I have studied Christianity as an outsider now for twenty years. I am a Jew first and foremost. It would only be reasonable to expect that I had some inherited animosity toward this ancient system toward my kind.
Yet having looked at the problem from every angle, I can't find any evidence of anything like Protestantism existing before the general time of Luther. By contrast I find the concept of the Papacy as old as Christianity.
I am not talking of course about the Roman Church right now. I know that the Romans appropriated the title Papa from the Alexandrians. Everyone knows this. Since the early third century, the Patriarch of Alexandria held the title 'Papa.' I think the term meant 'grandfather' or the 'father of the various fathers' or bishops who were established for the first time in Alexandria in the early third century.
At one time there was but one church in Alexandria, one Patriarch and one throne. There were no other bishops. I am not even sure that the Alexandrian Patriarch ever employed the title 'bishop' in a formal sense before the time of Irenaeus.
Nevertheless I am absolutely sure that the Alexandrian tradition ALWAYS venerated its Patriarch as the living Christ of its tradition. I can't help but think that because we know that the Alexandrian tradition ALWAYS emphasized Jesus' divine nature that they understood him to be wholly divine.
His mission, his reason for coming down from heaven, was to initiate one from among the sons of men and transform his mortal body into something divine as an example to all mankind to embrace the Christian faith.
So now you know why the modern day Copts are so devoted to their Patriarch. The whole original mystery religion that was founded by St. Mark suddenly collapses if we were all to become Protestants stupidly 'studying the Scriptures' at the expense in participating in the system established for our perfection.
The Patriarch sitting on a throne represents the original conclusion to the gospel. I have already noted a long time agao that Baarda (the Gospel Quotations of the Persian Sage Aphraates) provides us with the closest idea of what the non-canonical ending to the Gospel According to Mark must have looked like (viz. the Diatessaron) when he identifies Aphraates citation of the material here as "For Christ sits at the right hand of His Father, and Christ dwells among men."
It doesn't take a genius to remember that Irenaeus makes explicit that those attached to a heretical version of the Gospel of Mark both "separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered" (AH iii.11.7] AND thought that someone other than Jesus ended up sitting enthroned at the end of the gospel (AH iii.6.1;10.5.12.2 et al).
The fact that the Coptic tradition already assumes Mark's enthronement as the beginning of their entire tradition, identifies Mark as the secret 'Christ' of their tradition (Severus of Al'Ashmunein Homilies on Mark) AND the starting point of their Episcopal line makes it difficult to avoid concluding that the outward symbol of the enthroned Patriarch is the most fundamental concept in all of Christianity.
The key again is getting out of our inherited PROTESTANT assumptions about what 'real Christianity' looks like ...
