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“Oh, a priest, theologians, Church fathers, Church doctors, Holy Saints, and much much more.”

I’d suggest skipping those and simply using a decent commentary that includes discussions of the original language and the historical setting. Theologians will argue over almost anything. The Church Fathers were all over the place. In one writing they would say one thing, and in another say another - with the same person writing! Church doctors and Holy Saints were interested in preserving Catholic theology, and cheerfully would do so at the expense of the word of God.

The New Testament knows of two types of human priests - Jewish priests, offering blood and other sacrifices, and every Christian, offering sacrifices of obedience, thankfulness, etc. There were no priests in the New Testament in the Christian Church. Someone who is a priest is, by definition, someone who does not accept the authority of the Word of God over his own theology - so why consult him to find out what the word says, when he doesn’t CARE about what it says?

That was why Wycliffe was so dangerous to the Roman Catholic Church. By getting the word of God into the hands of believers, he allowed the believers to discover they had been lied to about what God wants of them. That is also why they attacked Tyndale, and attacked Luther, and why they still attack the KJV - because letting people read the Word of God leaves the Roman Catholic Church with no foundation.

A church who wants people to “do penance” instead of repent is not interested in the Word of God.

The Church Fathers were all over the place. In one writing they would say one thing, and in another say another - with the same person writing!

Perhaps that is somewhat exaggerated, but it is documented that the “stipulated “unanimous consent” of the fathers?, requires both terms, even for Mt. 16:18.

Then you have Jerome's tortured argument from Genesis that even numbers denotes uncleaness and destroys prefigures the marriage compact, illustrating how even a Catholic scholar as him can wrest Scripture to support his skewed view.

There were no priests in the New Testament in the Christian Church.

Indeed In her effort to conform NT pastors to her erroneous understanding of the Lord's Supper (“Eucharist”), Catholicism came to render presbuteros” as “priests” (which the RC Douay Rheims Bible inconsistently does: Acts 20:17; Titus 1:5), and sometimes “episkopos,” in order to support a distinctive NT sacerdotal priesthood in the church, but which the Holy Spirit never does. For the word which the Holy Spirit distinctively uses for priests*, is “hiereus” or “archiereus.” (Heb. 4:15; 10:11) and which is never used for NT pastors, nor does the words presbuteros (senior/elder) or episkopos (superintendent/overseer) which He does use for NT pastors mean "priest." Presbuteros or episkopos do not denote a unique sacrificial function, and hiereus (as archiereus=chief priests) is used in distinction to elders in such places as Lk. 22:66; Acts 22:5.

Jewish elders as a body existed before the priesthood, most likely as heads of household or clans, and being an elder did not necessarily make one a Levitical priest (Ex. 3:16,18, 18:12; 19:7; 24:1; Num. 11:6; Dt. 21:2; 22:5-7; 31:9,28; 32:7; Josh. 23:2; 2Chron. 5:4; Lam. 1:9; cf. Mt. 21:13; 26:47) or a high priest, offering both gifts and sacrifices for sins. (Heb. 5:1) A priest could be an elder, and could elders exercise some priestly functions such as praying and laying hands on sacrifices, but unlike presbuteros and episkopos, the two were not the same in language or in function, as one could be a elder without formally being a priest. It is also understood that even the Latin word (sacerdos) which corresponds to priest has no morphological or lingual relationship with the Latin word for “presbyter.”

The Catholic titular use of hiereus/priest for presbyteros/elder is defended by the use of an etymological fallacy , since "priest" etymologically is derived from presbyteros due to imposed functional equivalence.

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and evolving changes in form and meaning. over time, however, etymologies are not definitions. The etymological fallacy here is a linguistic misconception, a genetic fallacy that erroneously holds that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to its original or historical meaning.

However, the idea of the NT being a distintive class titled "priests" was a later development.

Catholic writer Greg Dues in "Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide," states, "Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions."

"When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist." (http://books.google.com/books?id=ajZ_aR-VXn8C&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

And R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) (while yet trying to defend the use of priest), reveals, "The Greek word for this office is ‘?e?e?? (hiereus), which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos. First century Christians [such as the inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest took on its definition." (http://grigaitis.net/weekly/2007/2007-04-27.html)

Thus despite the Scriptural distinctions in titles, Rome made the word “presbyteros” (elders) to mean “priest” by way of functional equivalence, reading into Scripture her own theology, supposing that the presbyters engaged in a unique and primary sacrificial function of turning bread and wine into the physical body and blood of Christ as an expiation for sins, and which is then physically consumed to gain spirtual and eternal life. .

In response to a query on this issue, the web site of International Standard Version (not my preferred translation) states, No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that "presbyteros" means "priest" instead of "elder". The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means "elder", and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people. Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek "presbyteros" (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for "old" and therefore translated as "one who is older") thus describes the character qualities of the "episkopos". The term "elder" would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term "overseer" (for that is the literal rendering of "episkopos") connotes the job description. To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of "presbyteros", our rendering of "elder" most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM. ...we would also question the fundamental assumption that you bring up in your last observation, i.e., that "the church has always had priests among its ordained clergy". We can find no documentation of that claim. ( http://isvbible.com/catacombs/elders.htm)