This defense of Paul misunderstands both Jesus's and Paul's relationships to Jewish law. Jesus challenged specific interpretations of Torah while remaining firmly within the Jewish tradition. He explicitly stated "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17). When Jesus critiqued religious authorities, it was for prioritizing ritual adherence over compassion and justice - values deeply rooted in Torah and the prophetic tradition.

Paul, conversely, rejected Torah observance entirely for Gentile converts and declared that "Christ is the end of the law" (Romans 10:4). This wasn't a mere challenge to strict interpretations - it was a wholesale replacement of Jewish law with a new belief system centered on faith in Christ's death and resurrection. This put him in direct conflict with Jesus's original followers, including his brother James, who maintained that following Jesus meant living ethically within Jewish tradition.

Your claim that "Paul made a stronger argument" reveals the very problem we're discussing - prioritizing theological argumentation over lived ethical practice. Jesus didn't make arguments about the law; he demonstrated through his life and teachings how to embody its deepest values of love, justice, and compassion. The shift from Jesus's embodied example to Paul's theological arguments about belief marks the beginning of Christianity's transformation from a way of life into a system of beliefs.

Jesus's message was radical precisely because it called for a deeper, more authentic practice of Jewish values, not their abandonment. Paul's message was radical in a different direction - creating an entirely new religion centered on believing the right things about Jesus rather than living as Jesus lived.