1 Corinthians 11:25
1 Corinthians 11:2525In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
JWs read the cup the same way they read the bread: a pure symbol pointing back to Jesus' shed blood, with no real participation. The NWT's "this cup means the new covenant by virtue of my blood" gives them two doctrinal moves at once — the verb shift from "is" to "means" reduces the cup to a token, and the additional phrase "by virtue of" pushes the blood into a causal background rather than Paul's "in my blood" identity statement. Combined with the organisation's restriction of new-covenant membership to the 144,000, only those anointed partake annually at the Memorial.
Paul's Greek (touto to potērion hē kainē diathēkē estin en tō emō haimati) reads naturally as "this cup is the new covenant in my blood." Whatever theology of presence one holds, the verb is the ordinary copula and "in my blood" is locative — the cup is the covenant by being in the blood, not "by virtue of" it. New-covenant membership is not restricted to a hidden 144,000 in this passage: Paul commands the rite to "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup" — addressed to the whole Corinthian congregation (compare 2 Cor 3:6, where "us" includes every minister of the new covenant in Corinth without an asterisk).
The NWT changes Paul's "is" (estin) to "means" — the same swap as v.24 — and softens the genitive "in my blood" to "by virtue of my blood." Both moves loosen the identity Paul wrote into the verse: the cup no longer is the new covenant in the blood; it merely represents one in causal connection with the blood. As with the Eucharist verses generally, the doctrinal pressure on the literal reading is what drives the translation choice — Greek had clear words for "represent" if Paul had meant that.