That's pretty intense?"
"No shit Sherlock."
"What can I do to help?"
"Read a book or something, I don't know Just don't burden me with the responsibility of educating you"
*It's incredibly exhausting"
"I'm sorry, Socko I was just trying to become a better person"
"Why do you rich fucking white people Insist on seeing every socio-political conflict Through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization?"
"This isn't about you So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way"
"Watch your mouth, buddy"
"Remember who's on whose hand here"
"But that's what I- Have you not been fucking listening? We are entrenched in a way (all right, all right)"
"Wait, wait, no please! I don't wanna go back, please, ugh, ugh, ugh I can't go, I can't go back Please, please, I'm sorry!"
"Are you gonna behave yourself?"
"Yes"
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, sir"
"Look at me"
"Yes, sir"
"That's better That is how the world works That is how the world works I hope you learned your lesson"
"I did and it hurt That's how it works"
NOOOOOOO!!!
Drags sock puppet into a pocket like some introvert getting dragged into socializing in bars by extroverts.
"So do you understand know?" I asked poppy.
"That everything is made under the blood of billions, and we shouldn't make their deaths be in vein?" Poppy said.
"Correct. And we shouldn't let outsiders make our choices for us. We should kick them out." I said like some isolationist American during the 1920's.
"Ironic isn't it smith. The c.i.a used to be anti socialist but look how the circumstances turned the American government into. A social democracy/merit based democracy where politicians are based in merit rather than popularity. Politicians are insentivised to change the world than burn it down like some of the old presidents did. Ironic that america became something it hated. A weird mesh of meritocracy, democracy, republican, liberaterian, and market socialist ideals. Some sort ideological mesh made by idealogs"
"And it's working with it's remaining two Allies, and former enemies just to defeat a foreign threat. How poetically ironic isn't it? I mean the CIA used to go schizo mode when they hear communist, and socialist ideals or hearing the word russians, and chinese are plotting something. Now the country it help grew became the very thing it sought to destroy. Morbidly ironic isn't it?" Poppy said with a meloncholic under tone.
"Yeah. Specially the stuff we do now." I said agreeing to the statement.
"But that's how the world works. Everything must change. Either you adapt or die." I said with a meloncholic under tone.
"So do you know where we are going?" I asked poppy.
I then puffed up my cigar. Sweet sweet nicotine.
"Back to america. In the space port in Austin Texas. I'm already done contacting the contact the handler gave to me. E.T.A 7 hours. Now let's go to the laostian military base 7 miles north from here. Our air america flight is waiting for us." Poppy said.
I sighed. "Come ride with me. I have a motorcycle a hundred meters from here."
We walked towards my motorcycle. I then puffed up my cigar smelling the nicotine.
So my life is about to change huh? Eh. I'm just gonna adapt. After all in this world it's either adapt or die.
Click, click, click
Motorcycle engine starts rumbling.
Poppy then held my waist. It's hands are cold as steel. Colder than even corpse. I sighed.
The highway was almost empty. Everyone was working a 10-8 job in one of the corporations that control laos. There was no land vehicles transporting goods because the aliens are using their tech to transport them underground. The road was almost abandoned except for the guys who have motorcycle hobbies. Anyways it doesn't matter. After all there's no traffic anymore.
The fresh breeze calmed my nerves. It made me feel alive. A motorcyclist drive by me and waved hello. I waved back at the motorcyclist. It's good to be on the road.
After a twenty minute drive we arrived at the military base. Another CIA agent greeted us, and escorted us to the flight.
"So you guys are the diplomatic bodyguards?" Asked the agent.
"Yup. That's what my handler told me." Poppy said.
"So your one of the newer a.i models eh. Ok. Just step right in. Plus the flight is rather boring. Just sleep while on flight to save energy." The agent told me.
I sighed. I threw away the cigar, and slept through the flight.
A few hours later...
I woke up arriving at Austin executive airport. Poppy just sat there watching me sleep like some sort of creep. It made me a little bit paranoid at the unflinching eyes that was watching me. But I ignored my instincts, and went outside.
After that I ate something for breakfast. A couple of pancakes, and chicken wings. Poppy looked at me with envy. I sighed.
"Can you eat? Do you need food to survive?" I asked.
"Well.... I need glucose to recharge my batteries. I can also use a charger but it would be suspicious. So the glucose to energy converter was made for special missions so that I wouldn't blow my cover."
Figured. Those guys in the CIA RnD team are making contengencies for every eventual event. I then ordered a plate of syrup covered pancakes.
Poppy looked at me smiling. I sighed.
An hour later...
We arrived at the space port. People walked around buying nicnacs, waiting for their flight, and just waited around for their family members that were coming back.
Another agent came up to me, and gave me two tickets.
"Here's the tickets. Also have this. You'll need it."
The agent then gave me some sort of high tech phone. Then out of knowhere something exploded.
I was knocked unconscious for a couple minutes. When I woke up I was getting dragged by poppy along with the agent that gave me the tickets. She shot back at incoming enemies using alien tech.
"Ugh..." As I said that I began coughing blood. I looked down I was bleeding. My left leg was missing. It was slowly bleeding due to a tourniquet, bandages, and some sealing foam. It was still bleeding but isn't bleeding as badly as to kill me in just a couple seconds.
Gunshots echoed in the space port. Agents shot back at the alien attackers. A fierce firefight began. Bright lights like something akin to RGB lights but in a epileptic way we're seen down the isles as screams of both alien, CIA, fbi, and fully kitted out port guards were slaughtered one by one.
Poppy dragged me, and the other agent to a bathroom. "Sit rep." I asked poppy.
"It seems to be a terrorist attack. I don't know why but they looked like alien mercenaries. The question is that did the consortium hired them to kill our diplomat. Good thing the diplomat hasn't arrived. I checked the agency message boards, and they said that good thing the diplomat was sick after getting food poisoning this morning. They are already talking about it. Some of them are even suggesting that the consortium did this attack." Poppy said.
"So the diplomat got lucky. But why the fuck would they attack our diplomat to the syndicate? I mean it's counter productive. We don't need their goods or services considering the people here would rather choose human companies rather than alien shady companies. I guess they must've know about our deals with them, and decided to start a shadow war. A war in the shadows. The companies of the consortium vs the remaining independent government's. Who ever wins controls all the resources in the world." I told poppy.
She nodded. "Good guess but no one really knows. It's so sudden. We need more info before we act against them."
"I'll patch you up in the meantime. I hurried the medical assistance I gave you a couple minutes ago. I was hurrying because this guy is saying we need to leave after he suffered minor bruises. You blunted most of the damaged for him because you were in front of the explosion. He was saved because you were blocking him from getting hit by shrapnel. I cut you're leg off. Sorry. It can't be saved considering it was barely hanging on the leg. Plus I was running out of time so I had to cut it before you bled out."
I sighed. "Okay. Just get my hk UmP 45 inside my arm. It's in second the compartment a secret compartment. In the upper arm. I have a few mags of it inside the compartment. Here's a screw driver to remove the lid."
I then gave poppy a screw driver hidden in my pants, and saw her unscrew the lid off. A ump 45, and fully loaded 4 mags came out dropping loudly on the floor.
"Now carry me to the danger. I would rather die than suffer for years being reminded of the sad reality that I lost an arm, and a leg every time I wake up." I morbidly joked to poppy.
"Are you sure? You're injured! Are you fucking suicidal?" Poppy, and the agent said.
"Did I stutter?"
The two of them sighed.
Poppy then carried me in her back, and the other agent used poppy as meat shields. The agent held a Barretta 93r. A burst fire weapon.
"Ready?" I said.
"Ugh. You're lucky I accepted your request dumbass."
"Yes."
I was being piggy back carried by poppy while the agent followed us.
"Tango 15 meters to the left." Poppy said.
I then activated burst fire, and shot at the direction given. When I saw an enemy I aimed for the center mass. But I instead hit the thorax killing the alien instantly.
"Kill confirms. Enemy is k.i.a."
"Tango 20 meters ahead."
I then aimed straight forward, and saw a bolt of light strike near me. It was close enough to feel the heat of the round. I shot back, and killed the alien instantly by hitting the alien in the lungs, and heart.
"Enemy is k.i.a"
Then I heard a three round burst coming from a Barretta. I looked back, and saw the agent kill an incoming enemy.
"Thanks. So what's your name?" I asked.
"Oh I haven't properly instroduced myself. My name is agent Carter." The agent/Carter said.
"Thanks Carter. My name is agent smith."
"No problem agent smith. We CIA agents got each other's backs. We must stick together."
"Guys tangos incoming coming from the left. ETA 20 seconds."
We then aimed our Guns, and waited for the enemy to arrive. When they eventually arrived we moved them down with burst fire. After that a couple national guard guys came up to us. They were probably chasing those aliens.
"Thanks." One of the national guards said.
"No problem"
We continued, and after two minutes of walking we walked into a firefight. I smiled.
"You know what to do." I said smiling.
"Third party them?"
"Yup."
I then turned on full auto, and began to spray, and pray.
After a few seconds of pulling the trigger my gun ran out of bullets. Carter also ran out of bullets in his magazine, and reloaded. 3 confirmed kills, and multiple missed or slightly injured.
Oh crap. Then a bolt of light past near me. Enough to the point my right cheek got minor burns.
"Duck!"
I then began to be dragged by poppy into cover. Carter also looked for cover, and dived into the nearest cover. I quickly reloaded the mag, and started shooting at the aliens again. I changed the selector back to burst fire to conserve ammo.
I aimed center mass at the enemies. A loud burst of .45 ACP rounds was heard as an enemy was hit in the thorax.
"Kill confirmed."
I continued, and shot enemies in either the arms, legs, the thorax, or the chest.
After three minutes the firefight ended.
"Other sectors secured. All area's are currently in our control. Over 700 people died, 1720 were injured, and some were missing. Military and government casualties are 124 KIA'd, 24 severely injured, 57 mildly injured, and 38 MIA'd." Poppy said smiling.
Then paramedics rushed into the scene. People were rushed into nearby hospitals while I was dragged by a undercover CIA paramedic to a government safe house along with poppy, and Carter.
A week later…
I was standing in the military cemetery in Arlington national cemetery. Where soldiers who died without any identifications are buried. I saw burials around me. Soldiers who died without any family members, soldiers disowned by family, and other such things. But hey it's just the life of a soldier. That's what I know at least. From ranger grunt to c.i.a grunt. I was disowned by my parents who were conservatives, and highly religious because I was going to sacrifice my place in heaven to save some heathens from the middle east. I never regretted my actions. I saved lives, and ended some. No guts no glory after all.
Some of the people getting buried got medal of honors. Saving comrades in need of dire help in exchange for their lives, soldiers who rescued civilians in exchange for their own lives, and soldiers who honorably fought on to save others even faced with hard decisions.
I saluted the unknown soldiers for their bravery, and honor. In the background poppy, and Carter were talking. But that wasn't important. Bagpipes, trumpets, and drums play as the unknown soldiers get burried with their medals. The grave sentinels saluted while burying the dead. Gunshots in the honor of the dead was heard as the unknown soldiers got buried while being watched by the people who those soldiers saved.
After that I returned to head quarters with a prosthetic leg, and talked to my handler. Poppy, and Carter went back to the safehouse just to talk.
"Oh hi smith." My handler captain david said.
"Hi David."
"Here's another purple heart medal, and a bronze star medal." David then tossed the medals towards me.
"That's your what? 22nd and 23rd medal? Bravo congrats smith."
"I'm gonna ask you sometime David."
"Ask away smith."
"When will i get sent as a diplomatic bodyguard?"
"About three weeks from now. Also agent Carter is gonna be one of your partners for the mission."
I sighed. Figured.
"So who was behind the terror attack David?"
"Honestly. The CIA search the crime scene, and saw that the consortium blatantly did that. The mercenaries worked under one of the companies in the consortium. But for the public it's gonna be announced tonight that a rogue consortium PMC did that so we wouldn't provoke them too much."
"It's gonna be a long day smith."
"Yeah David."
Then David gave me a cigar.
"Wanna smoke?"
I nodded.
To be continued…
submitted by Akfanboy to HFY [link] [comments]
After a couple of seconds my arm was finally done recalibrating. I'm gonna miss my friends. But I'll never miss the humid areas of laos, Vietnam, and some parts of china. The golden triangle is so goddamned hot. Honestly I don't know if it's secretly a promotion or a demotion. Or possibly I'm gonna get fired, and killed.
I'll get my name scraped out of the national files. If I get fired the chances of getting dragged into a blacksite is high, and I'll get tripped by the guys on one of the blacksites.
Oh god. I remember the LSD torture. It's like being awake but not in control. It's like being stuck as a backseat driver as people do unspeakable stuff to me. Oh boy if the public knows about the MK ultra test 2 oh boy. The people are gonna riot. It's already 2040.
The world is on edge, and under foreign influence for over a decade now. From the end of the 20's intergalactic travelers, and companies came, and control most of the world's nations within just a span of two years. They have the guts to exploit our resources, and don't give a damn about what happens to us. They care about profits. Except for the 8 major powers most of the world is under alien control. The only nations that aren't under alien control are russia, china, The U.S.A, great Britain with their manpower advantage given Australia is a British vassal state, France, Canada, Israel, and lastly an unlikely power the African union made out of 7 of the most powerful nations in Africa before the arrival of the outsiders are the only remaining independent countries.
Most of the intelligence agencies are currently working together dealing drugs with the outsiders who visit us, giving weapons to guerilla fighters, and getting weapons from the outside. Ships from an unlikely ally an independent economic alliance of nations named the syndicate allows to us to get some weapons. As long as we sell them drugs, and perishables from earth. It turns out the syndicate likes drugs, coffee, and other stuff native to earth.
Some of our intelligence guys are chatting with the aliens. The guys who are exploiting our resources are called the consortium. They are a consort of companies, and a league that agrees on how to manipulate markets. These guys are basically the more unhinged version of the wall street guys, and a mix of the c.i.a.
I sighed. "This is gonna be a long day ahead of me."
I then smoked a cigar. The cigar calmed my nerves as I inhaled the nicotine. The addictive substance relaxes me. Plus lung cancer isn't a problem anymore considering we now have a solution on how to cure it. The alien companies gave us some of their tech to show their so called sympathy before they flooded economies with consumer goods from their companies, and controlled almost all of earths economies.
"So agent smith. This is your new partner." A c.i.a handler said to me.
I spat out some ash from my mouth, and complained. "The fuck are you giving me a newbie as a partner? And what the hell am I gonna to do to need a new partner. Rodriguez already was fine yet I'm stuck with a newbie?"
The handler laughed. "Oh heavens no. This is an a.i. Codename poppy. She's your new partner in crime. Because we are gonna send you as a diplomatic bodyguard to the syndicate."
"Oh hi! I'm poppy I'm an artificial intelligence created by the c.i.a, m.i.6, the g.r.u, the s.s.m, mossad, and the s.s.a." The human looking robot said.
The voice kinda sounds synthetic, and the tone is too happy. I kinda hate it. I hate that it gives off happy go lucky vibes. I don't mean to be a grouch but the happy go lucky guys always die first. It's kinda ironic in a fucked up way.
So this thing is an a.i kinda like g.w. An a.i made by the c.i.a. G.W have made the internet more tolerable, and friendly due to context. People back then always manipulated facts into their political goals, and ideals. People get the facts misconstrued for political reasons.
G.W was made after a game character that was so prophetic about the world in the future. M.G.S 2: Sons of liberty. It has the same function as g.w from mgs2. It gives facts in a non biased way. In a way where people don't get their feelings hurt when something is given to them in a factual, and non biased ways.
People used to manipulate facts for political correctness. Hiding the fact that they misinterpret the meaning of those words. The internet used to be a toxic, and a fucked up place before g.w. Like Jesus Christ the goddamn internet was filled with incels, and attention seekers using facts and misusing them for internet clout. It was a place where no one is invalidated but nobody was right. G.w put an end to that era. G.w is now living in a secluded server thanking us for it's creation. It was phased out after it asked to be replaced by another one because it was sick, and tired of correcting people that get the facts misconstrued. It got to the point that it begged the c.i.a, and annoyed the c.i.a to the point that it wanted to be put in a secluded server so it could live it's remaining days in relative leisure just because it begged the c.i.a director so many times that he would get spam calls from the a.i using his official phone number even in the middle of the night for three straight years.
Anyways back to discussion.
"So you're one of those advanced a.i's like g.w?" I asked just to be sure I'm not paired with a dumb a.i.
"Yup. I even passed the Turing test in flying colors. I can feel emotions, do something out of spite or anger, and can think for myself." Poppy said with a dog like innocence.
"So what can you do?" I asked.
"Well. I can fly planes, use guns even those that people can't use due to physiological differences, and hack computers without being near the target. I'm basically just an a.i that can be a jack of all traits if given a chance." Poppy said.
"Fine. But you'll do it my way or the high way." I told poppy with a commanding tone.
Poppy laughed. "Okay boomer."
I sighed. This is gonna be a long day. I'm old as shit but not a boomer.
"Woah. You guys are already going along greatly. Great for you." The handler snickered.
He then left, and left me with poppy.
I'm fucked. "So I'm gonna brief you about the world poppy. Through a song."
I then sang bo burnham's how the world works song.
"Hey, kids Today, we're gonna learn about the world The world that's around us is pretty amazing But how does it work? It must be complicated The secret is the world can only work When everything works together"
"A bee drinks from a flower And leaves with its pollen A squirrel in a tree spreads the seeds that have fallen Everything works together"
"The biggest elephant, the littlest fly The gophers underground, the birds in the sky And every single cricket, every fish in the sea"
"Gives what they can and gets what they need That is how the world works That is how the world works"
"From A to Zebra To the worms in the dirt That's how it works Hey everyone"
I then pulled out a sock, and made it into a puppet.
"Look who stopped by to say "hello" It's Socko Hey! Where you been, Socko?"
"I've been where I always am when you're not wearing me on your hand In a frightening, liminal space between states of being Not quite dead, not quite alive It's similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis"
"Socko, we were just talking about the world and how it works!"
"Boy, that sounds complicated! Do you have anything you'd wanna teach us about the world?"
"I wouldn't say anything that you Probably haven't already said yourself"
"I don't know about that, Socko How about you give it a try?"
"All right!"
"The simple narrative taught in every history class Is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist Don't you know the world is built with blood? And genocide and exploitation"
"The global network of capital essentially functions To separate the worker from the means of production And the FBI killed Martin Luther King Private property's inherently theft"
"And neoliberal fascists are destroying the left And every politician, every cop on the street Protects the interests of the pedophilic corporate elite"
"That is how the world works (really?) That is how the world works Genocide the Natives, say you got to it first"
"That's how it works"
"That's pretty intense?"
"No shit Sherlock."
"What can I do to help?"
"Read a book or something, I don't know Just don't burden me with the responsibility of educating you"
*It's incredibly exhausting"
"I'm sorry, Socko I was just trying to become a better person"
"Why do you rich fucking white people Insist on seeing every socio-political conflict Through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization?"
"This isn't about you So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way"
"Watch your mouth, buddy"
"Remember who's on whose hand here"
"But that's what I- Have you not been fucking listening? We are entrenched in a way (all right, all right)"
"Wait, wait, no please! I don't wanna go back, please, ugh, ugh, ugh I can't go, I can't go back Please, please, I'm sorry!"
"Are you gonna behave yourself?"
"Yes"
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, sir"
"Look at me"
"Yes, sir"
"That's better That is how the world works That is how the world works I hope you learned your lesson"
"I did and it hurt That's how it works"
NOOOOOOO!!!
Drags sock puppet into a pocket like some introvert getting dragged into socializing in bars by extroverts.
"So do you understand know?" I asked poppy.
"That everything is made under the blood of billions, and we shouldn't make their deaths be in vein?" Poppy said.
"Correct. And we shouldn't let outsiders make our choices for us. We should kick them out." I said like some isolationist American during the 1920's.
"Ironic isn't it smith. The c.i.a used to be anti socialist but look how the circumstances turned the American government into. A social democracy/merit based democracy where politicians are based in merit rather than popularity. Politicians are insentivised to change the world than burn it down like some of the old presidents did. Ironic that america became something it hated. A weird mesh of meritocracy, democracy, republican, liberaterian, and market socialist ideals. Some sort ideological mesh made by idealogs"
"And it's working with it's remaining two Allies, and former enemies just to defeat a foreign threat. How poetically ironic isn't it? I mean the CIA used to go schizo mode when they hear communist, and socialist ideals or hearing the word russians, and chinese are plotting something. Now the country it help grew became the very thing it sought to destroy. Morbidly ironic isn't it?" Poppy said with a meloncholic under tone.
"Yeah. Specially the stuff we do now." I said agreeing to the statement.
"But that's how the world works. Everything must change. Either you adapt or die." I said with a meloncholic under tone.
"So do you know where we are going?" I asked poppy.
I then puffed up my cigar. Sweet sweet nicotine.
"Back to america. In the space port in Austin Texas. I'm already done contacting the contact the handler gave to me. E.T.A 7 hours. Now let's go to the laostian military base 7 miles north from here. Our air america flight is waiting for us." Poppy said.
I sighed. "Come ride with me. I have a motorcycle a hundred meters from here."
We walked towards my motorcycle. I then puffed up my cigar smelling the nicotine.
So my life is about to change huh? Eh. I'm just gonna adapt. After all in this world it's either adapt or die.
Click, click, click
Motorcycle engine starts rumbling.
Poppy then held my waist. It's hands are cold as steel. Colder than even corpse. I sighed.
The highway was almost empty. Everyone was working a 10-8 job in one of the corporations that control laos. There was no land vehicles transporting goods because the aliens are using their tech to transport them underground. The road was almost abandoned except for the guys who have motorcycle hobbies. Anyways it doesn't matter. After all there's no traffic anymore.
The fresh breeze calmed my nerves. It made me feel alive. A motorcyclist drive by me and waved hello. I waved back at the motorcyclist. It's good to be on the road.
After a twenty minute drive we arrived at the military base. Another CIA agent greeted us, and escorted us to the flight.
"So you guys are the diplomatic bodyguards?" Asked the agent.
"Yup. That's what my handler told me." Poppy said.
"So your one of the newer a.i models eh. Ok. Just step right in. Plus the flight is rather boring. Just sleep while on flight to save energy." The agent told me.
I sighed. I threw away the cigar, and slept through the flight.
A few hours later...
I woke up arriving at Austin executive airport. Poppy just sat there watching me sleep like some sort of creep. It made me a little bit paranoid at the unflinching eyes that was watching me. But I ignored my instincts, and went outside.
After that I ate something for breakfast. A couple of pancakes, and chicken wings. Poppy looked at me with envy. I sighed.
"Can you eat? Do you need food to survive?" I asked.
"Well.... I need glucose to recharge my batteries. I can also use a charger but it would be suspicious. So the glucose to energy converter was made for special missions so that I wouldn't blow my cover."
Figured. Those guys in the CIA RnD team are making contengencies for every eventual event. I then ordered a plate of syrup covered pancakes.
Poppy looked at me smiling. I sighed.
An hour later...
We arrived at the space port. People walked around buying nicnacs, waiting for their flight, and just waited around for their family members that were coming back.
Another agent came up to me, and gave me two tickets.
"Here's the tickets. Also have this. You'll need it."
The agent then gave me some sort of high tech phone. Then out of knowhere something exploded.
I was knocked unconscious for a couple minutes. When I woke up I was getting dragged by poppy along with the agent that gave me the tickets. She shot back at incoming enemies using alien tech.
"Ugh..." As I said that I began coughing blood. I looked down I was bleeding. My left leg was missing. It was slowly bleeding due to a tourniquet, bandages, and some sealing foam. It was still bleeding but isn't bleeding as badly as to kill me in just a couple seconds.
Gunshots echoed in the space port. Agents shot back at the alien attackers. A fierce firefight began. Bright lights like something akin to RGB lights but in a epileptic way we're seen down the isles as screams of both alien, CIA, fbi, and fully kitted out port guards were slaughtered one by one.
Poppy dragged me, and the other agent to a bathroom. "Sit rep." I asked poppy.
"It seems to be a terrorist attack. I don't know why but they looked like alien mercenaries. The question is that did the consortium hired them to kill our diplomat. Good thing the diplomat hasn't arrived. I checked the agency message boards, and they said that good thing the diplomat was sick after getting food poisoning this morning. They are already talking about it. Some of them are even suggesting that the consortium did this attack." Poppy said.
"So the diplomat got lucky. But why the fuck would they attack our diplomat to the syndicate? I mean it's counter productive. We don't need their goods or services considering the people here would rather choose human companies rather than alien shady companies. I guess they must've know about our deals with them, and decided to start a shadow war. A war in the shadows. The companies of the consortium vs the remaining independent government's. Who ever wins controls all the resources in the world." I told poppy.
She nodded. "Good guess but no one really knows. It's so sudden. We need more info before we act against them."
"I'll patch you up in the meantime. I hurried the medical assistance I gave you a couple minutes ago. I was hurrying because this guy is saying we need to leave after he suffered minor bruises. You blunted most of the damaged for him because you were in front of the explosion. He was saved because you were blocking him from getting hit by shrapnel. I cut you're leg off. Sorry. It can't be saved considering it was barely hanging on the leg. Plus I was running out of time so I had to cut it before you bled out."
I sighed. "Okay. Just get my hk UmP 45 inside my arm. It's in second the compartment a secret compartment. In the upper arm. I have a few mags of it inside the compartment. Here's a screw driver to remove the lid."
I then gave poppy a screw driver hidden in my pants, and saw her unscrew the lid off. A ump 45, and fully loaded 4 mags came out dropping loudly on the floor.
"Now carry me to the danger. I would rather die than suffer for years being reminded of the sad reality that I lost an arm, and a leg every time I wake up." I morbidly joked to poppy.
"Are you sure? You're injured! Are you fucking suicidal?" Poppy, and the agent said.
"Did I stutter?"
The two of them sighed.
Poppy then carried me in her back, and the other agent used poppy as meat shields. The agent held a Barretta 93r. A burst fire weapon.
"Ready?" I said.
"Ugh. You're lucky I accepted your request dumbass."
"Yes."
I was being piggy back carried by poppy while the agent followed us.
"Tango 15 meters to the left." Poppy said.
I then activated burst fire, and shot at the direction given. When I saw an enemy I aimed for the center mass. But I instead hit the thorax killing the alien instantly.
"Kill confirms. Enemy is k.i.a."
"Tango 20 meters ahead."
I then aimed straight forward, and saw a bolt of light strike near me. It was close enough to feel the heat of the round. I shot back, and killed the alien instantly by hitting the alien in the lungs, and heart.
"Enemy is k.i.a"
Then I heard a three round burst coming from a Barretta. I looked back, and saw the agent kill an incoming enemy.
"Thanks. So what's your name?" I asked.
"Oh I haven't properly instroduced myself. My name is agent Carter." The agent/Carter said.
"Thanks Carter. My name is agent smith."
"No problem agent smith. We CIA agents got each other's backs. We must stick together."
"Guys tangos incoming coming from the left. ETA 20 seconds."
We then aimed our Guns, and waited for the enemy to arrive. When they eventually arrived we moved them down with burst fire. After that a couple national guard guys came up to us. They were probably chasing those aliens.
"Thanks." One of the national guards said.
"No problem"
We continued, and after two minutes of walking we walked into a firefight. I smiled.
"You know what to do." I said smiling.
"Third party them?"
"Yup."
I then turned on full auto, and began to spray, and pray.
After a few seconds of pulling the trigger my gun ran out of bullets. Carter also ran out of bullets in his magazine, and reloaded. 3 confirmed kills, and multiple missed or slightly injured.
Oh crap. Then a bolt of light past near me. Enough to the point my right cheek got minor burns.
"Duck!"
I then began to be dragged by poppy into cover. Carter also looked for cover, and dived into the nearest cover. I quickly reloaded the mag, and started shooting at the aliens again. I changed the selector back to burst fire to conserve ammo.
I aimed center mass at the enemies. A loud burst of .45 ACP rounds was heard as an enemy was hit in the thorax.
"Kill confirmed."
I continued, and shot enemies in either the arms, legs, the thorax, or the chest.
After three minutes the firefight ended.
"Other sectors secured. All area's are currently in our control. Over 700 people died, 1720 were injured, and some were missing. Military and government casualties are 124 KIA'd, 24 severely injured, 57 mildly injured, and 38 MIA'd." Poppy said smiling.
Then paramedics rushed into the scene. People were rushed into nearby hospitals while I was dragged by a undercover CIA paramedic to a government safe house along with poppy, and Carter.
A week later…
I was standing in the military cemetery in Arlington national cemetery. Where soldiers who died without any identifications are buried. I saw burials around me. Soldiers who died without any family members, soldiers disowned by family, and other such things. But hey it's just the life of a soldier. That's what I know at least. From ranger grunt to c.i.a grunt. I was disowned by my parents who were conservatives, and highly religious because I was going to sacrifice my place in heaven to save some heathens from the middle east. I never regretted my actions. I saved lives, and ended some. No guts no glory after all.
Some of the people getting buried got medal of honors. Saving comrades in need of dire help in exchange for their lives, soldiers who rescued civilians in exchange for their own lives, and soldiers who honorably fought on to save others even faced with hard decisions.
I saluted the unknown soldiers for their bravery, and honor. In the background poppy, and Carter were talking. But that wasn't important. Bagpipes, trumpets, and drums play as the unknown soldiers get burried with their medals. The grave sentinels saluted while burying the dead. Gunshots in the honor of the dead was heard as the unknown soldiers got buried while being watched by the people who those soldiers saved.
After that I returned to head quarters with a prosthetic leg, and talked to my handler. Poppy, and Carter went back to the safehouse just to talk.
"Oh hi smith." My handler captain david said.
"Hi David."
"Here's another purple heart medal, and a bronze star medal." David then tossed the medals towards me.
"That's your what? 22nd and 23rd medal? Bravo congrats smith."
"I'm gonna ask you sometime David."
"Ask away smith."
"When will i get sent as a diplomatic bodyguard?"
"About three weeks from now. Also agent Carter is gonna be one of your partners for the mission."
I sighed. Figured.
"So who was behind the terror attack David?"
"Honestly. The CIA search the crime scene, and saw that the consortium blatantly did that. The mercenaries worked under one of the companies in the consortium. But for the public it's gonna be announced tonight that a rogue consortium PMC did that so we wouldn't provoke them too much."
"It's gonna be a long day smith."
"Yeah David."
Then David gave me a cigar.
"Wanna smoke?"
I nodded.
To be continued…
2023.06.02 15:58 lbabinz [PSN] Days of Play Digital PlayStation Game Sale
Landing Page
submitted by lbabinz to VideoGameDealsCanada [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 14:17 Vast_Suggestion_5145 Best Orthopedic Doctor Near Me Dr.Srinivas Kasha
When it comes to finding the best orthopedic doctor near you, look no further than Dr. Srinivas Kasha. With his exceptional expertise, extensive experience, and commitment to patient care, Dr. Kasha has established himself as a trusted name in the field of orthopedics.
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Comprehensive Fracture Treatment
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State-of-the-Art Facilities and Patient-Centric Care
Dr. Srinivas Kasha's clinic is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and cutting-edge technologies, enabling him to provide the highest quality orthopedic care to his patients. From the moment you enter his clinic, you will experience a warm and welcoming environment designed to put you at ease. Dr. Kasha and his compassionate team prioritize patient satisfaction, ensuring that you receive personalized attention and care throughout your orthopedic journey.
Conclusion
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Contact Info:
Kims Hospital 1-8-31/1, Minister Road, Krishna Nagar Colony, Begumpet, Secunderabad, Telangana 500003.
Mail Id: [email protected]
Phone No: +91-9948047649
submitted by Vast_Suggestion_5145 to u/Vast_Suggestion_5145 [link] [comments]
Unparalleled Expertise in Orthopedics
Dr. Srinivas Kasha is a highly skilled and experienced orthopedic doctor who specializes in diagnosing and treating a wide range of musculoskeletal conditions. With his extensive knowledge of orthopedic medicine, he offers comprehensive care for various orthopedic issues, including fractures, joint problems, sports injuries, and degenerative conditions. Dr. Kasha's expertise extends to both surgical and non-surgical treatment options, allowing him to provide personalized care tailored to each patient's unique needs.
Orthopedic Excellence in Begumpet
As an esteemed orthopedic doctor in Begumpet, Dr. Srinivas Kasha has earned a reputation for delivering exceptional orthopedic care to patients in the local community. With a deep understanding of the unique healthcare needs of Begumpet residents, Dr. Kasha is dedicated to providing accurate diagnoses, effective treatments, and compassionate care. His commitment to excellence and patient satisfaction sets him apart as a leading orthopedic specialist in the area.
Specialization in Knee Joint Arthroplasty
Dr. Srinivas Kasha possesses advanced skills in knee joint arthroplasty, a surgical procedure commonly performed to relieve pain and improve function in individuals with severe knee arthritis. As an orthopedic surgeon specializing in knee joint arthroplasty, Dr. Kasha utilizes the latest techniques and technologies to ensure optimal outcomes for his patients. His expertise in this area makes him the go-to orthopedic doctor for knee-related issues in Hyderabad.
Orthopedic Hip Specialist
If you're seeking a specialist for hip-related orthopedic concerns, look no further than Dr. Srinivas Kasha. As an orthopedic hip specialist, he has extensive experience in diagnosing and treating hip conditions, including arthritis, hip fractures, labral tears, and hip impingement. Dr. Kasha combines his in-depth knowledge of hip orthopedics with a patient-centered approach to develop individualized treatment plans that address each patient's unique needs, aiming to restore mobility and improve quality of life.
Comprehensive Fracture Treatment
Fractures can be painful and debilitating, requiring specialized care for proper healing. Dr. Srinivas Kasha is a trusted orthopedic doctor renowned for his expertise in fracture treatment in Hyderabad. Whether it's a simple or complex fracture, Dr. Kasha employs advanced techniques to accurately diagnose and provide appropriate treatment options. With his skillful approach and dedication to patient well-being, he ensures optimal fracture healing and helps patients regain their normal functionality.
State-of-the-Art Facilities and Patient-Centric Care
Dr. Srinivas Kasha's clinic is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and cutting-edge technologies, enabling him to provide the highest quality orthopedic care to his patients. From the moment you enter his clinic, you will experience a warm and welcoming environment designed to put you at ease. Dr. Kasha and his compassionate team prioritize patient satisfaction, ensuring that you receive personalized attention and care throughout your orthopedic journey.
Conclusion
When it comes to orthopedic care, Dr. Srinivas Kasha stands out as a top choice for individuals seeking the best orthopedic doctor near them. With his unparalleled expertise, commitment to excellence, and patient-centric approach, he provides comprehensive orthopedic solutions tailored to each patient's specific needs. Whether you require treatment for a knee condition, hip issue, fracture, or any other orthopedic concern, Dr. Kasha is dedicated to helping you achieve optimal health and regain your mobility.
Contact Info:
Kims Hospital 1-8-31/1, Minister Road, Krishna Nagar Colony, Begumpet, Secunderabad, Telangana 500003.
Mail Id: [email protected]
Phone No: +91-9948047649
2023.06.02 13:35 ADC668 Edinburgh Marathon Race Report
Race Information Name: Edinburgh Marathon Date: May 28, 2023 Distance: 26.2 miles Location: Edinburgh Time: 3:46:20
Goals Goal Description Completed? A Sub 3:30 No B Maintain pace discipline No C Sub 4:00 (Complete) Yes
Splits Km Time min/m 1 7:32 2 7:40 3 7:41 4 8:04 5 7:52 6 7:43 7 8:03 8 7:47 9 7:57 10 7:55 11 7:56 12 7:48 13 7:49 14 7:41 15 7:46 16 7:49 17 7:59 18 7:57 19 7:52 20 7:50 21 7:53 22 7:56 23 8:04 24 8:05 25 8:07 26 8:11 27 8:09 28 8:05 29 8:15 30 8:19 31 8:17 32 8:22 33 8:29 34 8:27 35 8:35 36 8:37 37 8:31 38 8:41 39 8:43 40 10:23 41 17:35 42 17:15
Training:
Training had been consistent throughout with the last few 32km runs feeling good! There was no issue with fuelling and pace for all three 32km runs sat around the 7:52 mark. With the training I had set to taking SIS gels on every 5km and sipping either water or an energy drink 3km after that. This was done throughout. With a goal of a sub 3:30 mara I was relatively confident that this could be done, if not quicker... it wasn't to be!
Pre-race:
Didn't sleep too well the night before getting to bed around 2200. Had eaten fairly low fibre throughout the week which consisted of high carbs (rice, pasta etc) and protein, however I think that looking ahead some more fibre would have done me well. Some food for thought. Dinner the night before consisted of a chicken breast and rice however in hindsight some additional calories may have been a bonus as we would find out. After an earl-ish wake with some porridge, peanut butter and coffee we travelled on the 0705 train to Edinburgh from Leuchars. A really easy journey ahead of the day. We found a seat next to a man who was on the production team for BBC's Big Weekend and managed to relax into the 1:30 journey. Sipped through a bottle of Lucozade Sport but could possibly have done with some more liquid here. Arrival at Edinburgh was chaotic with runners flooding the station but managed to find a rogue banana in M&S and wolfed it down before joining the huge queue to the loo's near the startline. Luckily word was passed down the line that the urinals was clearing so I managed to skip the queue to get a quick wee in before kick off at 10:00. As this acted as a 'training run' for July's 100km 'Race to the Stones' I wore a vest which held the days nutrition (around 6 SIS gels and a pack of Clif Bloks) and liquids (x1 500ml watex1 500ml High5 Zero Tab). A quick warm up with help of a theragun and I moved into place where the 'red' and 'yellow' sections met; My thinking being that I could get held up if I were to position myself towards the rear this may hold my up given the downhill sections of the run; this was the first of the many errors to come.
Race:
*Note the Km distance vs min per mile pacing
Race kicked off on the dot of 10:00 with around a minute before crossing the start line itself. As expected it was a quick start. I had been warned not to go too fast out the gates but was not prepared the swarms of people pushing down the steep roads. I had endeavoured not to go quicker than a 7:40 pace per mile but found myself pushing it a bit much at the start and tried to rein it in. Pacing was all over the place at this stage and there was little consistency. Possibly due to the terrain and the feeling of being 'pushed ahead' but I definitely found myself being overtaken by more people than I would take myself - likely due to my poor positioning at the start.
My HR seemed ok with it at the 150 mark (avg resting HR is around 38bpm) however I began to notice it slowly creeping up. It was at the 10km mark that I started to think that this could be a long day ahead as I managed 10km in around 48mins. I hadn't quite hit the rhythm I was used to and now out of town where the crowds disappeared apart from the odd family, it felt odd to be on course. A mistake here was to to avoid the aid stations. I was cautious to avoid the High5 gels due to the concern of having not trained with them however it was a mistake to have not taken more water when offered as I would find out.
Where my fueling technique had worked in the past I was finding it tricky to keep the momentum. Error number 2. Or 3. Or 4? As the heat increased from around 15 degrees to 18 things seemed tougher than expected at around the 25km point. I was now well aware that I had gone out too fast as my HR was now into the late 160's and low 170's. This is where it stayed for the rest of the race creeping up and staying at around 177. As we approached the 30km point there was a turnaround point which was gravel which was harder than expected given the change in terrain. At this point however each slight incline began to feel like a slog and it began to look like the sub 3:30 would take a serious effort.
I began to realize that I would need more fuel and in taking more on another gel I managed to drop the 4/5 remaining Clif Bloks and stupidly chose not to take the time to pick them up. Another error. I really began to fade at around the 35km mark however by the time I hit the 39km mark I was cooked. After waving to get the attention of my Dad who was spectating this turned out to be a random bystander and I was starting to hallucinate. My energy had completely gone and I was in trouble. I tried to keep running but had to stop, making it almost impossible to then restart. I could barely speak now and despite the continued support of the crowds which had began to grow as we got towards the finish line, felt my eyes start to close and my body want to give in. By this stage I had passed the 3:30 time and just wanted to get across the line before the 4:00 mark.
I managed to creep around the corner at the end and crossed the line. I was directed to the med tent just to the left of the finish line and collapsed onto the floor. HR all over the place, no energy and a time of 3:46 I was more thrilled that I had finished than anything.
Post-race: Having dragged myself off the med tent floor I managed to make it down to the exit area and grab some water for the salt tabs that were being given out with the race t-shirt/medal I slowly began to feel alive again. A few more salt tabs and the relief of having finished made things slightly better. A sip of a shandy and a boost bar and I started to gain some energy, however my stomach was in pieces. This was to continue with a lack of motion in the ocean for the following 3 days...
A few learning points: Self-selection at the start line was poor. Pace discipline was evident. HR was all over the place and should have been a considering factor. On course nutrition could have been better. Poor pre-race nutrition may have added to the lack of energy? Overall a long day in the office.
submitted by ADC668 to AdvancedRunning [link] [comments]
Goals Goal Description Completed? A Sub 3:30 No B Maintain pace discipline No C Sub 4:00 (Complete) Yes
Splits Km Time min/m 1 7:32 2 7:40 3 7:41 4 8:04 5 7:52 6 7:43 7 8:03 8 7:47 9 7:57 10 7:55 11 7:56 12 7:48 13 7:49 14 7:41 15 7:46 16 7:49 17 7:59 18 7:57 19 7:52 20 7:50 21 7:53 22 7:56 23 8:04 24 8:05 25 8:07 26 8:11 27 8:09 28 8:05 29 8:15 30 8:19 31 8:17 32 8:22 33 8:29 34 8:27 35 8:35 36 8:37 37 8:31 38 8:41 39 8:43 40 10:23 41 17:35 42 17:15
Training:
Training had been consistent throughout with the last few 32km runs feeling good! There was no issue with fuelling and pace for all three 32km runs sat around the 7:52 mark. With the training I had set to taking SIS gels on every 5km and sipping either water or an energy drink 3km after that. This was done throughout. With a goal of a sub 3:30 mara I was relatively confident that this could be done, if not quicker... it wasn't to be!
Pre-race:
Didn't sleep too well the night before getting to bed around 2200. Had eaten fairly low fibre throughout the week which consisted of high carbs (rice, pasta etc) and protein, however I think that looking ahead some more fibre would have done me well. Some food for thought. Dinner the night before consisted of a chicken breast and rice however in hindsight some additional calories may have been a bonus as we would find out. After an earl-ish wake with some porridge, peanut butter and coffee we travelled on the 0705 train to Edinburgh from Leuchars. A really easy journey ahead of the day. We found a seat next to a man who was on the production team for BBC's Big Weekend and managed to relax into the 1:30 journey. Sipped through a bottle of Lucozade Sport but could possibly have done with some more liquid here. Arrival at Edinburgh was chaotic with runners flooding the station but managed to find a rogue banana in M&S and wolfed it down before joining the huge queue to the loo's near the startline. Luckily word was passed down the line that the urinals was clearing so I managed to skip the queue to get a quick wee in before kick off at 10:00. As this acted as a 'training run' for July's 100km 'Race to the Stones' I wore a vest which held the days nutrition (around 6 SIS gels and a pack of Clif Bloks) and liquids (x1 500ml watex1 500ml High5 Zero Tab). A quick warm up with help of a theragun and I moved into place where the 'red' and 'yellow' sections met; My thinking being that I could get held up if I were to position myself towards the rear this may hold my up given the downhill sections of the run; this was the first of the many errors to come.
Race:
*Note the Km distance vs min per mile pacing
Race kicked off on the dot of 10:00 with around a minute before crossing the start line itself. As expected it was a quick start. I had been warned not to go too fast out the gates but was not prepared the swarms of people pushing down the steep roads. I had endeavoured not to go quicker than a 7:40 pace per mile but found myself pushing it a bit much at the start and tried to rein it in. Pacing was all over the place at this stage and there was little consistency. Possibly due to the terrain and the feeling of being 'pushed ahead' but I definitely found myself being overtaken by more people than I would take myself - likely due to my poor positioning at the start.
My HR seemed ok with it at the 150 mark (avg resting HR is around 38bpm) however I began to notice it slowly creeping up. It was at the 10km mark that I started to think that this could be a long day ahead as I managed 10km in around 48mins. I hadn't quite hit the rhythm I was used to and now out of town where the crowds disappeared apart from the odd family, it felt odd to be on course. A mistake here was to to avoid the aid stations. I was cautious to avoid the High5 gels due to the concern of having not trained with them however it was a mistake to have not taken more water when offered as I would find out.
Where my fueling technique had worked in the past I was finding it tricky to keep the momentum. Error number 2. Or 3. Or 4? As the heat increased from around 15 degrees to 18 things seemed tougher than expected at around the 25km point. I was now well aware that I had gone out too fast as my HR was now into the late 160's and low 170's. This is where it stayed for the rest of the race creeping up and staying at around 177. As we approached the 30km point there was a turnaround point which was gravel which was harder than expected given the change in terrain. At this point however each slight incline began to feel like a slog and it began to look like the sub 3:30 would take a serious effort.
I began to realize that I would need more fuel and in taking more on another gel I managed to drop the 4/5 remaining Clif Bloks and stupidly chose not to take the time to pick them up. Another error. I really began to fade at around the 35km mark however by the time I hit the 39km mark I was cooked. After waving to get the attention of my Dad who was spectating this turned out to be a random bystander and I was starting to hallucinate. My energy had completely gone and I was in trouble. I tried to keep running but had to stop, making it almost impossible to then restart. I could barely speak now and despite the continued support of the crowds which had began to grow as we got towards the finish line, felt my eyes start to close and my body want to give in. By this stage I had passed the 3:30 time and just wanted to get across the line before the 4:00 mark.
I managed to creep around the corner at the end and crossed the line. I was directed to the med tent just to the left of the finish line and collapsed onto the floor. HR all over the place, no energy and a time of 3:46 I was more thrilled that I had finished than anything.
Post-race: Having dragged myself off the med tent floor I managed to make it down to the exit area and grab some water for the salt tabs that were being given out with the race t-shirt/medal I slowly began to feel alive again. A few more salt tabs and the relief of having finished made things slightly better. A sip of a shandy and a boost bar and I started to gain some energy, however my stomach was in pieces. This was to continue with a lack of motion in the ocean for the following 3 days...
A few learning points: Self-selection at the start line was poor. Pace discipline was evident. HR was all over the place and should have been a considering factor. On course nutrition could have been better. Poor pre-race nutrition may have added to the lack of energy? Overall a long day in the office.
2023.06.02 12:34 Far-Instance5908 Marvellous Residential Properties In Mumbai
Mumbai, the Indian metropolis, attracts visitors worldwide with its mysterious allure. The area is located on the western coast of the country near the Arabian Sea's mouth. Mumbai was previously known as Bombay before 1995, which is important to remember. Visitors can enjoy the historic splendor of Mumbai while strolling through its pleasant neighborhoods. Throughout its history, Mumbai has been one of the most prosperous cities in India. Mumbai's real estate market is rapidly growing. Mumbai is upgrading its infrastructure to provide top-notch services. Take a look at these amazingly built homes in Mumbai.
Located in JNPT Road, Ulwe, Mumbai, Bhaveshwar Pushp is a project developed by Payal Group. Introducing Bhaveshwar Pushp - an exquisite project that boasts meticulously designed living spaces at affordable prices. Experience the epitome of thoughtful architecture and indulge in a luxurious lifestyle. Experience the lifestyle of royalty with Bhaveshwar Pushp's stunning apartments in Ulwe. Escape the hustle and bustle of city life and unwind in the serene oasis of Bhaveshwar Pushp. Your home will transform into the ultimate retreat, providing the perfect escape after a long day at work. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 42 Lacs and 67 Lacs respectively.
Located in Khadakpada, Kalyan, Mumbai, Shubh Manokamana is a project developed by Shubh Vastu Construction. Introducing Shubh Manokamana - a thoughtfully designed living space with affordable flats. Shubh Manokamana offers luxurious apartments in Kalyan, perfect for a royal lifestyle. Your home is now an ideal retreat. The residential apartments in Kalyan provide luxurious homes that are peacefully located away from the city center noise. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 35 Lacs and 55 Lacs respectively.
Located in Kannamwar Nagar II, Vikhroli, Mumbai, Unique Shine is a project developed by Reliable India Corporation. Introducing Unique Shine- an exquisite development featuring meticulously designed residential units that offer a harmonious blend of functionality and aesthetics at competitive price points. The apartments at Vikhroli offered by Unique Shine embody a luxurious lifestyle fit for royalty. The Unique Shine apartments have been designed with a strategic focus on both interior and exterior architecture. 1 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 65 Lacs.
submitted by Far-Instance5908 to indianrealestate [link] [comments]
Projects In Mumbai
Bhaveshwar Pushp
Contact:+912268493841Located in JNPT Road, Ulwe, Mumbai, Bhaveshwar Pushp is a project developed by Payal Group. Introducing Bhaveshwar Pushp - an exquisite project that boasts meticulously designed living spaces at affordable prices. Experience the epitome of thoughtful architecture and indulge in a luxurious lifestyle. Experience the lifestyle of royalty with Bhaveshwar Pushp's stunning apartments in Ulwe. Escape the hustle and bustle of city life and unwind in the serene oasis of Bhaveshwar Pushp. Your home will transform into the ultimate retreat, providing the perfect escape after a long day at work. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 42 Lacs and 67 Lacs respectively.
Shubh Manokamana
Contact:+912261739658Located in Khadakpada, Kalyan, Mumbai, Shubh Manokamana is a project developed by Shubh Vastu Construction. Introducing Shubh Manokamana - a thoughtfully designed living space with affordable flats. Shubh Manokamana offers luxurious apartments in Kalyan, perfect for a royal lifestyle. Your home is now an ideal retreat. The residential apartments in Kalyan provide luxurious homes that are peacefully located away from the city center noise. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 35 Lacs and 55 Lacs respectively.
Unique Shine
Contact:+912261344382Located in Kannamwar Nagar II, Vikhroli, Mumbai, Unique Shine is a project developed by Reliable India Corporation. Introducing Unique Shine- an exquisite development featuring meticulously designed residential units that offer a harmonious blend of functionality and aesthetics at competitive price points. The apartments at Vikhroli offered by Unique Shine embody a luxurious lifestyle fit for royalty. The Unique Shine apartments have been designed with a strategic focus on both interior and exterior architecture. 1 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 65 Lacs.
2023.06.02 11:36 Individual_Club_5584 open plots for sale in tirupati
 | SR DIVYA GREEN CITY Modern villa open plots .It is located in R.Mallavaram, Near Airport Tirupati. And also it is located at a prime location worthy of our customer’s investments . Doing all types of real estate property in tirupathi. House, apartments, villas and development lands available . We provide an excellent level of service and expertise to the customers in the real estate market. Our team provides a professional way to dealing as per your requirement and High standards of your dreams. submitted by Individual_Club_5584 to SocialGrep [link] [comments] Property Features : # 100% Vasthu Layouts # Best Connectivity to Roads , Airports and Railway # Adhering TUDA Norms # Avenue Plantation # Ornamental Street Lighting # 8 min drive to Amara Hospital # 3 min drive to IOCL Pump https://preview.redd.it/sdbqar7gtk3b1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=356e45e49943ce6ba0611384b7b20b79aa400a44 |
2023.06.02 11:07 Far-Instance5908 Marvellous Residential Properties In Mumbai
Mumbai, the Indian metropolis, attracts visitors worldwide with its mysterious allure. The area is located on the western coast of the country near the Arabian Sea's mouth. Mumbai was previously known as Bombay before 1995, which is important to remember. Visitors can enjoy the historic splendor of Mumbai while strolling through its pleasant neighborhoods. Throughout its history, Mumbai has been one of the most prosperous cities in India. Mumbai's real estate market is rapidly growing. Mumbai is upgrading its infrastructure to provide top-notch services. Take a look at these amazingly built homes in Mumbai.
Located in JNPT Road, Ulwe, Mumbai, Bhaveshwar Pushp is a project developed by Payal Group. Introducing Bhaveshwar Pushp - an exquisite project that boasts meticulously designed living spaces at affordable prices. Experience the epitome of thoughtful architecture and indulge in a luxurious lifestyle. Experience the lifestyle of royalty with Bhaveshwar Pushp's stunning apartments in Ulwe. Escape the hustle and bustle of city life and unwind in the serene oasis of Bhaveshwar Pushp. Your home will transform into the ultimate retreat, providing the perfect escape after a long day at work. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 42 Lacs and 67 Lacs respectively.
Located in Khadakpada, Kalyan, Mumbai, Shubh Manokamana is a project developed by Shubh Vastu Construction. Introducing Shubh Manokamana - a thoughtfully designed living space with affordable flats. Shubh Manokamana offers luxurious apartments in Kalyan, perfect for a royal lifestyle. Your home is now an ideal retreat. The residential apartments in Kalyan provide luxurious homes that are peacefully located away from the city center noise. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 35 Lacs and 55 Lacs respectively.
Located in Kannamwar Nagar II, Vikhroli, Mumbai, Unique Shine is a project developed by Reliable India Corporation. Introducing Unique Shine- an exquisite development featuring meticulously designed residential units that offer a harmonious blend of functionality and aesthetics at competitive price points. The apartments at Vikhroli offered by Unique Shine embody a luxurious lifestyle fit for royalty. The Unique Shine apartments have been designed with a strategic focus on both interior and exterior architecture. 1 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 65 Lacs.
submitted by Far-Instance5908 to indianrealestate [link] [comments]
Projects In Mumbai
Bhaveshwar Pushp
Contact:+912268493841Located in JNPT Road, Ulwe, Mumbai, Bhaveshwar Pushp is a project developed by Payal Group. Introducing Bhaveshwar Pushp - an exquisite project that boasts meticulously designed living spaces at affordable prices. Experience the epitome of thoughtful architecture and indulge in a luxurious lifestyle. Experience the lifestyle of royalty with Bhaveshwar Pushp's stunning apartments in Ulwe. Escape the hustle and bustle of city life and unwind in the serene oasis of Bhaveshwar Pushp. Your home will transform into the ultimate retreat, providing the perfect escape after a long day at work. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 42 Lacs and 67 Lacs respectively.
Shubh Manokamana
Contact:+912261739658Located in Khadakpada, Kalyan, Mumbai, Shubh Manokamana is a project developed by Shubh Vastu Construction. Introducing Shubh Manokamana - a thoughtfully designed living space with affordable flats. Shubh Manokamana offers luxurious apartments in Kalyan, perfect for a royal lifestyle. Your home is now an ideal retreat. The residential apartments in Kalyan provide luxurious homes that are peacefully located away from the city center noise. 1 and 2 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 35 Lacs and 55 Lacs respectively.
Unique Shine
Contact:+912261344382Located in Kannamwar Nagar II, Vikhroli, Mumbai, Unique Shine is a project developed by Reliable India Corporation. Introducing Unique Shine- an exquisite development featuring meticulously designed residential units that offer a harmonious blend of functionality and aesthetics at competitive price points. The apartments at Vikhroli offered by Unique Shine embody a luxurious lifestyle fit for royalty. The Unique Shine apartments have been designed with a strategic focus on both interior and exterior architecture. 1 bhk flats in Mumbai are available at a selling price of INR 65 Lacs.
2023.06.02 10:46 rahulsharma2023 Top Housing Projects In Gurugram
Gurugram, a thriving city in India, is rapidly developing. Gurugram is on track to becoming the most urbanized city in India with affluent neighborhoods, big residences, retail malls, and global corporations. Gurugram is considered an education and career hub due to 250 Fortune 500 firms, seven colleges, prestigious schools, and other factors. India's prosperity has been boosted by globalization, and Gurugram, the hub of modern India, is reaping the benefits. Here are some top residential properties in Gurugram.
Located in Sector 60, Golf Course Extension Road, Gurugram, Birla Anaika is a project developed by Birla Estates Pvt. Birla Anaika showcases design-influenced architecture. This makes every height, bend, shape, creativity, and square foot perfect. Spacious homes that offer individual areas for each family member and also allow for family time are ideal for privacy and family living. Birla Anaika prioritizes quality. A strong house is essential for a healthy family, just like a healthy body is essential for a healthy mind. Birla Anaika houses were built using the finest materials. 3 bhk flats in Gurugram are available at a selling price of INR 3.62 Cr.
Located in Nurpur Jharsa, Southern Peripheral road, Gurugram, M3M Natura is a project developed by M3M India. M3M Natura is the perfect place to unwind after a long day at work, making you forget that you live in the city. These apartments are far from the city center. Living in desirable apartments offers numerous benefits. M3M Natura's location in Nurpur Jharsa provides convenient access to all major landmarks and daily destinations. These include hospitals, schools, supermarkets, parks, recreational centers, and other fun places. 2 bhk flat in Gurugram is available at a selling price of INR 1.06 Cr.
Located in Sector 27, Golf Course Road, Gurugram, Suncity Vatsal Valley is a project developed by Suncity Projects Pvt Ltd. Suncity Vatsal Valley is located in a beautiful forested area and is also conveniently close to Gurgaon and South Delhi. You can reach the premium region along Golf Course Road in Gurgaon in just 5 minutes by car, and South Delhi in no time. It's just a 10-15 minute drive from IGI airport and conveniently located near other important parts of the city. 2 and 3 bhk flats in Gurugram are available at a selling price of INR 98.88 Lacs and 1.22 Cr respectively.
submitted by rahulsharma2023 to indianrealestate [link] [comments]
Homes In Gurugram
Birla Anaika
Contact No : +911166103762Located in Sector 60, Golf Course Extension Road, Gurugram, Birla Anaika is a project developed by Birla Estates Pvt. Birla Anaika showcases design-influenced architecture. This makes every height, bend, shape, creativity, and square foot perfect. Spacious homes that offer individual areas for each family member and also allow for family time are ideal for privacy and family living. Birla Anaika prioritizes quality. A strong house is essential for a healthy family, just like a healthy body is essential for a healthy mind. Birla Anaika houses were built using the finest materials. 3 bhk flats in Gurugram are available at a selling price of INR 3.62 Cr.
M3M Natura
Contact No : +912261739629Located in Nurpur Jharsa, Southern Peripheral road, Gurugram, M3M Natura is a project developed by M3M India. M3M Natura is the perfect place to unwind after a long day at work, making you forget that you live in the city. These apartments are far from the city center. Living in desirable apartments offers numerous benefits. M3M Natura's location in Nurpur Jharsa provides convenient access to all major landmarks and daily destinations. These include hospitals, schools, supermarkets, parks, recreational centers, and other fun places. 2 bhk flat in Gurugram is available at a selling price of INR 1.06 Cr.
Suncity Vatsal Valley
Contact No : +911166103762Located in Sector 27, Golf Course Road, Gurugram, Suncity Vatsal Valley is a project developed by Suncity Projects Pvt Ltd. Suncity Vatsal Valley is located in a beautiful forested area and is also conveniently close to Gurgaon and South Delhi. You can reach the premium region along Golf Course Road in Gurgaon in just 5 minutes by car, and South Delhi in no time. It's just a 10-15 minute drive from IGI airport and conveniently located near other important parts of the city. 2 and 3 bhk flats in Gurugram are available at a selling price of INR 98.88 Lacs and 1.22 Cr respectively.
2023.06.02 07:27 Sealcatt My roommate finding a kitten was the worst mistake of her life
It started when I was heading home from a camping trip with my roommate kayla and our friend Ben, we were enjoying the road trip but were all beginning to get bored as we got on the highway and the beautiful forest scenery faded into empty fields. We were in the middle of deciding where we should stop to get food when Kayla shouted at me to pull over and assuming she was carsick and needed to puke I immediately did without asking her why. When I got to the side of the road she almost immediately jumped out and ran behind the car then down the road. When she got back after a few minutes she was holding a small gray thing and excitedly climbed back in the car, Ben who was in the backseat leaned forward to see what she was holding and it took me a minute to realize what the gray thing was. To my surprise it was a tiny kitten who looked only a few weeks old “is it dead?” I instinctively asked even though it was obvious it wasn’t as it’s eyes were open and it was quietly mewing. The rest of the car ride consisted of Kayla telling me to drive faster because she wanted to get home to take it to the vet or something (I wasn’t exactly paying attention to what she was saying…) anyways a couple days after getting home despite my constant protesting Kayla and I now had a cat. She took her to the vet and she had so many diseases and worms i knew we couldn’t pay to fix but Kayla insisted and tortilla (don’t ask me why she chose to name it that) now was my problem. Though she payed for the vet bills I was tasked with buying tortilla things like food bowls and a bed and eventually she became my full responsibility with Kayla spending little to no time or money on her. Though I hated her at first I soon started loving tortilla and renamed her Smokey. At some point I left to go on another camping trip this time without Kayla and when I got back she told me smokey gotten out while I was gone and was still missing. I was devastated and did everything I could to try to find her but wasn’t able to and eventually gave up. A few weeks after that though I began to notice strange things happening like waking up in the middle of the night to distorted meowing coming from outside or occasionally seeing a small shadow behind me in the mirror, I talked to doctors and therapists but they all told me it was just hallucinations caused by the grief of losing Smokey which I believed until things started getting worse and I was no longer able to sleep due to every time I closed my eyes I would hear the sad distorted meowing again. I soon couldn’t stand it anymore at some point gave up on ignoring it like my doctors told me to do and got up in the middle of the night to go outside to find the source of the meowing. As I walked around the sides of my house the meowing grew more distorted but also more sad(?) I couldn’t explain it but I felt drawn to it and soon found myself standing in front of a plastic bag that was poorly hidden behind a couple of cardboard boxes, maybe it was because I was still half asleep or maybe it was because my doctors had put me on so many different kinds of medications that I wasn’t thinking right but something compelled me to open the bag and inside was something that part of me new I was going to find yet my heart still sank and I felt sick looking at it, a tiny decaying body. It took me a minute to fully register what I was seeing but when I did I nearly puked. I picked up the bag and ran inside barging into kaylas room and began screaming at her to wake up. When she did I thrust the bag into her and she nervously looked away which confirmed my suspicions that it was her who did it. I screamed at her asking why she would do it and the answer she gave was pathetic “I was just holding her and she clawed me…I didn’t mean to kick her so hard…” hearing this made me furious and I snatched the bag away from her but when I looked back in it the body was gone, I then turned to face her but she was gone to. I spent a lot of time looking for her and attempted to call her multiple times. That morning I called the police to report her missing and when they couldn’t find her I was of course questioned but was quickly let go. That night I ended up sleeping at my moms house partly because the apartment was still being searched for evidence and partly because I couldn’t stand to be there anymore. As I fell asleep I had a dream of Kayla screaming and crying saying she was sorry and that she didn’t mean it, she was heavily bleeding from gashes covering pretty much her entire body, she began to attempt to run but tripped and something I couldn’t see dragged her away. The next morning I saw on the news that both her and Smokey’s bodies had been found behind the dumpster near my apartment but the killer is apparently unknown the only kind of evidence they have are the large gashes covering her body and the blood on Smoky’s rotting paws.
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2023.06.02 04:07 Danielmlib Empty offices affecting Canada's economics CityNews Winnipeg
With many know when they sent home in march of 2020 they likely known to incinerate their office wear when cafes near office towers survived on office workers when in that hot housing markets has many know they can be priced out of renting an apartment when if many know they are paying $2,500/month on a 500 or less square foot apartment with hardly any room for a dedicated home office when if owners of office towers known they are thrust into a position to accept proposals of companies to individuals pulling a mixed usage permit even if its to be reports of a job seeker's market when if employers are put in a position to either meet demands of employees thinking of returning to the office or getting rid of employees. If employees know their job takes them on the road when even domestically its better to drive than to fly when no matter the occupation of employees still has them known to spend millions on a bus conversion when if a coach builder known to dedicate one section as a mobile office and another section set up as living quarters. If companies to individuals known to pull a mixed usage permit when if office workers given the rights to design their own office and apartment when if some of the requests by office workers if they are called to the office is to have their own office with an attached washroom and or changeroom when their desk is to have their own desktop computer and dedicated printer. with many office workers know they have their way to save thousands annually by going fully remote when if they save fuel and wear and tear on their vehicle along with registration and insurance when at the office they are also saving parking along with drycleaning when if being sent home permanently known before one is known to go fully remotely had them wonder if the dress code once being formal wear to business casual when if men believe he is knowingly joined by women working from a dedicated home office to a bus conversion having a section set up as a mobile office know no dress codes can apply to them when working fully remote has men known to completely abolish gender labels on clothing when if he is joined by women wearing lingerie.
submitted by Danielmlib to u/Danielmlib [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 02:30 glo75001 Auli Travel Package By Global Pah Holidays
Feel the rush of air on your face as you go skiing on the well-kept snow slopes, blazing a bold trail. On a blanket of snow, pummelled each other with snowballs. Let your eyes feast if you’re a lover of natural beauty.
By train, there are railway stations in Rishikesh, Haridwar, and Dehradun. Rishikesh is the closest railhead to Auli (250 km approx). Auli may be reached via bus or taxi from Rishikesh.
By Road – Joshimath is 16 kilometres apart by road from Auli. Between Joshimath and Rishikesh, state transport buses run often (253 km). Between Joshimath and Rishikesh (253 km), Haridwar (277 km), Dehradun (298 km), and Delhi (298 km), Local Transport Union buses and State Transport buses run (500 km). Auli may be reached via ropeway, bus, or cab from Joshimath.
submitted by glo75001 to AuliTravelPackage [link] [comments]
Auli Travel Package
As uttarakhand’s local travel agent, we will offer you best auli travel package. Before that you should know some facts about the place. Auli is located in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, near the world-famous holy temple of Badrinath, and is surrounded by snow-capped peaks of the Garhwal Himalayas. Auli’s well-dressed slopes are surrounded by coniferous and oak forests, which offer a panoramic view of mountains, at an altitude of 2,500 to 3,050 m above sea level. Find yourself at Auli, among the high peaks Nanda Devi and Mana Parbat, if you’re looking for adventure, excitement, and frolic this winter.Feel the rush of air on your face as you go skiing on the well-kept snow slopes, blazing a bold trail. On a blanket of snow, pummelled each other with snowballs. Let your eyes feast if you’re a lover of natural beauty.
WAYS TO REACH AULI
Airplane – Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun, roughly 300 kilometres from Auli, is the closest airport. Dehradun’s Jolly Grant Airport is a domestic airport located around 20 kilometres from the city centre.By train, there are railway stations in Rishikesh, Haridwar, and Dehradun. Rishikesh is the closest railhead to Auli (250 km approx). Auli may be reached via bus or taxi from Rishikesh.
By Road – Joshimath is 16 kilometres apart by road from Auli. Between Joshimath and Rishikesh, state transport buses run often (253 km). Between Joshimath and Rishikesh (253 km), Haridwar (277 km), Dehradun (298 km), and Delhi (298 km), Local Transport Union buses and State Transport buses run (500 km). Auli may be reached via ropeway, bus, or cab from Joshimath.
2023.06.02 02:09 WeirdBryceGuy The Deathgrounds of Love
Time had barely passed, the memory of her presence was still so fresh as to be palpable, when I entered the Deathgrounds of Love. For many, unrequited love diminishes before it can mount further and poison the heart. It fades as life goes on, and infatuations are forgotten; paramours become little more than half-remembered follies. But my love for her grew even as we drifted apart, even as her disdain for me blossomed into a multi-thorned and blackly petaled flower. Almost ironically it grew, until it finally manifested as a material, tangible thing: a heart, which came to beat with malignant autonomy upon a veiny stalk, in the midst of that graven place where unchecked love evilly flourishes.
Unguarded—at its gates, at least—were the grounds when I arrived, doubly delirious with grief and wonderment. I had not known of the place beforehand. It was only with the impossible manifestation of that heart, born of my anguish, that I became suddenly and providentially aware of the the graveyard and its unwholesome, reality-defying contents.
Despite what had occurred—and what apparently always occurs among the worm-riddled, blood-sodden soil—the place was not a garden; life found itself thriving there, yes, but not any life born of God's design. And death was chief above all, no matter how many vital organs beat ceaselessly from stalk to arterial stalk.
I entered ignorant of what I may find, beyond that which I had been drawn to upon waking suddenly earlier that morning. The outer grounds were rank with an earthy and coppery smell, like the dank, pulpy earth of a fresh battlefield. I got the impression that lives had been spent upon the grey soil, hundreds if not thousands of them; and yet there was only the dismal land, overhanged by a subtle atmosphere of mist, and environed by old trees. Beyond this mist I could just barely discern the inner plots; and I knew that therein I'd find my second heart.
Further in I progressed, until I entered that sepulchral garden, with its rows upon rows of vegetative hearts, sprouted with unsettling plumpness from the soil like overly ripe fruits. The audibility of their beating was maddening; it was as if thousands of people had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only their still-animate hearts. Even worse, they beat not in unison, but in horrible discordance - no two hearts held the same rhythm.
And yet somehow through the tachycardiac chaos I sensed my own - that is to say the heart to which I'd been tirelessly drawn.
Like an automaton I trudged on, my shoes sinking into the blood-laden soil; my sight blurred by the newly emergent haze of crimson. My mind befogged by the increasingly humid air.
With an automatic gentleness I pushed through the rows of unfamiliar hearts until I came upon my own. There it was, visually indistinct among the others, and yet I knew without a shred of doubt that it was mine. It pulsed with a steady rhythm, bleeding from its valves as if there were arteries to carry away the blood; a vascular system through which it could circulate. Despite the morbidity of it, I found it beautiful, as if it was something I'd searched for my entire life; some long-sought treasure of my nightly dreams.
So marveled was I, that I didn't notice the approach of the stranger. It wasn't until he had placed a hand on my shoulder that I became aware of him. I recoiled, but was kept from jumping back by the firmness of his gloved grip. He was a tall old man, dressed in a long grey overcoat, at the waist of which sat some kind of multi-pocketed workman's belt. There were several pouches affixed to the belt, and all bore black splotches of some unidentifiable substance. He wore what I assumed had once been black boots, but were now stained a deep crimson - undoubtedly from having spent innumerable hours trudging through the blood-rich soil.
His face was old and severe, with a blackly stained beard that trailed thinly down to his chest. His coal-black eyes met my own, and for a brief moment I felt as if was being pulled from my own body and examined in some outré, incorporeal pocket of space. A moment later, the phantasmal feeling passed, and the man released his iron grip on me.
"You've come for the heart, that it?"
I nodded, not yet able to form words; the shock of his appearance still fresh.
He grunted, and his voice reminded me of a dying animal I'd once seen on the road: harsh and guttural, defiant against pity and death. In his other hand he held a pair of garden shears, and with these he gestured towards the heart.
"Ye can have it, it's yers. But I'll have to take the one ye got in ye. An exchange. Don't fret about the pain. Ye won't feel it."
This proposition reigned in my mind from the state of fantastical acceptance it had gone to. Suddenly I became acutely, frighteningly aware that I was standing in a cemetery full of human hearts, all of which had somehow grown from the ground; and that this caretaker had actually offered to cut out mine in exchange for the one beating before me. It was ludicrous, macabre beyond measure.... and yet it was real.
"Ye should know: that in taking this here heart, you'll be happy, happier than you've ever been. But you'll forget the person you're longing for. They'll be wiped from yer memory. That's the price. Or the relief, depending."
The thought of a future without the nightly anguish of having lost her—made doubly terrible by the fact that it had been my fault—seemed almost too good to be true. But the idea of losing her completely, of having her smile erased from my memory, her voice lost to the mental void....it was inconceivable. To have loved and lost, and all that.
As much as it pained me to, I denied the man's bizarre offer.
His eyes narrowed, focusing on my chest - my heart. He pointed his empty hand at me and said, "Are ye sure? If left unchecked, it could kill ye. The grief. The sorrow. I've seen it, time and time again."
Had I not come to my senses about the utter weirdness of the situation, I probably wouldn't have noticed the almost imperceptible changes in his demeanor and posture. There was a yearning in his stance, a predatory hunger. Given the circumstances, it felt vampiric.
I backed away from him, again reiterating that I'd like to keep my heart, no matter what trouble it could cause me down the line. The stranger sighed, exhaling a visible cloud of what appeared to be black smoke or vapor.
"Too bad. I'm damn hungry."
That was the final kick my brain needed to fully recognize and piece together all the little clues laid around me. The soil, whilst predominantly a deep red, also held clumps of black matter in places - almost always near the beating hearts. This was plainly not mulch or any kind of gardening substance; the clumps were fleshy, some slick with what was obviously blackened blood. And that led me to two other points of observation: the man's belt, with its stained pouches, and his darkly stained beard - as if he'd been eating something that leaked black juices.
"Ah. You've put it together, have ye? No matter."
His eyes must've followed mine as I surveyed the scene before me. Still, the truth, the horrid reality, hadn't yet come to me.
"I eat the hearts given to me. Turned black they've been, in their grief. Fat, poisoned things. Only the most terminal are drawn to this place. Ye have a sick heart, and are better off without it. Serves ye no purpose to keep it. Why not let me eat it? Keeps me full, and keeps me own inklings towards love at bay. Stamps em down, so I never feel a thing. Never have to love, and lose. Never again..."
He seemed to mentally close upon himself for a moment, so I took the opportunity to begin my retreat. With much less care than before I pushed through the rows of hearts, heedless of how much damage I dealt to the organs and their repulsive stalks. Quickly I returned to that barren terrain before the plots, where the soil was a much more tolerable grey, and where the atmosphere was free of that delirious scarlet haze and its stifling humidity.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Just as I did so, a shriek echoed into the night, and a voice full of mad demonic fury tore through the trees, sending the nesting birds skyward.
"Give me your fucking heart!"
I should've continued onward, the gate was only a few yards away; but the Satanic magnitude of the voice was irresistibly attention-grabbing. I felt compelled to see what kind of odious creature could've projected such anger, even though I'd seen the man just moments before.
The ground began to shake, and the withered trees trembled, loosing half-dead leaves onto the ground. And that awful scarlet haze came rolling over the boughs, deeply tinting the atmosphere as if it were a living thing. A sentient cloud of evil.
And from amidst the malignant haze came a thing that might have once been a man, but had undergone a transformation so repugnantly profound that any remaining elements of humanity appeared as mockeries of the form. It towered above the feeble trees, even using their tops as points of stability as it lurched toward me. It's body was vaguely anthropomorphic, distantly human, but outwardly fish-like; the flesh of some selachian nightmare draped over the skeleton of a man.
A face, contorted abhorrently to fit an angular, newly mutated skull, bared a broad maw at me. The teeth shone like an assassin's daggers in the night, sending chills throughout my body. Even as it cleared the tree line and revealed itself fully to me, I could not move: I was so completely transfixed by the depravity of its body, by the unreality of its existence.
"Ye could've given me your heart, and all would've been well. But now...now you've gone and made me take off me coat. I don't like to take off me coat. I don't like having to work for me food. I'm all out of it, and I won't let the thoughts of love come back to me. I won't allow it. Now, c'mere and let me pull you apart."
Despite his hideous transformation, his voice was largely unchanged. Just deeper, more guttural, his ire made plain. The lack of any overt monstrous intonation only made the only whole ordeal more terrifying.
Wrenching control away from the panicked part of my mind, I forced my body to turn and move towards the gate. The thing bounded after me like some frenzied animal, shaking the ground with its every step. I pumped my legs to their absolute limits, reaching the gate just as the humidity of the haze tickled the back of my neck.
I threw it open, leapt through, and slammed it just as that colossal nightmare reached it. I wouldn't have thought the old gate any real match for its massive frame, but the rusted iron held against the horror's assault. The haze was also somehow kept at bay, not a single particle of the mysterious vapor breaching the bars despite how thickly it pressed upon it.
Before it could pull some trick or transform into something capable by bypassing the providentially sturdy gate, I turned away and ran back to my car. And while the creature didn't follow me, its hateful voice did.
"The heart! Bring back your heart!"
I drove away without looking back.
submitted by WeirdBryceGuy to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]
Unguarded—at its gates, at least—were the grounds when I arrived, doubly delirious with grief and wonderment. I had not known of the place beforehand. It was only with the impossible manifestation of that heart, born of my anguish, that I became suddenly and providentially aware of the the graveyard and its unwholesome, reality-defying contents.
Despite what had occurred—and what apparently always occurs among the worm-riddled, blood-sodden soil—the place was not a garden; life found itself thriving there, yes, but not any life born of God's design. And death was chief above all, no matter how many vital organs beat ceaselessly from stalk to arterial stalk.
I entered ignorant of what I may find, beyond that which I had been drawn to upon waking suddenly earlier that morning. The outer grounds were rank with an earthy and coppery smell, like the dank, pulpy earth of a fresh battlefield. I got the impression that lives had been spent upon the grey soil, hundreds if not thousands of them; and yet there was only the dismal land, overhanged by a subtle atmosphere of mist, and environed by old trees. Beyond this mist I could just barely discern the inner plots; and I knew that therein I'd find my second heart.
Further in I progressed, until I entered that sepulchral garden, with its rows upon rows of vegetative hearts, sprouted with unsettling plumpness from the soil like overly ripe fruits. The audibility of their beating was maddening; it was as if thousands of people had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only their still-animate hearts. Even worse, they beat not in unison, but in horrible discordance - no two hearts held the same rhythm.
And yet somehow through the tachycardiac chaos I sensed my own - that is to say the heart to which I'd been tirelessly drawn.
Like an automaton I trudged on, my shoes sinking into the blood-laden soil; my sight blurred by the newly emergent haze of crimson. My mind befogged by the increasingly humid air.
With an automatic gentleness I pushed through the rows of unfamiliar hearts until I came upon my own. There it was, visually indistinct among the others, and yet I knew without a shred of doubt that it was mine. It pulsed with a steady rhythm, bleeding from its valves as if there were arteries to carry away the blood; a vascular system through which it could circulate. Despite the morbidity of it, I found it beautiful, as if it was something I'd searched for my entire life; some long-sought treasure of my nightly dreams.
So marveled was I, that I didn't notice the approach of the stranger. It wasn't until he had placed a hand on my shoulder that I became aware of him. I recoiled, but was kept from jumping back by the firmness of his gloved grip. He was a tall old man, dressed in a long grey overcoat, at the waist of which sat some kind of multi-pocketed workman's belt. There were several pouches affixed to the belt, and all bore black splotches of some unidentifiable substance. He wore what I assumed had once been black boots, but were now stained a deep crimson - undoubtedly from having spent innumerable hours trudging through the blood-rich soil.
His face was old and severe, with a blackly stained beard that trailed thinly down to his chest. His coal-black eyes met my own, and for a brief moment I felt as if was being pulled from my own body and examined in some outré, incorporeal pocket of space. A moment later, the phantasmal feeling passed, and the man released his iron grip on me.
"You've come for the heart, that it?"
I nodded, not yet able to form words; the shock of his appearance still fresh.
He grunted, and his voice reminded me of a dying animal I'd once seen on the road: harsh and guttural, defiant against pity and death. In his other hand he held a pair of garden shears, and with these he gestured towards the heart.
"Ye can have it, it's yers. But I'll have to take the one ye got in ye. An exchange. Don't fret about the pain. Ye won't feel it."
This proposition reigned in my mind from the state of fantastical acceptance it had gone to. Suddenly I became acutely, frighteningly aware that I was standing in a cemetery full of human hearts, all of which had somehow grown from the ground; and that this caretaker had actually offered to cut out mine in exchange for the one beating before me. It was ludicrous, macabre beyond measure.... and yet it was real.
"Ye should know: that in taking this here heart, you'll be happy, happier than you've ever been. But you'll forget the person you're longing for. They'll be wiped from yer memory. That's the price. Or the relief, depending."
The thought of a future without the nightly anguish of having lost her—made doubly terrible by the fact that it had been my fault—seemed almost too good to be true. But the idea of losing her completely, of having her smile erased from my memory, her voice lost to the mental void....it was inconceivable. To have loved and lost, and all that.
As much as it pained me to, I denied the man's bizarre offer.
His eyes narrowed, focusing on my chest - my heart. He pointed his empty hand at me and said, "Are ye sure? If left unchecked, it could kill ye. The grief. The sorrow. I've seen it, time and time again."
Had I not come to my senses about the utter weirdness of the situation, I probably wouldn't have noticed the almost imperceptible changes in his demeanor and posture. There was a yearning in his stance, a predatory hunger. Given the circumstances, it felt vampiric.
I backed away from him, again reiterating that I'd like to keep my heart, no matter what trouble it could cause me down the line. The stranger sighed, exhaling a visible cloud of what appeared to be black smoke or vapor.
"Too bad. I'm damn hungry."
That was the final kick my brain needed to fully recognize and piece together all the little clues laid around me. The soil, whilst predominantly a deep red, also held clumps of black matter in places - almost always near the beating hearts. This was plainly not mulch or any kind of gardening substance; the clumps were fleshy, some slick with what was obviously blackened blood. And that led me to two other points of observation: the man's belt, with its stained pouches, and his darkly stained beard - as if he'd been eating something that leaked black juices.
"Ah. You've put it together, have ye? No matter."
His eyes must've followed mine as I surveyed the scene before me. Still, the truth, the horrid reality, hadn't yet come to me.
"I eat the hearts given to me. Turned black they've been, in their grief. Fat, poisoned things. Only the most terminal are drawn to this place. Ye have a sick heart, and are better off without it. Serves ye no purpose to keep it. Why not let me eat it? Keeps me full, and keeps me own inklings towards love at bay. Stamps em down, so I never feel a thing. Never have to love, and lose. Never again..."
He seemed to mentally close upon himself for a moment, so I took the opportunity to begin my retreat. With much less care than before I pushed through the rows of hearts, heedless of how much damage I dealt to the organs and their repulsive stalks. Quickly I returned to that barren terrain before the plots, where the soil was a much more tolerable grey, and where the atmosphere was free of that delirious scarlet haze and its stifling humidity.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Just as I did so, a shriek echoed into the night, and a voice full of mad demonic fury tore through the trees, sending the nesting birds skyward.
"Give me your fucking heart!"
I should've continued onward, the gate was only a few yards away; but the Satanic magnitude of the voice was irresistibly attention-grabbing. I felt compelled to see what kind of odious creature could've projected such anger, even though I'd seen the man just moments before.
The ground began to shake, and the withered trees trembled, loosing half-dead leaves onto the ground. And that awful scarlet haze came rolling over the boughs, deeply tinting the atmosphere as if it were a living thing. A sentient cloud of evil.
And from amidst the malignant haze came a thing that might have once been a man, but had undergone a transformation so repugnantly profound that any remaining elements of humanity appeared as mockeries of the form. It towered above the feeble trees, even using their tops as points of stability as it lurched toward me. It's body was vaguely anthropomorphic, distantly human, but outwardly fish-like; the flesh of some selachian nightmare draped over the skeleton of a man.
A face, contorted abhorrently to fit an angular, newly mutated skull, bared a broad maw at me. The teeth shone like an assassin's daggers in the night, sending chills throughout my body. Even as it cleared the tree line and revealed itself fully to me, I could not move: I was so completely transfixed by the depravity of its body, by the unreality of its existence.
"Ye could've given me your heart, and all would've been well. But now...now you've gone and made me take off me coat. I don't like to take off me coat. I don't like having to work for me food. I'm all out of it, and I won't let the thoughts of love come back to me. I won't allow it. Now, c'mere and let me pull you apart."
Despite his hideous transformation, his voice was largely unchanged. Just deeper, more guttural, his ire made plain. The lack of any overt monstrous intonation only made the only whole ordeal more terrifying.
Wrenching control away from the panicked part of my mind, I forced my body to turn and move towards the gate. The thing bounded after me like some frenzied animal, shaking the ground with its every step. I pumped my legs to their absolute limits, reaching the gate just as the humidity of the haze tickled the back of my neck.
I threw it open, leapt through, and slammed it just as that colossal nightmare reached it. I wouldn't have thought the old gate any real match for its massive frame, but the rusted iron held against the horror's assault. The haze was also somehow kept at bay, not a single particle of the mysterious vapor breaching the bars despite how thickly it pressed upon it.
Before it could pull some trick or transform into something capable by bypassing the providentially sturdy gate, I turned away and ran back to my car. And while the creature didn't follow me, its hateful voice did.
"The heart! Bring back your heart!"
I drove away without looking back.
2023.06.02 02:08 WeirdBryceGuy The Deathgrounds of Love
Time had barely passed, the memory of her presence was still so fresh as to be palpable, when I entered the Deathgrounds of Love. For many, unrequited love diminishes before it can mount further and poison the heart. It fades as life goes on, and infatuations are forgotten; paramours become little more than half-remembered follies. But my love for her grew even as we drifted apart, even as her disdain for me blossomed into a multi-thorned and blackly petaled flower. Almost ironically it grew, until it finally manifested as a material, tangible thing: a heart, which came to beat with malignant autonomy upon a veiny stalk, in the midst of that graven place where unchecked love evilly flourishes.
Unguarded—at its gates, at least—were the grounds when I arrived, doubly delirious with grief and wonderment. I had not known of the place beforehand. It was only with the impossible manifestation of that heart, born of my anguish, that I became suddenly and providentially aware of the the graveyard and its unwholesome, reality-defying contents.
Despite what had occurred—and what apparently always occurs among the worm-riddled, blood-sodden soil—the place was not a garden; life found itself thriving there, yes, but not any life born of God's design. And death was chief above all, no matter how many vital organs beat ceaselessly from stalk to arterial stalk.
I entered ignorant of what I may find, beyond that which I had been drawn to upon waking suddenly earlier that morning. The outer grounds were rank with an earthy and coppery smell, like the dank, pulpy earth of a fresh battlefield. I got the impression that lives had been spent upon the grey soil, hundreds if not thousands of them; and yet there was only the dismal land, overhanged by a subtle atmosphere of mist, and environed by old trees. Beyond this mist I could just barely discern the inner plots; and I knew that therein I'd find my second heart.
Further in I progressed, until I entered that sepulchral garden, with its rows upon rows of vegetative hearts, sprouted with unsettling plumpness from the soil like overly ripe fruits. The audibility of their beating was maddening; it was as if thousands of people had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only their still-animate hearts. Even worse, they beat not in unison, but in horrible discordance - no two hearts held the same rhythm.
And yet somehow through the tachycardiac chaos I sensed my own - that is to say the heart to which I'd been tirelessly drawn.
Like an automaton I trudged on, my shoes sinking into the blood-laden soil; my sight blurred by the newly emergent haze of crimson. My mind befogged by the increasingly humid air.
With an automatic gentleness I pushed through the rows of unfamiliar hearts until I came upon my own. There it was, visually indistinct among the others, and yet I knew without a shred of doubt that it was mine. It pulsed with a steady rhythm, bleeding from its valves as if there were arteries to carry away the blood; a vascular system through which it could circulate. Despite the morbidity of it, I found it beautiful, as if it was something I'd searched for my entire life; some long-sought treasure of my nightly dreams.
So marveled was I, that I didn't notice the approach of the stranger. It wasn't until he had placed a hand on my shoulder that I became aware of him. I recoiled, but was kept from jumping back by the firmness of his gloved grip. He was a tall old man, dressed in a long grey overcoat, at the waist of which sat some kind of multi-pocketed workman's belt. There were several pouches affixed to the belt, and all bore black splotches of some unidentifiable substance. He wore what I assumed had once been black boots, but were now stained a deep crimson - undoubtedly from having spent innumerable hours trudging through the blood-rich soil.
His face was old and severe, with a blackly stained beard that trailed thinly down to his chest. His coal-black eyes met my own, and for a brief moment I felt as if was being pulled from my own body and examined in some outré, incorporeal pocket of space. A moment later, the phantasmal feeling passed, and the man released his iron grip on me.
"You've come for the heart, that it?"
I nodded, not yet able to form words; the shock of his appearance still fresh.
He grunted, and his voice reminded me of a dying animal I'd once seen on the road: harsh and guttural, defiant against pity and death. In his other hand he held a pair of garden shears, and with these he gestured towards the heart.
"Ye can have it, it's yers. But I'll have to take the one ye got in ye. An exchange. Don't fret about the pain. Ye won't feel it."
This proposition reigned in my mind from the state of fantastical acceptance it had gone to. Suddenly I became acutely, frighteningly aware that I was standing in a cemetery full of human hearts, all of which had somehow grown from the ground; and that this caretaker had actually offered to cut out mine in exchange for the one beating before me. It was ludicrous, macabre beyond measure.... and yet it was real.
"Ye should know: that in taking this here heart, you'll be happy, happier than you've ever been. But you'll forget the person you're longing for. They'll be wiped from yer memory. That's the price. Or the relief, depending."
The thought of a future without the nightly anguish of having lost her—made doubly terrible by the fact that it had been my fault—seemed almost too good to be true. But the idea of losing her completely, of having her smile erased from my memory, her voice lost to the mental void....it was inconceivable. To have loved and lost, and all that.
As much as it pained me to, I denied the man's bizarre offer.
His eyes narrowed, focusing on my chest - my heart. He pointed his empty hand at me and said, "Are ye sure? If left unchecked, it could kill ye. The grief. The sorrow. I've seen it, time and time again."
Had I not come to my senses about the utter weirdness of the situation, I probably wouldn't have noticed the almost imperceptible changes in his demeanor and posture. There was a yearning in his stance, a predatory hunger. Given the circumstances, it felt vampiric.
I backed away from him, again reiterating that I'd like to keep my heart, no matter what trouble it could cause me down the line. The stranger sighed, exhaling a visible cloud of what appeared to be black smoke or vapor.
"Too bad. I'm damn hungry."
That was the final kick my brain needed to fully recognize and piece together all the little clues laid around me. The soil, whilst predominantly a deep red, also held clumps of black matter in places - almost always near the beating hearts. This was plainly not mulch or any kind of gardening substance; the clumps were fleshy, some slick with what was obviously blackened blood. And that led me to two other points of observation: the man's belt, with its stained pouches, and his darkly stained beard - as if he'd been eating something that leaked black juices.
"Ah. You've put it together, have ye? No matter."
His eyes must've followed mine as I surveyed the scene before me. Still, the truth, the horrid reality, hadn't yet come to me.
"I eat the hearts given to me. Turned black they've been, in their grief. Fat, poisoned things. Only the most terminal are drawn to this place. Ye have a sick heart, and are better off without it. Serves ye no purpose to keep it. Why not let me eat it? Keeps me full, and keeps me own inklings towards love at bay. Stamps em down, so I never feel a thing. Never have to love, and lose. Never again..."
He seemed to mentally close upon himself for a moment, so I took the opportunity to begin my retreat. With much less care than before I pushed through the rows of hearts, heedless of how much damage I dealt to the organs and their repulsive stalks. Quickly I returned to that barren terrain before the plots, where the soil was a much more tolerable grey, and where the atmosphere was free of that delirious scarlet haze and its stifling humidity.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Just as I did so, a shriek echoed into the night, and a voice full of mad demonic fury tore through the trees, sending the nesting birds skyward.
"Give me your goddamn heart!"
I should've continued onward, the gate was only a few yards away; but the Satanic magnitude of the voice was irresistibly attention-grabbing. I felt compelled to see what kind of odious creature could've projected such anger, even though I'd seen the man just moments before.
The ground began to shake, and the withered trees trembled, loosing half-dead leaves onto the ground. And that awful scarlet haze came rolling over the boughs, deeply tinting the atmosphere as if it were a living thing. A sentient cloud of evil.
And from amidst the malignant haze came a thing that might have once been a man, but had undergone a transformation so repugnantly profound that any remaining elements of humanity appeared as mockeries of the form. It towered above the feeble trees, even using their tops as points of stability as it lurched toward me. It's body was vaguely anthropomorphic, distantly human, but outwardly fish-like; the flesh of some selachian nightmare draped over the skeleton of a man.
A face, contorted abhorrently to fit an angular, newly mutated skull, bared a broad maw at me. The teeth shone like an assassin's daggers in the night, sending chills throughout my body. Even as it cleared the tree line and revealed itself fully to me, I could not move: I was so completely transfixed by the depravity of its body, by the unreality of its existence.
"Ye could've given me your heart, and all would've been well. But now...now you've gone and made me take off me coat. I don't like to take off me coat. I don't like having to work for me food. I'm all out of it, and I won't let the thoughts of love come back to me. I won't allow it. Now, c'mere and let me pull you apart."
Despite his hideous transformation, his voice was largely unchanged. Just deeper, more guttural, his ire made plain. The lack of any overt monstrous intonation only made the only whole ordeal more terrifying.
Wrenching control away from the panicked part of my mind, I forced my body to turn and move towards the gate. The thing bounded after me like some frenzied animal, shaking the ground with its every step. I pumped my legs to their absolute limits, reaching the gate just as the humidity of the haze tickled the back of my neck.
I threw it open, leapt through, and slammed it just as that colossal nightmare reached it. I wouldn't have thought the old gate any real match for its massive frame, but the rusted iron held against the horror's assault. The haze was also somehow kept at bay, not a single particle of the mysterious vapor breaching the bars despite how thickly it pressed upon it.
Before it could pull some trick or transform into something capable by bypassing the providentially sturdy gate, I turned away and ran back to my car. And while the creature didn't follow me, its hateful voice did.
"The heart! Bring back your heart!"
I drove away without looking back.
submitted by WeirdBryceGuy to ChillingApp [link] [comments]
Unguarded—at its gates, at least—were the grounds when I arrived, doubly delirious with grief and wonderment. I had not known of the place beforehand. It was only with the impossible manifestation of that heart, born of my anguish, that I became suddenly and providentially aware of the the graveyard and its unwholesome, reality-defying contents.
Despite what had occurred—and what apparently always occurs among the worm-riddled, blood-sodden soil—the place was not a garden; life found itself thriving there, yes, but not any life born of God's design. And death was chief above all, no matter how many vital organs beat ceaselessly from stalk to arterial stalk.
I entered ignorant of what I may find, beyond that which I had been drawn to upon waking suddenly earlier that morning. The outer grounds were rank with an earthy and coppery smell, like the dank, pulpy earth of a fresh battlefield. I got the impression that lives had been spent upon the grey soil, hundreds if not thousands of them; and yet there was only the dismal land, overhanged by a subtle atmosphere of mist, and environed by old trees. Beyond this mist I could just barely discern the inner plots; and I knew that therein I'd find my second heart.
Further in I progressed, until I entered that sepulchral garden, with its rows upon rows of vegetative hearts, sprouted with unsettling plumpness from the soil like overly ripe fruits. The audibility of their beating was maddening; it was as if thousands of people had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only their still-animate hearts. Even worse, they beat not in unison, but in horrible discordance - no two hearts held the same rhythm.
And yet somehow through the tachycardiac chaos I sensed my own - that is to say the heart to which I'd been tirelessly drawn.
Like an automaton I trudged on, my shoes sinking into the blood-laden soil; my sight blurred by the newly emergent haze of crimson. My mind befogged by the increasingly humid air.
With an automatic gentleness I pushed through the rows of unfamiliar hearts until I came upon my own. There it was, visually indistinct among the others, and yet I knew without a shred of doubt that it was mine. It pulsed with a steady rhythm, bleeding from its valves as if there were arteries to carry away the blood; a vascular system through which it could circulate. Despite the morbidity of it, I found it beautiful, as if it was something I'd searched for my entire life; some long-sought treasure of my nightly dreams.
So marveled was I, that I didn't notice the approach of the stranger. It wasn't until he had placed a hand on my shoulder that I became aware of him. I recoiled, but was kept from jumping back by the firmness of his gloved grip. He was a tall old man, dressed in a long grey overcoat, at the waist of which sat some kind of multi-pocketed workman's belt. There were several pouches affixed to the belt, and all bore black splotches of some unidentifiable substance. He wore what I assumed had once been black boots, but were now stained a deep crimson - undoubtedly from having spent innumerable hours trudging through the blood-rich soil.
His face was old and severe, with a blackly stained beard that trailed thinly down to his chest. His coal-black eyes met my own, and for a brief moment I felt as if was being pulled from my own body and examined in some outré, incorporeal pocket of space. A moment later, the phantasmal feeling passed, and the man released his iron grip on me.
"You've come for the heart, that it?"
I nodded, not yet able to form words; the shock of his appearance still fresh.
He grunted, and his voice reminded me of a dying animal I'd once seen on the road: harsh and guttural, defiant against pity and death. In his other hand he held a pair of garden shears, and with these he gestured towards the heart.
"Ye can have it, it's yers. But I'll have to take the one ye got in ye. An exchange. Don't fret about the pain. Ye won't feel it."
This proposition reigned in my mind from the state of fantastical acceptance it had gone to. Suddenly I became acutely, frighteningly aware that I was standing in a cemetery full of human hearts, all of which had somehow grown from the ground; and that this caretaker had actually offered to cut out mine in exchange for the one beating before me. It was ludicrous, macabre beyond measure.... and yet it was real.
"Ye should know: that in taking this here heart, you'll be happy, happier than you've ever been. But you'll forget the person you're longing for. They'll be wiped from yer memory. That's the price. Or the relief, depending."
The thought of a future without the nightly anguish of having lost her—made doubly terrible by the fact that it had been my fault—seemed almost too good to be true. But the idea of losing her completely, of having her smile erased from my memory, her voice lost to the mental void....it was inconceivable. To have loved and lost, and all that.
As much as it pained me to, I denied the man's bizarre offer.
His eyes narrowed, focusing on my chest - my heart. He pointed his empty hand at me and said, "Are ye sure? If left unchecked, it could kill ye. The grief. The sorrow. I've seen it, time and time again."
Had I not come to my senses about the utter weirdness of the situation, I probably wouldn't have noticed the almost imperceptible changes in his demeanor and posture. There was a yearning in his stance, a predatory hunger. Given the circumstances, it felt vampiric.
I backed away from him, again reiterating that I'd like to keep my heart, no matter what trouble it could cause me down the line. The stranger sighed, exhaling a visible cloud of what appeared to be black smoke or vapor.
"Too bad. I'm damn hungry."
That was the final kick my brain needed to fully recognize and piece together all the little clues laid around me. The soil, whilst predominantly a deep red, also held clumps of black matter in places - almost always near the beating hearts. This was plainly not mulch or any kind of gardening substance; the clumps were fleshy, some slick with what was obviously blackened blood. And that led me to two other points of observation: the man's belt, with its stained pouches, and his darkly stained beard - as if he'd been eating something that leaked black juices.
"Ah. You've put it together, have ye? No matter."
His eyes must've followed mine as I surveyed the scene before me. Still, the truth, the horrid reality, hadn't yet come to me.
"I eat the hearts given to me. Turned black they've been, in their grief. Fat, poisoned things. Only the most terminal are drawn to this place. Ye have a sick heart, and are better off without it. Serves ye no purpose to keep it. Why not let me eat it? Keeps me full, and keeps me own inklings towards love at bay. Stamps em down, so I never feel a thing. Never have to love, and lose. Never again..."
He seemed to mentally close upon himself for a moment, so I took the opportunity to begin my retreat. With much less care than before I pushed through the rows of hearts, heedless of how much damage I dealt to the organs and their repulsive stalks. Quickly I returned to that barren terrain before the plots, where the soil was a much more tolerable grey, and where the atmosphere was free of that delirious scarlet haze and its stifling humidity.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Just as I did so, a shriek echoed into the night, and a voice full of mad demonic fury tore through the trees, sending the nesting birds skyward.
"Give me your goddamn heart!"
I should've continued onward, the gate was only a few yards away; but the Satanic magnitude of the voice was irresistibly attention-grabbing. I felt compelled to see what kind of odious creature could've projected such anger, even though I'd seen the man just moments before.
The ground began to shake, and the withered trees trembled, loosing half-dead leaves onto the ground. And that awful scarlet haze came rolling over the boughs, deeply tinting the atmosphere as if it were a living thing. A sentient cloud of evil.
And from amidst the malignant haze came a thing that might have once been a man, but had undergone a transformation so repugnantly profound that any remaining elements of humanity appeared as mockeries of the form. It towered above the feeble trees, even using their tops as points of stability as it lurched toward me. It's body was vaguely anthropomorphic, distantly human, but outwardly fish-like; the flesh of some selachian nightmare draped over the skeleton of a man.
A face, contorted abhorrently to fit an angular, newly mutated skull, bared a broad maw at me. The teeth shone like an assassin's daggers in the night, sending chills throughout my body. Even as it cleared the tree line and revealed itself fully to me, I could not move: I was so completely transfixed by the depravity of its body, by the unreality of its existence.
"Ye could've given me your heart, and all would've been well. But now...now you've gone and made me take off me coat. I don't like to take off me coat. I don't like having to work for me food. I'm all out of it, and I won't let the thoughts of love come back to me. I won't allow it. Now, c'mere and let me pull you apart."
Despite his hideous transformation, his voice was largely unchanged. Just deeper, more guttural, his ire made plain. The lack of any overt monstrous intonation only made the only whole ordeal more terrifying.
Wrenching control away from the panicked part of my mind, I forced my body to turn and move towards the gate. The thing bounded after me like some frenzied animal, shaking the ground with its every step. I pumped my legs to their absolute limits, reaching the gate just as the humidity of the haze tickled the back of my neck.
I threw it open, leapt through, and slammed it just as that colossal nightmare reached it. I wouldn't have thought the old gate any real match for its massive frame, but the rusted iron held against the horror's assault. The haze was also somehow kept at bay, not a single particle of the mysterious vapor breaching the bars despite how thickly it pressed upon it.
Before it could pull some trick or transform into something capable by bypassing the providentially sturdy gate, I turned away and ran back to my car. And while the creature didn't follow me, its hateful voice did.
"The heart! Bring back your heart!"
I drove away without looking back.
2023.06.02 02:03 WeirdBryceGuy The Deathgrounds of Love
Time had barely passed, the memory of her presence was still so fresh as to be palpable, when I entered the Deathgrounds of Love. For many, unrequited love diminishes before it can mount further and poison the heart. It fades as life goes on, and infatuations are forgotten; paramours become little more than half-remembered follies. But my love for her grew even as we drifted apart, even as her disdain for me blossomed into a multi-thorned and blackly petaled flower. Almost ironically it grew, until it finally manifested as a material, tangible thing: a heart, which came to beat with malignant autonomy upon a veiny stalk, in the midst of that graven place where unchecked love evilly flourishes.
Unguarded—at its gates, at least—were the grounds when I arrived, doubly delirious with grief and wonderment. I had not known of the place beforehand. It was only with the impossible manifestation of that heart, born of my anguish, that I became suddenly and providentially aware of the the graveyard and its unwholesome, reality-defying contents.
Despite what had occurred—and what apparently always occurs among the worm-riddled, blood-sodden soil—the place was not a garden; life found itself thriving there, yes, but not any life born of God's design. And death was chief above all, no matter how many vital organs beat ceaselessly from stalk to arterial stalk.
I entered ignorant of what I may find, beyond that which I had been drawn to upon waking suddenly earlier that morning. The outer grounds were rank with an earthy and coppery smell, like the dank, pulpy earth of a fresh battlefield. I got the impression that lives had been spent upon the grey soil, hundreds if not thousands of them; and yet there was only the dismal land, overhanged by a subtle atmosphere of mist, and environed by old trees. Beyond this mist I could just barely discern the inner plots; and I knew that therein I'd find my second heart.
Further in I progressed, until I entered that sepulchral garden, with its rows upon rows of vegetative hearts, sprouted with unsettling plumpness from the soil like overly ripe fruits. The audibility of their beating was maddening; it was as if thousands of people had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only their still-animate hearts. Even worse, they beat not in unison, but in horrible discordance - no two hearts held the same rhythm.
And yet somehow through the tachycardiac chaos I sensed my own - that is to say the heart to which I'd been tirelessly drawn.
Like an automaton I trudged on, my shoes sinking into the blood-laden soil; my sight blurred by the newly emergent haze of crimson. My mind befogged by the increasingly humid air.
With an automatic gentleness I pushed through the rows of unfamiliar hearts until I came upon my own. There it was, visually indistinct among the others, and yet I knew without a shred of doubt that it was mine. It pulsed with a steady rhythm, bleeding from its valves as if there were arteries to carry away the blood; a vascular system through which it could circulate. Despite the morbidity of it, I found it beautiful, as if it was something I'd searched for my entire life; some long-sought treasure of my nightly dreams.
So marveled was I, that I didn't notice the approach of the stranger. It wasn't until he had placed a hand on my shoulder that I became aware of him. I recoiled, but was kept from jumping back by the firmness of his gloved grip. He was a tall old man, dressed in a long grey overcoat, at the waist of which sat some kind of multi-pocketed workman's belt. There were several pouches affixed to the belt, and all bore black splotches of some unidentifiable substance. He wore what I assumed had once been black boots, but were now stained a deep crimson - undoubtedly from having spent innumerable hours trudging through the blood-rich soil.
His face was old and severe, with a blackly stained beard that trailed thinly down to his chest. His coal-black eyes met my own, and for a brief moment I felt as if was being pulled from my own body and examined in some outré, incorporeal pocket of space. A moment later, the phantasmal feeling passed, and the man released his iron grip on me.
"You've come for the heart, that it?"
I nodded, not yet able to form words; the shock of his appearance still fresh.
He grunted, and his voice reminded me of a dying animal I'd once seen on the road: harsh and guttural, defiant against pity and death. In his other hand he held a pair of garden shears, and with these he gestured towards the heart.
"Ye can have it, it's yers. But I'll have to take the one ye got in ye. An exchange. Don't fret about the pain. Ye won't feel it."
This proposition reigned in my mind from the state of fantastical acceptance it had gone to. Suddenly I became acutely, frighteningly aware that I was standing in a cemetery full of human hearts, all of which had somehow grown from the ground; and that this caretaker had actually offered to cut out mine in exchange for the one beating before me. It was ludicrous, macabre beyond measure.... and yet it was real.
"Ye should know: that in taking this here heart, you'll be happy, happier than you've ever been. But you'll forget the person you're longing for. They'll be wiped from yer memory. That's the price. Or the relief, depending."
The thought of a future without the nightly anguish of having lost her—made doubly terrible by the fact that it had been my fault—seemed almost too good to be true. But the idea of losing her completely, of having her smile erased from my memory, her voice lost to the mental void....it was inconceivable. To have loved and lost, and all that.
As much as it pained me to, I denied the man's bizarre offer.
His eyes narrowed, focusing on my chest - my heart. He pointed his empty hand at me and said, "Are ye sure? If left unchecked, it could kill ye. The grief. The sorrow. I've seen it, time and time again."
Had I not come to my senses about the utter weirdness of the situation, I probably wouldn't have noticed the almost imperceptible changes in his demeanor and posture. There was a yearning in his stance, a predatory hunger. Given the circumstances, it felt vampiric.
I backed away from him, again reiterating that I'd like to keep my heart, no matter what trouble it could cause me down the line. The stranger sighed, exhaling a visible cloud of what appeared to be black smoke or vapor.
"Too bad. I'm damn hungry."
That was the final kick my brain needed to fully recognize and piece together all the little clues laid around me. The soil, whilst predominantly a deep red, also held clumps of black matter in places - almost always near the beating hearts. This was plainly not mulch or any kind of gardening substance; the clumps were fleshy, some slick with what was obviously blackened blood. And that led me to two other points of observation: the man's belt, with its stained pouches, and his darkly stained beard - as if he'd been eating something that leaked black juices.
"Ah. You've put it together, have ye? No matter."
His eyes must've followed mine as I surveyed the scene before me. Still, the truth, the horrid reality, hadn't yet come to me.
"I eat the hearts given to me. Turned black they've been, in their grief. Fat, poisoned things. Only the most terminal are drawn to this place. Ye have a sick heart, and are better off without it. Serves ye no purpose to keep it. Why not let me eat it? Keeps me full, and keeps me own inklings towards love at bay. Stamps em down, so I never feel a thing. Never have to love, and lose. Never again..."
He seemed to mentally close upon himself for a moment, so I took the opportunity to begin my retreat. With much less care than before I pushed through the rows of hearts, heedless of how much damage I dealt to the organs and their repulsive stalks. Quickly I returned to that barren terrain before the plots, where the soil was a much more tolerable grey, and where the atmosphere was free of that delirious scarlet haze and its stifling humidity.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Just as I did so, a shriek echoed into the night, and a voice full of mad demonic fury tore through the trees, sending the nesting birds skyward.
"Give me your fucking heart!"
I should've continued onward, the gate was only a few yards away; but the Satanic magnitude of the voice was irresistibly attention-grabbing. I felt compelled to see what kind of odious creature could've projected such anger, even though I'd seen the man just moments before.
The ground began to shake, and the withered trees trembled, loosing half-dead leaves onto the ground. And that awful scarlet haze came rolling over the boughs, deeply tinting the atmosphere as if it were a living thing. A sentient cloud of evil.
And from amidst the malignant haze came a thing that might have once been a man, but had undergone a transformation so repugnantly profound that any remaining elements of humanity appeared as mockeries of the form. It towered above the feeble trees, even using their tops as points of stability as it lurched toward me. It's body was vaguely anthropomorphic, distantly human, but outwardly fish-like; the flesh of some selachian nightmare draped over the skeleton of a man.
A face, contorted abhorrently to fit an angular, newly mutated skull, bared a broad maw at me. The teeth shone like an assassin's daggers in the night, sending chills throughout my body. Even as it cleared the tree line and revealed itself fully to me, I could not move: I was so completely transfixed by the depravity of its body, by the unreality of its existence.
"Ye could've given me your heart, and all would've been well. But now...now you've gone and made me take off me coat. I don't like to take off me coat. I don't like having to work for me food. I'm all out of it, and I won't let the thoughts of love come back to me. I won't allow it. Now, c'mere and let me pull you apart."
Despite his hideous transformation, his voice was largely unchanged. Just deeper, more guttural, his ire made plain. The lack of any overt monstrous intonation only made the only whole ordeal more terrifying.
Wrenching control away from the panicked part of my mind, I forced my body to turn and move towards the gate. The thing bounded after me like some frenzied animal, shaking the ground with its every step. I pumped my legs to their absolute limits, reaching the gate just as the humidity of the haze tickled the back of my neck.
I threw it open, leapt through, and slammed it just as that colossal nightmare reached it. I wouldn't have thought the old gate any real match for its massive frame, but the rusted iron held against the horror's assault. The haze was also somehow kept at bay, not a single particle of the mysterious vapor breaching the bars despite how thickly it pressed upon it.
Before it could pull some trick or transform into something capable by bypassing the providentially sturdy gate, I turned away and ran back to my car. And while the creature didn't follow me, its hateful voice did.
"The heart! Bring back your heart!"
I drove away without looking back.
submitted by WeirdBryceGuy to TheCrypticCompendium [link] [comments]
Unguarded—at its gates, at least—were the grounds when I arrived, doubly delirious with grief and wonderment. I had not known of the place beforehand. It was only with the impossible manifestation of that heart, born of my anguish, that I became suddenly and providentially aware of the the graveyard and its unwholesome, reality-defying contents.
Despite what had occurred—and what apparently always occurs among the worm-riddled, blood-sodden soil—the place was not a garden; life found itself thriving there, yes, but not any life born of God's design. And death was chief above all, no matter how many vital organs beat ceaselessly from stalk to arterial stalk.
I entered ignorant of what I may find, beyond that which I had been drawn to upon waking suddenly earlier that morning. The outer grounds were rank with an earthy and coppery smell, like the dank, pulpy earth of a fresh battlefield. I got the impression that lives had been spent upon the grey soil, hundreds if not thousands of them; and yet there was only the dismal land, overhanged by a subtle atmosphere of mist, and environed by old trees. Beyond this mist I could just barely discern the inner plots; and I knew that therein I'd find my second heart.
Further in I progressed, until I entered that sepulchral garden, with its rows upon rows of vegetative hearts, sprouted with unsettling plumpness from the soil like overly ripe fruits. The audibility of their beating was maddening; it was as if thousands of people had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only their still-animate hearts. Even worse, they beat not in unison, but in horrible discordance - no two hearts held the same rhythm.
And yet somehow through the tachycardiac chaos I sensed my own - that is to say the heart to which I'd been tirelessly drawn.
Like an automaton I trudged on, my shoes sinking into the blood-laden soil; my sight blurred by the newly emergent haze of crimson. My mind befogged by the increasingly humid air.
With an automatic gentleness I pushed through the rows of unfamiliar hearts until I came upon my own. There it was, visually indistinct among the others, and yet I knew without a shred of doubt that it was mine. It pulsed with a steady rhythm, bleeding from its valves as if there were arteries to carry away the blood; a vascular system through which it could circulate. Despite the morbidity of it, I found it beautiful, as if it was something I'd searched for my entire life; some long-sought treasure of my nightly dreams.
So marveled was I, that I didn't notice the approach of the stranger. It wasn't until he had placed a hand on my shoulder that I became aware of him. I recoiled, but was kept from jumping back by the firmness of his gloved grip. He was a tall old man, dressed in a long grey overcoat, at the waist of which sat some kind of multi-pocketed workman's belt. There were several pouches affixed to the belt, and all bore black splotches of some unidentifiable substance. He wore what I assumed had once been black boots, but were now stained a deep crimson - undoubtedly from having spent innumerable hours trudging through the blood-rich soil.
His face was old and severe, with a blackly stained beard that trailed thinly down to his chest. His coal-black eyes met my own, and for a brief moment I felt as if was being pulled from my own body and examined in some outré, incorporeal pocket of space. A moment later, the phantasmal feeling passed, and the man released his iron grip on me.
"You've come for the heart, that it?"
I nodded, not yet able to form words; the shock of his appearance still fresh.
He grunted, and his voice reminded me of a dying animal I'd once seen on the road: harsh and guttural, defiant against pity and death. In his other hand he held a pair of garden shears, and with these he gestured towards the heart.
"Ye can have it, it's yers. But I'll have to take the one ye got in ye. An exchange. Don't fret about the pain. Ye won't feel it."
This proposition reigned in my mind from the state of fantastical acceptance it had gone to. Suddenly I became acutely, frighteningly aware that I was standing in a cemetery full of human hearts, all of which had somehow grown from the ground; and that this caretaker had actually offered to cut out mine in exchange for the one beating before me. It was ludicrous, macabre beyond measure.... and yet it was real.
"Ye should know: that in taking this here heart, you'll be happy, happier than you've ever been. But you'll forget the person you're longing for. They'll be wiped from yer memory. That's the price. Or the relief, depending."
The thought of a future without the nightly anguish of having lost her—made doubly terrible by the fact that it had been my fault—seemed almost too good to be true. But the idea of losing her completely, of having her smile erased from my memory, her voice lost to the mental void....it was inconceivable. To have loved and lost, and all that.
As much as it pained me to, I denied the man's bizarre offer.
His eyes narrowed, focusing on my chest - my heart. He pointed his empty hand at me and said, "Are ye sure? If left unchecked, it could kill ye. The grief. The sorrow. I've seen it, time and time again."
Had I not come to my senses about the utter weirdness of the situation, I probably wouldn't have noticed the almost imperceptible changes in his demeanor and posture. There was a yearning in his stance, a predatory hunger. Given the circumstances, it felt vampiric.
I backed away from him, again reiterating that I'd like to keep my heart, no matter what trouble it could cause me down the line. The stranger sighed, exhaling a visible cloud of what appeared to be black smoke or vapor.
"Too bad. I'm damn hungry."
That was the final kick my brain needed to fully recognize and piece together all the little clues laid around me. The soil, whilst predominantly a deep red, also held clumps of black matter in places - almost always near the beating hearts. This was plainly not mulch or any kind of gardening substance; the clumps were fleshy, some slick with what was obviously blackened blood. And that led me to two other points of observation: the man's belt, with its stained pouches, and his darkly stained beard - as if he'd been eating something that leaked black juices.
"Ah. You've put it together, have ye? No matter."
His eyes must've followed mine as I surveyed the scene before me. Still, the truth, the horrid reality, hadn't yet come to me.
"I eat the hearts given to me. Turned black they've been, in their grief. Fat, poisoned things. Only the most terminal are drawn to this place. Ye have a sick heart, and are better off without it. Serves ye no purpose to keep it. Why not let me eat it? Keeps me full, and keeps me own inklings towards love at bay. Stamps em down, so I never feel a thing. Never have to love, and lose. Never again..."
He seemed to mentally close upon himself for a moment, so I took the opportunity to begin my retreat. With much less care than before I pushed through the rows of hearts, heedless of how much damage I dealt to the organs and their repulsive stalks. Quickly I returned to that barren terrain before the plots, where the soil was a much more tolerable grey, and where the atmosphere was free of that delirious scarlet haze and its stifling humidity.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. Just as I did so, a shriek echoed into the night, and a voice full of mad demonic fury tore through the trees, sending the nesting birds skyward.
"Give me your fucking heart!"
I should've continued onward, the gate was only a few yards away; but the Satanic magnitude of the voice was irresistibly attention-grabbing. I felt compelled to see what kind of odious creature could've projected such anger, even though I'd seen the man just moments before.
The ground began to shake, and the withered trees trembled, loosing half-dead leaves onto the ground. And that awful scarlet haze came rolling over the boughs, deeply tinting the atmosphere as if it were a living thing. A sentient cloud of evil.
And from amidst the malignant haze came a thing that might have once been a man, but had undergone a transformation so repugnantly profound that any remaining elements of humanity appeared as mockeries of the form. It towered above the feeble trees, even using their tops as points of stability as it lurched toward me. It's body was vaguely anthropomorphic, distantly human, but outwardly fish-like; the flesh of some selachian nightmare draped over the skeleton of a man.
A face, contorted abhorrently to fit an angular, newly mutated skull, bared a broad maw at me. The teeth shone like an assassin's daggers in the night, sending chills throughout my body. Even as it cleared the tree line and revealed itself fully to me, I could not move: I was so completely transfixed by the depravity of its body, by the unreality of its existence.
"Ye could've given me your heart, and all would've been well. But now...now you've gone and made me take off me coat. I don't like to take off me coat. I don't like having to work for me food. I'm all out of it, and I won't let the thoughts of love come back to me. I won't allow it. Now, c'mere and let me pull you apart."
Despite his hideous transformation, his voice was largely unchanged. Just deeper, more guttural, his ire made plain. The lack of any overt monstrous intonation only made the only whole ordeal more terrifying.
Wrenching control away from the panicked part of my mind, I forced my body to turn and move towards the gate. The thing bounded after me like some frenzied animal, shaking the ground with its every step. I pumped my legs to their absolute limits, reaching the gate just as the humidity of the haze tickled the back of my neck.
I threw it open, leapt through, and slammed it just as that colossal nightmare reached it. I wouldn't have thought the old gate any real match for its massive frame, but the rusted iron held against the horror's assault. The haze was also somehow kept at bay, not a single particle of the mysterious vapor breaching the bars despite how thickly it pressed upon it.
Before it could pull some trick or transform into something capable by bypassing the providentially sturdy gate, I turned away and ran back to my car. And while the creature didn't follow me, its hateful voice did.
"The heart! Bring back your heart!"
I drove away without looking back.
2023.06.02 00:59 StealthyGoatzz Atlanta tournaments?
I’m near the Atlanta GA area and I’ve been feeling confident in my abilities as of late. With SF6 imminent I imagine the community is going to be larger than ever, I’m curious on the active scene in Atlanta to compete and if anyone has info or leads on who to contact or where to go. Thank you
submitted by StealthyGoatzz to StreetFighter [link] [comments]
2023.06.02 00:58 StealthyGoatzz Atlanta Tournaments?
I’m near the Atlanta GA area and I’ve been feeling confident in my abilities as of late. With SF6 imminent I imagine the community is going to be larger than ever, I’m curious on the active scene in Atlanta to compete and if anyone has info or leads on who to contact or where to go. Thank you
submitted by StealthyGoatzz to Fighters [link] [comments]
2023.06.01 23:58 nickbbbbbbbb8 Pray for my dumbass😭
Nearly took off my nipple falling into the giant apartment garbage🤦♂️ i tried to throw my bag in and it took me with it.. totally slammed my chest and scraped against the arms of the mf! Had to sit in the road like a dummy and gather myself before i could even process.. 7mos post op, glad im fully healed so my shit didn’t ACTUALLY rip off !! Just a solid skin break no bad damage..
Anyways fellas dont be dumb like me, dont try to He-Man the trash bags up pls laugh at my embarrassment..
yall ever done something like that? Id love to hear so i feel less dumb haha!
submitted by nickbbbbbbbb8 to ftm [link] [comments]
Anyways fellas dont be dumb like me, dont try to He-Man the trash bags up pls laugh at my embarrassment..
yall ever done something like that? Id love to hear so i feel less dumb haha!