Well, that one touched a nerve, my bad. I should have simply written that the passage has been interpreted in that fashion by many people rather than many “scholars.” I apologize for this. But the issue is apparently a big deal: All you have to do is Google “Paul the Apostle and lying” or some similar variation and you get numerous entries not just referencing Romans 3:7 as an example of Paul’s alleged prevarications but also 1 Cor. 9:19-22 and 2 Cor. 12:1. I say alleged prevarications because don’t have a dog in the fight whether Paul was a liar or rationalized lying for the “greater good” of Christianity. I am merely pointing out that those allegations have been leveled at him based on his, what you call, rhetorical style. People can believe whatever they want in that regard. The amount of ink spilled on the subject alone, especially by Christian apologists is pretty significant though.
Having said that, I do think in one respect that Paul did invent stuff, i.e. his claims regarding the resurrection. Most obvious is his claim in 1 Cor. 15 that 500 people witnessed Jesus postmortem. Paul provides not one scintilla of evidence for this claim, not a single name, not a single detail of where, when or what actually happened, despite the fact that he, by his own admission, had numerous witnesses available to document his claim. As outlandish as the claim is, I think that any reasonable person, would have gone out of his or her way to provide competent evidence of this claimed occurrence. I think Paul simply made it up. But, ultimately that is a different debate…