The word "Buddhism" to mean somehow "teachings of the historical Buddha as practiced by his followers" is quite misleading; the very name "Buddhism" is what the Western world called what they imagined to be that religion/philosophy. Since the Western world has nothing that combines, under the same set of teachings, a science of the mind that implies an ethical conduct to provide relief from all suffering, and which precisely describes the methods and techniques to achieve that goal, it's easy for us Westerners to get a bit confused about what Buddhism actually is.
To make matters even worse, when the 19th century Theosophist Society founded by Mme. Blavatsky brought (and widespread) the first teachings in the West in a systematic way (Buddhism, under one form or another, can be traced in the West since a century before Christ), they mostly saw the amazingly colourful rituals of Tibetan Buddhism, and, being an esoteric society, they marvelled at the richness of this "religion" which has been kept away from the West for so many centuries. The first translations, thus, incorporated common philosophical/theological words from Christian/Jewish doctrine as a (very bad) attempt to explain what Buddhism was all about. This lead to terrible consequences, attributing completely opposite meanings to some major key elements of Buddhism, which have been propagated to our century, and are still believed by many Westerners as being correct — leading often to rejection.
And finally, since India has sprouted so many different religions and philosophies, many of which incorporating common elements, it's very hard for a Westerner to distinguish between all of them. Most notably — as we shall see — Buddhist practice is often confused with Hindu meditation, because externally they look similar (sitting down with crossed legs). Many Westerners just think that Buddhism is a form of Hinduism where gods like Shiva or Krishna have been replaced by the historical Buddha, Gautama Shakyamuni, but that it's pretty much the same — when Buddhism rejects the whole idea of "gods" and is just a set of atheistic principles to provide relief from suffering.
