The Greatest Story in the World, Period 2 by Horace G. Hutchinson

As Christianity spread through the world in the second and third / centuries, churches, that is to say places in which the Christians / assembled for worship, were established in many cities. In different / parts of the Empire, as these parts were converted from paganism, / overseers of the local churches were appointed and were called / "episcopi," from a Greek word which is very literally translated by / our word overseer. And our word "bishop" is formed from that word / "episcopus. " There was, of course, a bishop, an episcopus, at Rome.

If Jerusalem had not been, as we have seen that it was, so battered / by war and so deserted by the inhabitants who were driven out of it, / it is likely that Jerusalem would have been regarded as the chief / Christian city, because Christ had taught and had suffered there. It / was the centre and chief city of the religion on which Christianity / was based and of that law which Christ Himself said that He came not / to destroy but to fulfil. But Jerusalem itself was almost destroyed.