Some 'elp with Linus....

[Pauliesonne]

Did the church make him up to validate their position because I've never heard of an established church exsisting at the time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Linus

[gambling_cruiser]

Drats, I thought you mean Linus van Pelt.
Couldn't care less than about dead popes, only dead popes are good popes.

[Beerina]

Who else was in the garage with Gates and Allen 30 years ago, one wonders two thousand years from now.

Christianity is more like McDonald's, it occurs to me. The original founder died obsure, and those who took up the mantle turned it into a gigantic, profitable, world-shaking enterprise. I still wonder why Paul never made himself the pope, though. But if he was the kingmaker, there must have been some political usefulness to having a puppet head of the church. Unless he was just an outsider who never could quite seize it all in spite of his best efforts.

[davefoc]

Did the church make him up to validate their position because I've never heard of an established church exsisting at the time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Linus

I hope you get some responses from the more knowledgeable participants in the forum on your question. The Wikipedia article strikes me as one of the unfortunate wikipedia articles on Christianity where the Christian apologist view is presented like it is established fact.

I stand to be corrected here, but my sense of it is that the history of the Roman Catholic Church in this period is not very well known. The idea that Peter had anything to do with it looks like a complete fabrication. Peter in the NT seems to be pretty much a member of the James group, that is a law upholding Jew. The idea that he hopped over to Rome, changed his views from Jewish Christian to Gentile Christian and founded the Roman Catholic Church seems doubtful. So, all this Peter you're the rock to be build my Church on stuff looks like later additions to me.

The idea that Linus is called a pope seems like a major stretch. At best he was a local Church leader. There is no established Roman Catholic Church to be pope of at this time.

This article talks about the early church fathers.
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/peterpope.html#development

A bit of a warning here, ceo_esq who seems to be a fairly knowlegeable poster here on Christian history is at times skeptical of some of Paul Tobin's (the author of this site) views. ceo_esq's views are backed up by some scholarly opinion which tends to see a little more truth in some of the Jesus stories than does Tobin.

From the article:
Who then, were the second and third "bishops" of Rome? All we know of them is their names: Linus (bishop from c67-79) and Anacletus (c79-92). History know nothing about these two bishops. For Anacletus, the correct Greek form for this name is Anencletus, which means "blameless". The fact that the pseudo-Pauline epistle of Titus (1:7) required a bishop to be blameless, throws doubt on the existence of this third bishop. [15] (http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/peterpope.html?20065#15) Linus' existence is on no more certain grounds than Anencletus'.