The Peter narrative

And as history and Tradition show – the Peter narrative continuing and culminating at Rome – the Petrine texts in Sacred Scripture, along with Clement’s epistle, point to a peculiar authority vested in the Church at Rome.

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/arguments-concerning-the-papacy/#comment-101279

Of course, there are other continuously evolving narratives in post-apostolic tradition. We even have a term for that: legendary embellishment. Take the development of the Simon Magus narrative. For instance:

The volume discusses the post-New Testament Simon Magus from the era of the Church Fathers beginning with Justin Martyr to the early modern era represented in a seventeenth century Baroque relief in the Cathedral of Oviedo, Spain. Sources consulted are artistic, theological texts, historical chronicles, sermons, hagiographies, vernacular literatures, biblical commentaries, and heresiologies. Topics explored are: Traditions and Historiography; Types of Simon Magus in Anti-Gnostic sources; a comparison of the Acts of Peter and the Passions of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul; Jerome and Vincent of Lérins on Simon Magus; the Nicolaitian heresy; the Fall of Simon Magus in the Church Fathers; Simon Magus, Dogs, and Simon Peter; Simon Magus in Irish and English medieval legends; Simon Magus, Nicolas of Antioch, and Muhammad; Vincent Ferrer and the canonical and apocryphal Simon Magus; Simon Magus in the Cathedral of León, Spain; Simon Magus in the Cathedral of Oviedo

http://www.brill.nl/simon-magus-patristic-medieval-and-early-modern-traditions

So that’s fatal a weakness in the theory of development. Historicized legends. Baptizing creative imagination.