obvious self contradiction, fwiw
Besides, do you really think he made up his loneliness, having to travel to find anyone who really wanted to learn, and then die as an old man on the side of the road? I doubt he would have chosen that, after all, why come to contribute to this world if everything were already hunky-dory,.. and frankly, it seems abusive behavior towards him to pretend he chose to suffer our stubbornness, ignorance, and pride. Again, girardian scapegoat mechanics.
> he expanded upon the teachings of the Brahmins before him
He referred to himself clearly as self-born and someone who saw the world on his own. One can't expand on something that doesn't contain a teaching.... sort of like your own descriptions, actually, if you don't mind my directness.
> but much of what we think of as Buddhism was made up by people other than him.
> The teachings he left were sufficient for the people of the time but today I think them more a trap than a gateway to truth.
You need to know the fact that when people tried to transmit his teaching, they couldn't help but damage or change it. This is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that they had a lower level of consciousness than his or didn't have the ability to verify singular points of knowledge and control their karma. Maybe 1-2 people could transmit it without damaging it terribly.
You and others today also can't always tell the difference between his words and what his words were changed into by many people - because you aren't yet sufficiently familiar with the law of existence and disillusioned with lies.
An apple, no matter how nourishing when fresh, becomes poisonous when rotten (degenerated). Instead of poisoning your body, the deteriorated truth poisons your apparatus of awareness - your consciousness. So you're right that you can't study his teaching and probably can't recover the real teaching or a sufficient teaching for saving your life if you're in danger, as far as I know - unless you have the help of another Tathagata. Chances are if you contact Buddhism without a truthful guide, you will lose yourself. That's why I wanted to tell you what the Lotus Sutra says and I wanted to tell you that it is clear that an actual Buddha has to appear in the world in order to reveal the dharma. Until then, people forget what the teaching is, far from being able to even enunciate it without damaging it. So please do not cheat yourself by believing your thoughts.