Father Henry Wansbrough (1934 – ) offered this comment on the Universalis App January 1, 2026: “At a certain stage, in the 1960’s, there was a great tendency to translate the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) as ‘happy are the poor in spirit’ etc. But God’s blessing does not mean ‘happiness’ in the sense that the poor in spirit are singing and dancing, having fun. Rather it means that God’s protective hand is over them.”
The 1960’s were a tough time. We were dealing with the Vietnam War, LBJ’s declaration of the War on Poverty, and the Sexual Revolution. The first two were doomed to failure and the third struck a blow to traditional family structure, roles, and responsibilities and to traditional Christian morals. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that some liberal Bible scholars thought that replacement of “blessed” with “happy” was a reasonable tweak. An “anything goes” attitude was gaining ground. (In the 1960’s, my wife and I were two busy with graduations, marriage, relocations, and birth of two sons to take much notice of social trends.)
Bible scholars generally agree that translations of the Bible should always start with original language documents, generally Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament. However, that is not a simple task. There are no surviving original copies of any Bible books. The Southeastern Baptist Seminary, famous for Bible scholarship, lists a dozen or so ancient Greek NT manuscripts, the earliest from the 2nd Century and the latest from the 5th Century. Some are bits and pieces, and the oldest manuscript of the entire New Testament is Sinaiticus, dated in the 4th Century. Vaticanus, also a 4th Century document, is considered of high quality but doesn’t include the whole New Testament. Well, enough boring details. The purpose of this paragraph is just to explain the difficulty of choosing original Greek to translate.
Biblegateway.com is an excellent resource including more than 150 translations of the New Testament in 50 languages. It includes the Latin Vulgate, the authentic Latin Bible for the Catholic Church. The translation by Jerome from Greek and Hebrew to Latin was done in 384 AD to 405 AD, and the Council of Trent approved the Vulgate as the authentic Bible for the Catholic Church in 1546 AD. The Vulgate was probably revised some between 405 and 1546, but the meanings of those ancient Latin words never change!
Catholic approval of Bibles in other languages is typically entrusted to local church bishops charged with using the Vulgate as their guide. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops specifies the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE) for Liturgy and several others including the New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (NRSV-CE) for personal use. Their complete list of approved versions is HERE.
I’m surprised that the Bibles approved by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops includes The Good News Translation. It was originally ( in1966!) called Good News for Modern Man. And, “Happy” shows up nine times in Matthew 5 and 255 times in the Bible. Happy shows up only once in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV-CE) New Testament expressing the appropriate emotion of Zacchaeus thinking of welcoming Jesus to his house.
When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.” – Luke 19:5-6
The best advice for us is to read the Bible regularly, taking care to read versions that have not been tweaked to conform with 20th or 21st century thinking.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. – Romans 12:2