I think it’s you who are fascinated by myths. You have a mythological history of the Church which bears little or no resemblance to actual history, and you see paganism lurking in every Christian practice, even those provably dating to the Apostles themselves, unless you can “prove” its validity on the basis of the Scriptures with your discursive reason and your own hermeneutic tradition — yes, you have one, deliberately constructed in opposition to the hermeneutic tradition of the Latin church, and following what I suspect on the basis of Acts 15 the Holy Apostles would have regarded as a judaizing heresy.
Maybe you need to brush up your Greek, and learn a little real Church history: bishops are mentioned in the New Testament, not only in the obvious places where the word episcopos is used, but also in the Apocalypse of St. John. It was the ancient custom to refer to the bishop a church as the “angel” of the church (a custom still preserved in the title “the Angel of Haran” applied to the Bishop of Bosra-Haran). St. John is not writing to bodiless powers protecting the churches of Asia Minor, but to their bishops. Seems to be rather an important office, since God sent a vision to the Apostle John and directed him to address it to a bunch of bishops.
God sent His Only-Begotten Son that all who believe in Him might have eternal life, and His Son sent the Holy Spirit, that on the Day of Pentecost in the year of His Saving Death and Resurrection made manifest the Church. That is the decisive thing. The Church’s books, those of the New Testament authored within the context of the Church that keep a record of these event, those of the Old inherited from the Old Israel that point forward to those events, are not God’s decisive self-revelation. They are not an axiom system from which one proves everything that is true, nor even everything that is true bearing on God.
Christianity is a way of life founded upon a Person, not an ideology founded on a text, not even a divinely inspired text.
Irenaeus declared the loss of “the teaching,” and his disciple Hippolytus affirmed it.
Nowhere in the NT are Bishops presented for adulation, nor worship. Yeshua declared the absolute equality of all of his sheep. None were to be elevated above the many.
Matthew 23:
[8] But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.
[9] And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.
[10] Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.
[11] But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.
[12] And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
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