[Mrs. Don-o]

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question in detail. It's approximately what I thought you would say. (See? I know you, dear CynicalBear!)

Now for the second part of the question:

Can you substantiate that any "ekklesia" in the first Millennium A.D. met these criteria? Anywhere? In what is now Israel, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, the Balkans, Italy, France, Spain, the British Isles, Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine, or anyplace else?

A name, a time, a place, a text --- historic evidence --- is what I'm looking for.

[ealgeone]

Just to be sure we're on the same page here....I'm not cynicalbear.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question in detail. It's approximately what I thought you would say. (See? I know you, dear CynicalBear!)

Now for the second part of the question:

Can you substantiate that any "ekklesia" in the first Millennium A.D. met these criteria? Anywhere? In what is now Israel, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, the Balkans, Italy, France, Spain, the British Isles, Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine, or anyplace else?

A name, a time, a place, a text --- historic evidence --- is what I'm looking for.

Simple answer is it was the early church.

The real question is can the rcc point to the early church and substantiate what it does?

For fun, let's keep this limited to Acts and Paul's writings. Those are texts we all agree on.