The Role of Torah in the Thought of Paul: Reading his Letters in Context

People often think that the Apostle Paul "converted" to Christianity. This is simply not true. Paul was proud of his Hebrew Heritage and in fact saw him self as a missionary to the Gentiles, not to the Jews. When we read Paul from the standpoint of who he claimed to be, and not from the standpoint that the later church took, we see that Torah played an important role in Paul's life. In addition, he never expected Christians to leave Torah observance behind.