Darklighter

I researched this point a while back, and while I can't remember the specifics, I believe that reniaa and schiling.klaus are correct. I can't remember who the "first" actual pope was though (Siricius sounds good?), after that point they were selected retroactivly, with Peter as the first since he was given "the keys of the kingdom", which is why keys are part of the papal seal and coat of arms. I beleive that the story of him dieing as a martyr on Vatican Hill was also created posthumously, although I can't remember exactly. Wikipedia probably has a good article on it.

reniaa is also correct when she states that the current structure of the Catholic church resembles in no way the first century church as described in the Bible. It's strains the imagination to think that the personalities of the apostles, as presented in scripture, would look favorably upon the flashy, gawdy, extravagent, get-ups that the pope and other 'higher-ups' wear, not to mention all the funny looking hats. As well as their obsession with ornate, expensive jewlery, and other flashy religious relics, aka their "bling". Where is ANY of that in scripture? Toss in the pagan holidays (Christmas, Easter), the over emphasis on tradition not based in scripture (didn't Jesus rebuke the Pharisees for that? hmmm..), and the claim made by Benidict XVI recently, that the Catholic church is the "one true chuch that Jesus founded," really does become laughable.

Then again I guess all Christian churches celebrate the pagan holidays of Christmas and Easter. Oh the hypocrasy...

arnoldo

So are we in agreement that the Greek Orthodox Church traces it's origin to the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem in 52 AD?

schilling.klaus

the apostolic concile, as the apostles anyways,
is a fraudulent fiction of second century Roman Catholics.
There's no such thing as an original Jerusalem church
before the fall of Jerusalem,
as already proven by Bruno Bauer over 100 years ago.

Klaus Schilling

reniaa

I agree although there a couple of christian religions that don't celebrate those pagan holidays they are the exeption rather than the norm. I think christianity is still suffering from being associated with catholics in many ways.

reniaa

Not sure, I'm not the scholar some are on these forums so my knowledge is limited to what I can research on the internet, I would be interested in hearing from someone who can give you a fuller answer than I could though

Toto

I don't think you will find anyone here, Christian or atheist or whatever, who would agree to this, and I wish that you would stop posting complete nonsense here.

I don't know of anyone who would fix a date for the founding of the church - it was probably more a question of evolution than formally establishing a church in any case.

But the split between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church dates to 1054 CE. You were off by 1002 years, which is fairly typical of your accuracy.

Toto

The case for the legendary nature of St Peter, and his connection with Mithra and with the Roman god Janus, is laid out in The Legend of Saint Peter (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Wells, translated and with a foreward and appendix by Frank Zindler.

Darklighter

I don't see why such emphasis is placed on "origins" when the only thing that should matter from a Christian perspective is whther or not your particular brand of faith is closely following scripture. Which unfortuanately and inevitably leads to a gajillion different denominations. They cannot all be right, and a loving God would not allow so many well meaning people to go astray. But this is what we would expect if biblegod does not exist, therefore this is evidence that biblegod does not exist.

arnoldo

In any event the Greek Orthodox Church traces it's origin back to the Original church of Jerusalem. Historical facts.

http://www.holylight.gr/patria/enpatria.html
http://www.wheaton.edu/DistanceLearning/Pella.htm

Darklighter

It doesn't matter if it started 2000 years ago or yesterday, since the foundation is flawed. Re-read the Tyre thread if you need to be reminded why. Being the first to be wrong still means you're wrong.