Since priest = presbuteros there are indeed priests in the New Testament church.
No, that is not correct:
This however:
presbuteros: elder
Original Word: πρεσβύτερος, α, ον
Part of Speech: Adjective
Transliteration: presbuteros
Phonetic Spelling: (pres-boo'-ter-os)
Short Definition: elder
Definition: elder, usually used as subst.; an elder, a member of the Sanhedrin, an elder of a Christian assembly.
Of course there are not...There is no place for a priest in the church...
Your priesthood is fashioned (somewhat) after the priesthood of the Temple period...
There is no Temple...There's no need for a temple...There's no need for a priest...
The O.T. priests of the temple provided the sacrifices for the people...They only were allowed into the presence of God...They only were allowed to pass beyond the 'veil'...
The Temple has been destroyed...The veil has been removed...The sacrifices became one Sacrifice for everyone, forever...
The entire congregation now has access to the Mercy Seat without the aide of a priest...Your Catholic religion is not represented anywhere within the pages of the New Testament...
If you people would actually read the scriptures, you would know that...
Since the distinctive word for OT sacerdotal clergy, “hiereus" - which NT presbuteros (senior/elder) never were titled - wrongly became "priest," there is indeed no class of clergy properly distinctively titled "priests.
"Priest" could be used if it kept the distinction btwn presbuteros and hiereus, which sacerd and preost orignallyl did, but in English it does not. Taking hiereus which is distinctively used for a distinctive class of OT clergy and translating it into a word used for both hiereus and presbuteros is the problem. The KJV correctly uses "elder" for presbuteros as that is what it originally meant.
One could take another word distinctively used for one office and translated it into a term which is then used for two offices but which the original languages used distinctive words for, and then claim they both had the same title. And which done due to imposed functional equivalence. But that would be something more fitting for a cult.