I suspect a substantial proportion of those on FR knew there was, as you say, a little “hanky/panky” going on when translating the New Testament to get the well-known Vulgate Bible. However, the intentional and inappropriate insertions are few, and the Vulgate was for the most part a sincere effort to work from the best available Greek manuscripts of primarily the second century AD (including reference to Origen Adamantius' work) as a revision of the even more flawed "Old Latin" text. As for the Vulgate Old Testament, the older manuscripts that Jerome used whenever possible were in Hebrew/Aramaic (the Tanakh), and Greek (the Septuagint) was only a last resort. The Vulgate as far as I knew did a good job on the OT, other than the debate over whether to include what Jerome himself referred to and thoroughly documented as the apocrypha. Regarding the quality of St. Jerome's Vulgate translation, we have plenty of Greek manuscripts that were completely unaffected, which allow us to see and correct deviations.
As you might guess, I'm a fan of the Vulgate in concept and as a remarkable work for mostly one man. I'm also a fan of the KJV, which has a majestic, poetic brilliance well beyond the archaic language. I don't see KJV as the only possible "true" translation, but I see it as an excellent work. The big question in translation is how far to deviate from a word-for-word rendering. Too literal is unreadable or awkward, and too free a paraphrase may blur or change critical aspects of the meaning. When I read Aramaic or Greek side by side with the KJV, I think the translators in almost every passage did a miraculously good job. [Note: I am going from memory, since I don't have the relevant materials with me, and I apologize if there are any "oopsies" in my comments above]
You have supported my view, so to speak. Litterature, and the bible is a work of litterature, has to have an appeal or no one would read it. As to the first 5 books of the bible, we are not sure who even wrote it. I suspect it is lore handed down through time as a sort of history but no one knows the accuracy. Ther was 900 years between Abraham and Moses. and before that was Noaha and a flood but there is no first hand transcript of that event.