The Bible in the News

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In the world of modern Bible translation, my cup “runneth over” (from Psalm 23:5) only in the King James Version. Elsewhere, for the most part, it overflows (as in such diverse versions as the NASB, NRSV, NIV, NAB and CEV^b). Exceptions—such as the NJV’s “brims over” or The Message’s “brims with”—are rare. For poetic evocation, you can count me as a “traditionalist” on this: Nothing quite gets the point across as well as the KJV. And, so it would seem, the popular press agrees: “my cup runneth over” and over in countless stories, especially in the headlines.

The qualms expressed by a correspondent for The Irish Times reflect one category of “cups”: “Week two of the World Cup and my cup runneth over with irritation: gaping, pitch-sized holes in the TV schedules and the incessant buzz of speculation, despair and schadenfreude as, one by one, overpaid thoroughbreds in knee-socks go head to head with the opposition only to be stretchered off again five minutes later, metatarsals twanging and kneecaps popping.”

In spite of all else, there are real and measurable financial incentives associated with the World Cup. Thus we read (in three different British publications): “World Cup Runneth Over for Stores” (“The World Cup did wonders for the supermarkets last month”), “Beer’s Cup Runneth Over with the Footie” (“Beer sales in England have reached all-time highs during the World Cup”), and “World Cup Runneth Over for Advertisers—Not Just with Beer” (“Media buyers believe that [the final of the Rugby World Cup] could bring in Pounds 16m[illion] for the broadcaster [of the game]”).

References to “real” cups can even be found in the arena of more dubious competitive “sports.” There is, for example, something known as the Wager Cup. As described in South Africa’s Business Day, “To win, this cup must not runneth over.” From the 16th century, “the cup is designed as a figure of a young girl wearing a wide, long skirt which forms a cup, supporting over her head a smaller, swiveling cup … Normally in silver, the idea was that once turned upside down, the skirt and the cup over the head were filled with wine. To win the wager, the participant had to drink both cups dry without spilling a drop.” Not a sight generally associated with a traditional afternoon’s high tea!

Not surprisingly, cups can run over with more than beer or wine. So, “if [political thriller movies are] your cup of tea then your cup runneth over.” And (in the wording of the London Times) Starbucks, hoping to reach a total of 40,000 stores worldwide, has a “cup [that] runneth over [with] 43 varieties of tasteless milky coffee.”

Such widespread usage of a traditional expression would, we might think, be immune to criticism. But, alas, churlishness has no bounds. Under the headline, “Thou Shalt Not Vandalize Verbs,” a Boston Globe correspondent condemns what she calls the “Ye Old Gift Shoppe syndrome, the delusion that since nobody speaks Elizabethan English anymore, you can invent cute archaisms just by sticking obsolete verb endings and pronouns into your prose at random, like currants in a plum pudding.” Within this framework, she queries: “But is it wit or mere ignorance that tempts editors to publish stories about trophies and tank tops … in which ‘their cups runneth over,’ which is just as wrong as ‘their cups runs over’?” Well, yes, maybe she does have a valid complaint, but—at least to my ears—anything that might get people to read the Bible can’t be all bad!

In the world of modern Bible translation, my cup “runneth over” (from Psalm 23:5) only in the King James Version. Elsewhere, for the most part, it overflows (as in such diverse versions as the NASB, NRSV, NIV, NAB and CEVb). Exceptions—such as the NJV’s “brims over” or The Message’s “brims with”—are rare. For poetic evocation, you can count me as a “traditionalist” on this: Nothing quite gets the point across as well as the KJV. And, so it would seem, the popular press agrees: “my cup runneth over” and over in countless stories, especially in the headlines. The qualms […]