For better or for worse, Luke explicitly says he was not a witness to any of the events in his Gospel, and relied on secondary testimony. John suggests he includes episodes for which he was not present, so it's further away than your illustration might suggest
-Interesting I did not realize these things.
(giving up wealth) That's hardly a hallmark of a cult when the wealth in question is encouraged to be distributed among the needy outside the cult.
Fair enough, but for better or for worse, Jesus doubted his disciples would follow through on this, and indeed, they fled when he was taken into custody. Likewise, he made extremely few explicit demands on them personally like Manson or Applewhite did. - This is true he mostly asked of them to follow him helping him spread his message but I believe this was the beginning of the cult and right before he went from message to action and told them to buy swords he was arrested and executed before he can put what ever violent plans he had in motion.
Back to the poor thing, there are many times in the Gospels where Jesus accuses his disciples of lack of faith for remaining by his side and actively discourages them from spreading the message of his divinity and powers (in Early Christianity studies this is called the Messianic Secret). -Yeah I believe he wanted them to go and spread his word like when he claimed to have given them the power to heal the sick and then told them to go out and let everyone know that they need forgiveness of sin (early cult doctrine before they get to the juicy stuff like eating flesh.) Could you tell me where to look more into the Messianic Secrete I have not heard of it. Thanks.
Further, it doesn't cover the way Christianity as a movement happened, in that unlike all the other Messiah claimants of first century Judea (and there were a lot) Christianity did not disband after the death of its leader, but instead formed communities to continue his message. -Cults go main stream all the time (ex scientology) I personally believe any organized religious movement is at the very least partially a cult no matter how main stream or laid back you know. Some cults just have more negative hall marks then others and those are the bad ones (the ones almost all think of when we think "cult").
It sounds like you're on one hand working towards Jesus as a charismatic leader, but while ignoring the sociology that made him a lasting figure, and on the other hand towards Jesus as a cult leader demanding devotion, even while ignoring a lot of his explicit teachings. I think a comparison with Zoroaster, Simon bar Kokhba and say Walt Whitman might be helpful to flesh this out more.
-I honestly think that there is a lot about him that is both I can see the examples where he has insight that seems uncorrupt and "good" for the lack of a better word. I also see negative qualities that clash with the others. Ultimately I think the biblical character has duality and hypocrisy by the nature of how the gospels have been written and it is hard to describe him in just one way if trying to stay true to the text. In trying to attempt to tell his story I struggled with things as simple as a chronological time line.