[RnMomof7]

The Holy Spirit knows Greek..He says WHAT HE MEANS .. There is no Greek word for priest in the NT church. Rome has tried to redefine the Greek to mean something else. But it means what it says ...The NT church had no “sacrifice” of the mass until the 300’s when they redefined the mass as a “sacrifice then they redefined the word presbuteros.

The belief that the Holy Spirit and the early church did not know the difference between presbuteros and hiereus or misused the word is more than a stretch.But it is a pretty good bet by Rome that the members that never read the bible would buy that.

There was no “priesthood” until 300 or so AD .

I would recommend the book Catholic Customs and Traditions: A popular guide by Greg Dues

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0896225151/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3BCGXMZU35S1O&coliid=I2W81J8B8SIL3G

The jewish priesthood was a “type” of Christ where He offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of men.
he was bot the priest and the sacrifice... as a final not God destroyed the priesthood and the sacrifices in 70 AD

[Petrosius]

Did you even read my post? We are talking about English, not Greek. No one has ever claimed that presbuteros and hiereus are the same. In English "priest" means first of all "presbyter". This was its original only meaning and has persisted until today. This was the only meaning of the word for hundreds of years. The use of "priest" for hiereus came later after the proper Old English word sacerd dropped out of usage.

The inability of many Protestants to understand this is that they have been successfully, if dishonestly, catechized to disassociate the modern Catholic presbyteral priest from the New Testament presbyter. Thus when they see the word "priest" they only see the Old Testament temple priest. But this is not the only, nor the first, meaning of the word.