I haven't been following this thread since my last response close to its inception, but I don't see how any such statement could be 100% accurate. Or rather, how we could be at all sure, from a historical point of view, that such a statement is accurate. Quite apart from the Jesus sect, it seems as if gentiles were interacting with Jews and incorporating YHWH worship into their ritual/religious practice. The gentile attendants of synagogues were likely the nexus of Gentile-Christian growth, and they were the people to whom those like Paul (or especially Paul) preached. Paul seems to have been an extraordinarily influential missionary, and also a central advocate against those who felt that converting gentiles needed to be circumcised, but there isn't much indication that this originated with him, or that he was alone, or that there were not other ways in which the Jesus sect already differed substantially from other Jewish sects or Jewish orthopraxy. Additionally, Paul remained Jewish, thought of himself as such, and seems to have regarded converting gentiles and the Jesus movement as what Judaism was.
Your contention is perfectly valid. Paul may have been preaching to a choir that was already trying to make its own (off-key) tune as opposed to the official all-Jewish music of the Nazarenes. There still remains scholarly debate on what exactly Paul taught. I'm still not sure. I believe Galatians for example, may in fact be a forgery like FR Mcguire conviningly lays out, against the majority Scholarly opinion, but the scholarly opinion on Galatians is heavily weighted by the Paulines...so...
Anyways, you have a very valid point. Paul may have not been the one to really start the gentile schism. But however, there's no proof either way. It's speculation on both ends.
We have multiple problems here. First there is the issue of what you mean by torah as it applies to first century judaism. "Law" in the loose sense, the pentateuch, the pentateuch combined with other Jewish texts and perhaps the oral torah, or something else?
A major problem with many people's understanding of the Gospels is that the Pharisees and Sadducees, according to Jesus, were preaching wrong things about the Law. Similar to how Rabbis today have made up all kinds of rules and regulations that have no scriptural basis or are only loosely based, like the milk and meat prohibition (hard to imagine a chicken being the son of a cow).
As for the Oral Torah, that is indeed a very problematic issue, it seems Jesus did in fact refer to some elements of it, but renounced others like the ritual handwashing. So again, more speculation.
Second, one has to keep in mind the most important and most certain historical aspect of Jesus' life: his execution. From the beginning (as evident even in Paul, who admits that as a zealous Jew he started out persecuting the followers of Jesus), Jesus and his followers clashed with other Jews. It seems fairly certain that it was primarily for the problems Jesus caused within the Jewish community that the romans executed him. In other words, it's hard to imagine a 100% pro-Torah Jesus and followers unless one allows for (at least at times) a fairly radical reinterpretation of torah beginning with Jesus, not Paul.
Many of the controversial passages are heavily suspected as interpolations. For example, the priohibition of a man remarrying after he divorces, is widely considered a later addition. Probably because some female believers felt it unfair that only they couldn't remarry. However, the common arguments that Jesus was anti-Law like with healing on the Sabbath and the erroneous translation "(Thus he declared all foods clean)" are based on gross misinterpretations that completely ignore the actual context of the stories, and ignore key parts that explain the meaning. For example, the disciples ask Jesus what he means by "This parable". Most Messianic Jews read the Gospels without seeing any lawlessness.
The issue here is the PHARISEE version of the Law. They didn't like Jesus's criticisms of their proto-Talmudic additions.
The gospels, though, particularly, John, represent a much later tradition. And, granting that the author of acts was the author of luke (contra Atkenson), by the time Luke was writing they were followers of Christ were already differentiated from other Jews and called "christians." This picture is strengthened by the account of Nero and the christians in Tacitus, where the emperor himself seems to know enough about the group to see them as 1) different from the Jews and gentiles and 2) generally hated such that they were convenient scapegoats.
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I thought the Romans didn't even differentiate between them all that much until later on, even requiring them to pay temple tax (which they did).
However, Luke is a difficult book to ascertain its origins, as opposed to Acts (and its speculation that they are by the same author even though its tradition). We see in Luke 16:17 a clear pro-Law statement. These issues probably deserve their own threads.
