This Is, Not This Means

This argument is not about whether Jesus meant the bread literally became his flesh. Stay out of the eucharistic real-presence debate entirely. The argument is about translation neutrality — a translator's job is to render the verb the author chose, not to pre-decide a doctrinal dispute.

1. Open the New World Translation to Matthew 26:26. Have them read the verse aloud. They will say: 'this means my body'. Then ask them to look at the Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear Translation, which prints the Greek text with a literal English gloss under each word. The gloss under estin is 'is'. The English line on the right of the page reads 'means'. Their own interlinear shows the swap.
2. Ask: 'If a Catholic Bible translated this verse as "this becomes my body" instead of "this is my body", would you accept that as neutral?' They will say no — that would be Catholic theology smuggled into the text. Pivot: 'That is exactly what your Bible has done in the other direction. The Greek says is. Your translation says means.'
3. Show that Greek has plain words for 'represents' or 'signifies'. Allegoreo (Galatians 4:24, 'speaking allegorically'), semaino (John 12:33, 'signifying what kind of death'), and parabole ('parable', used dozens of times in the Gospels). Jesus and the New Testament writers use these words when they want them. At the Last Supper, none of them appear. Just estin.
4. Pivot to 1 Corinthians 10:4. The NWT renders it: 'that rock meant the Christ'. The Greek again is en — a form of the verb 'to be'. The pattern is consistent: every time predicative 'is' could be read as identity rather than symbol, the NWT swaps in 'meant' or 'means'. The accumulating pattern is the argument.
5. Note who else does this. The standard mainstream English translations — KJV, NKJV, ESV, NIV, NASB, CSB, NRSV, NET, NLT — all read 'this is my body'. The translations that read 'means' are William Barclay's paraphrase (1968) and James Moffatt's paraphrase (1913). These are the company the NWT is keeping at this verse: paraphrases, not formal translations. Even the Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear gives the Greek as 'is'.
6. Frame the move plainly. The translator's task is to render what the Greek says and let the reader and the church work out the meaning. When a translation pre-decides a centuries-old doctrinal debate by swapping the verb, it is no longer translating — it is preaching through the text. That is what the NWT has done here.
7. Close gently. You are not asking them to become Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed on the eucharist. You are asking them to notice that their Bible has made the doctrinal decision before they ever opened it. A trustworthy translation gives you the verb the author wrote and lets you do the theology. The NWT has done the theology for them.

Yes — estin can carry that sense in some contexts, and Thayer does list 'denote, signify' as possible glosses. But possible is not the same as required. The translator's question is which sense the author chose, and the answer should be visible in the Greek itself. When New Testament writers want to say 'represents' or 'signifies', they have plain Greek words available — semaino at John 12:33 ('signifying what kind of death'), allegoreo at Galatians 4:24 ('speaking allegorically'), parabole used dozens of times. Jesus uses none of them at the Last Supper. He uses estin. Every major formal-equivalence English translation — KJV, NKJV, ESV, NIV, NASB, CSB, NET, NLT — renders it 'is'. The NWT stands almost alone in changing the verb. That is not a neutral translation choice; it is a doctrinal one.

That is a theological argument, not a translation argument. You may well be right that Jesus is speaking symbolically — many Protestant traditions agree with you on that. But the translator's job is not to remove the difficulty; it is to render the verb the author wrote. 'This is my body' is exactly as clear in English as 'touto estin to soma mou' is in Greek — both leave the reader to ask what 'is' means in this context. By substituting 'means', the NWT has answered that question for the reader instead of letting them ask it. Imagine if a Catholic translation rendered the verse 'this becomes my body' because that was 'just clearer' to a Catholic reader. You would rightly call that a doctrinal translation, not a neutral one. The NWT has done the same move in the opposite direction.

Those are the only examples typically cited, and both are paraphrases, not formal translations. Barclay openly described his work as 'a translation in modern speech', closer to a commentary. Moffatt's 1913 version was famously loose. Neither is in the company of the KJV/ESV/NIV/NASB family that translates word-for-word from the Greek. And here is the deeper question: even if a handful of paraphrases read 'means', the Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear Translation gives the literal Greek gloss as 'is'. So the NWT translators knew the verb was estin, knew it most naturally renders as 'is', and chose 'means' anyway. That is a deliberate doctrinal decision baked into the text. A reader who wants to think about the eucharist for themselves has had part of the work done for them, in a direction they did not consent to.

That comparison sounds even-handed, but it is not. 'This is my body' is what the Greek literally says — touto estin to soma mou. Reformed Protestants, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Memorialist Baptists all read 'is' and reach very different conclusions about what 'is' means in context. The verb 'is' does not force transubstantiation; it leaves the question open. That is what a faithful translation looks like — it preserves the ambiguity the original carries. Your translation forecloses the question by changing the verb. So the comparison is not 'one viewpoint versus another'; it is 'the original Greek versus a paraphrase that decides for you'.

That is a fair point about the symbolism — Paul is plainly saying the rock pre-figured Christ. But notice what every other translation does: they render the verb as 'was' and trust the reader to see the symbolism from the context. ESV: 'and the Rock was Christ.' NIV: 'and that rock was Christ.' KJV, NASB, NET — all the same. The reader has no trouble understanding that Paul means typologically. The NWT does not trust the reader; it pre-interprets by writing 'meant'. And that same paternalistic move is the one made at the Last Supper. The pattern is the argument: every time predicative 'is' could carry symbolic weight, the NWT changes the verb. A reader who sees the pattern starts to wonder what else has been quietly adjusted on their behalf.

Open the New World Translation to Matthew 26:26 and read it aloud. Then open the same publisher's Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (jw.org makes it available online) and look at the literal English gloss under the Greek word estin. Notice that the gloss reads 'is' but the English line reads 'means'. Then look up Galatians 4:24 ('these things are spoken allegorically' — Greek allegoroumena) and John 12:33 ('signifying what kind of death' — Greek semainon). Ask yourself: if Jesus had wanted to say 'this represents my body', the Greek language gave him the words to say it. He did not use them. Why has the NWT used them on his behalf?