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This is based on sound semantic analysis of primary sources contemporaneous with the New Testament. Note the complete absence of sacerdotal aspect.

This only holds if the primary and necessary meaning of "priest" is sacerdotal. Its primary meaning, however, is the Christian presbyterate; its sacerdotal aspect is derivative. Perhaps part of the problem is that when a Catholic hears the word "priest" his first thought is the Catholic presbyterate whereas when a Protestant hears it his first thought is the Temple kohanate.

The functionality of how the priestly office operates under the Roman system, especially sacerdotally, does not have continuous existence, but evolved over time, no doubt fueled by an increasingly hierarchical view of the church, which was generally absent for most of the first two centuries. Assuming for the sake of argument "priest" is derived from presbuteros (not a universally accepted theory), that does NOT prove continuity of meaning all the way back to it's primary use in the Greek text. All it would prove is that at some point the role of "presbyter" had been successfully redefined by Rome to incorporate sacerdotal elements. This in no way implies those sacerdotal aspects were there from the beginning.

So you see, we are not ignoring the etymology. We are disputing the semantic scoring of the etymology. You are ranking it too high. Yes, we do contend there is a break in meaning, that a proper translation of presbuteros must be based on the meaning it derives from usage contemporaneous to it's appearance in the NT, and not on later acquisitions.

Rather it is you who are relying upon etymology to deny a sacerdotal function of the presbuteros. Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus all show that at the Eucharist a material offering was made as a sacrifice. This was not merely a sacrifice of praise. Whether this offering of which they speak was merely bread and wine, an immersive metaphor or the actual Body and Blood of Jesus, it was a material sacrifice offered to God the Father. And despite the etymology of presbuteros not having a sacerdotal meaning, this is a sacerdotal action that was performed by that office.

Exactly, and it was a misunderstanding, as he explains in that Second Apology, because he clearly states human flesh was not being consumed by Christians, that such "fabulous" accusations were false.

The charge that Justin Martyr was denying was that Christians were slaying other men and eating their flesh not that they did not believe that the bread and wine of the Eucharist became the actual Body and Blood of Jesus, something that he explicitly affirms in his First Apology

In this hypothetical dialog, Orthodoxos represents what was widely accepted as orthodox Christian belief at the time of this writing (5th Century, I believe). This also represents a direct, irreconcilable conflict with the central premise of transubstantiation. A transformation of the Eucharist is admitted, but not one that vacates the nature of the visible objects, but rather adds to that nature grace. Thus, if the nature of bread remains, the bread is still bread, both in substance and accidence. As with the wine.

To understand fully what Theodoret meant you also have to look at the Second Dialogue :

Eran.— What do you call the gift which is offered before the priestly invocation?
Orth.— It were wrong to say openly; perhaps some uninitiated are present.
Eran.— Let your answer be put enigmatically.
Orth.— Food of grain of such a sort.
Eran.— And how name we the other symbol?
Orth.— This name too is common, signifying species of drink.
Eran.— And after the consecration how do you name these?
Orth.— Christ's body and Christ's blood.
Eran.— And do you believe that you partake of Christ's body and blood?
Orth.— I do.
Eran.— As, then, the symbols of the Lord's body and blood are one thing before the priestly invocation, and after the invocation are changed and become another thing; so the Lord's body after the assumption is changed into the divine substance.
Orth.— You are caught in the net you have woven yourself. For even after the consecration the mystic symbols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their former substance figure and form; they are visible and tangible as they were before. But they are regarded as what they have become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be. Compare then the image with the archetype, and you will see the likeness, for the type must be like the reality. For that body preserves its former form, figure, and limitation and in a word the substance of the body; but after the resurrection it has become immortal and superior to corruption; it has become worthy of a seat on the right hand; it is adored by every creature as being called the natural body of the Lord.

Do not be confused because Theodoret is not using the terms in the Scholastic sense. What is important here is while the figure and form of the Eucharist remains that of bread and wine but that they become the Body and Blood of Christ and as such are even worshipped. While he is not using Scholastic categories he is teaching the same as was taught by Trent.

As for what was the widely accepted as orthodox Christian belief at the time of this writing, let us look at what some of his contemporaries said:

THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA
He did not say, "This is the symbol of My Body, and this, of My Blood," but, "This is My Body and My Blood," teaching us not to look upon the nature of what is set before us, but that it is transformed by means of the Eucharistic action into Flesh and Blood. (On Matt. 26:26)
At first [the offering] is laid upon the altar as mere bread, and wine mixed with water; but by the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into the Body and the Blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and immortal nourishment. (Catechetical Homilies, 16)
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
Christ is present. The One who prepared that [Holy Thursday] table is the very One who now prepares this [altar] table. For it is not a man who makes the sacrificial gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ, but He that was crucified for us, Christ Himself. The priest stands there carrying our the action, but the power and the grace is of God. "This is My Body," he says. This statement transforms the gifts. (Homilies on the Treachery of Judas, 1, 6)
ST. AMBROSE OF MILAN
"My fled is truly food and My blood is truly drink." You hear Him speak of His flesh, you hear Him speak of His blood, you know the sacred signs of the Lord's death: and do you worry about His divinity? Hear His words when He says: "A spirit has not flesh and bones." As often as we receive the sacramental elements which through the mystery of the sacred prayer are transformed into the flesh and blood of the Lord, we proclaim the death of the Lord. (The Faith, 4, 10, 124.)
Perhaps you may be saying: I see something else; how can you assure me that I am receiving the Body of Christ? It but remains for us to prove it. And how many are the examples we might use! Let us prove that this is not what nature has shaped it to be, but what the blessing has consecrated; for the power of the blessing is greater than that of nature, because by the blessing even nature itself is changed. (Mysteries, 9, 50.)
You may perhaps say: "My bread is ordinary." But that bread is bread before the words of the Sacraments; where the consecration has entered in, the bread becomes the flesh of Christ. And let us add this: How can what is bread be the Body of Christ? By the consecration. The consecration takes place by certain words; but whose words? Those of the Lord Jesus. Like all the rest of the things said beforehand, they are said by the priest; praises are referred to God, prayer of petition is offered for the people, for kings, for other persons; but when the time comes for the confection of the venerable Sacrament, then the priest uses not his own words but the words of Christ. Therefore it is the word of Christ that confects this Sacrament. (The Sacraments, 4, 4, 14.)
ST. AUGUSTINE
The Lord Jesus wanted those whose eyes held lest they should recognize Him, to recognize Him in the breaking of the bread. The faithful know what I am saying. They know Christ in the breaking of the bread. For not all bread, but only that which receives the blessing of Christ, becomes Christ's body. (Sermons, 234, 2.)
ST. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA
He states demonstratively: "This is My Body," and "This is My Blood," lest you might suppose the things that are seen are a figure. Rather, by some secret of the all-powerful God the things seen are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, truly offered in a sacrifice in which we, as participants, receive the life-giving and sanctifying power of Christ. (On Matthew 26:27)

This is not to say there was no sense of reality or the special presence of Christ in the Eucharistic service. But something being real is not the equivalent of it being corporeal. As I have often said before, nothing is more real than God. Yet God, in His divine essence, is not corporeal, but a spirit, as Scripture clearly teaches. So it is entirely possible to have the language of reality, the totally unconscious acceptance of the metaphor as a vehicle for expressing the spiritual reality, without ever adopting anything close to the Aristotelian alchemy that came so much later.

But the incarnate Jesus is both God and man, both spiritual and corporeal. You are drifting into the Nestorian error that Theodoret was actually refuting in your quotation.

But the incarnate Jesus is both God and man, both spiritual and corporeal. You are drifting into the Nestorian error that Theodoret was actually refuting in your quotation.

Making logically appropriate distinctions between the divine and the human in the person of Christ does not reflect Nestorian error. In fact, if anything, it is consistent with Chalcedon and may even offer an argument against the Aquinian understanding of the Eucharist. Consider the principles of Chalcedon:

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

The Nestorian error goes further than merely making distinctions. There is nothing in Chalcedon that requires one to accept that Christ's corporeal body, which has it's origin under the temporal limits of human history, also exists in a hypothetical timeless state for which there is no Scriptural evidence. For one thing, it is in the nature of humans to be biologically finite. We have physical boundaries. Christ, even in His glorified, post-resurrection humanity, never appears corporeally in multiple locations simultaneously. To argue that the corporeal aspect of His human nature can take on properties exclusive to the divine nature, such as omnipresence, is really to argue for confusion of the natures, and thus to defy Chalcedon.

Not only that, but Scripture speaks to the nature of His temporary absence from us until His corporeal return:

Matthew 24:23-27 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. (24) For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (25) Behold, I have told you before. (26) Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. (27) For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

He rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and according to Hebrews is there now, seated in power at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us who believe. All under those limitations that are inherent in his human nature, even though perfectly and seamlessly united with His divine nature in one Person. Therefore He can tell His disciples that anyone coming along with stories of Him being corporeally present among us before His return is someone we are NOT to believe. Therefore the Holy Spirit, in providing us with this God-breathed record of truth, is insisting that we continue to acknowledge not only the divine nature of Christ, but also the human, and not as suddenly becoming corporeally timeless or omnipresent, but as a bridegroom on a journey to a distant land, from which He will one day return and gather us to Himself.

This avoids both the overdividing of Nestorianism and the underdividing of either Eutychianism or Monophysitism. Both extremes are errors. Chalcedon settled on the formula above as a provisional way of expressing dyophysitism, the position of orthodox Christian belief, the idea that the two natures continue to be both really human and really divine, but are undivided in the personhood of Christ Yet they are also with confusion, i.e., the divine nature does not fuse divine attributes into the human nature in such a way as to destroy the real humanness of Christ. Else He would cease to be our representative, the ideal human, and His dying for our sins would be invalidated.

Thus, like the Trinity, Chacledon expects us to hold these principles in balance despite the fact that they do not seem to peacefully coexist. Understanding how God can be three persons and one being is about as hard as understanding how Christ can have two natures yet be one person. Yet by faith we press forward with this belief because it is how God has revealed Himself in Scripture.

Which gets us, surprisingly, back to Theodoret. My point in raising his example was not to show he was unaffected by the increasing sacramental realism of his time, but to show that he was clearly NOT using language compatible with the much later formulations of transubstantiation concocted by Radbertus and Aquinas. Theodoret was working through the various models for Eucharistic thought like everyone else, and it is quite possible he was drawing an analogy between, on the one hand, the seamless but unconfused union of the human and divine in the person of Christ, and on the other hand, a similarly seamless but unconfused union of the nature of bread and the nature of Christ in the Eucharist. This is NOT the position of transubstantiation. I'd have to give it some more thought, but at first blush, it looks like Theodoret's view was much closer to the Lutheran view of sacramental union.

By contrast, to follow through with the analogy from the two natures of Christ, transubstantiation is rather like that theory where the divine nature fully displaces the human nature of Christ, in that the nature of Christ is said to fully displace the nature of the bread, only without visible effect. So as Christ, according to the one heresy, merely appeared to be human, but was really fully and only divine, so according to the heresy of transubstantiation, the wafer only appears to be a wafer but is really fully and only Christ, as to substance.

So Theodoret in the passage you cite is arguing for what I would hold was an improper reverence for the elements of the Eucharist, but his basis for doing so was more Augustinian than Aquinian, in that he holds the substance unchanged, but gives such regard to the change of framework as to justify reverencing the object only to the extent it is platonic type pointing to the archetype of Christ. This is very similar to the (specious) justification for bowing down to images of Jesus. The idea is the reverence for the true object, Christ, is merely being channeled through the use of the man-made object, but the man-made object continues to be stone or wood or whatever.

Which is why I found your cite to Augustine so fascinating. You must know how strongly he states the symbolic position:

24. If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man,” says Christ, “and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” John 6:53 This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share [communicandem] in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory [in memoria] of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us.

Available here: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/12023.htm

Here Augustine, using John 6 as an example, recognizes that asking someone to eat literal human flesh and drink literal human blood appears to be inciting a "crime or vice," and therefore must be seen as a figure, because God would not encourage us to commit crime or surrender to vice. It is remarkable in a way because this has to be one of the earliest recognitions of the mechanism of metaphor, that we encounter an analogy between two objects that cannot be resolved unless we accept that the relationship is not literal, but instructive.

Yet as you point out we do have Augustine talking elsewhere in what seems to be more realistic language. As with Martyr and Theodoret (and many others of the period), Augustine's "realism" is not the strong, materialistic realism of Aristotle, but the Platonic model of real connection between type and archetype, between a perfect ideal and some imperfect material manifestation of that ideal. I intend to do more research in this area, but the more I read, the more convinced I become that the the slow rise of Eucharistic realism, completely absent in Scripture, developed at least in part a result of this interaction with Plato, which would explain how it could be sincerely realistic without being at all transubstantive, in that the elements, as Theodoret says, are not transformed in substance, but in relation to what they represent. Hence ordinary bread, not a type to anything but bread, becomes the body of Christ by being set aside for that purpose, not because of some theory of magical transformation (cf. Greek pagan theurgy), but simply because it is put in the place of being a true but imperfect type to that perfect archetype, the body of Christ. To Theodoret and those like him, this is a real transformation, but it is NOT transubstantiation.

Peace,

SR