I guess we donāt, and never will know with absolute certainty, because we no longer have the originals. All we can do is make the best use of what remains of the ancient (but not original) manuscripts. For that we have to rely on the professional judgement of competent scholars and the Faith of the Church.
The Council of Trent, without saying anything about the Greek or Hebrew, did unequivocally state that the Latin Vulgate was free from moral or doctrinal error. To some that means that it, and it alone, is absolutely correct and free of any error whatsoever. But these probably forget that the Council also ordered a revision of the then current Vulgate, to remove any errors that had crept in over the ages. So in the absence of St. Jeromeās original version, the scholars of the day did the best they could with whatever editions they had available to them, as well as, of course, the writings of the Fathers and other important āwitnessesā. The resulting text we know as the Clementine Vulgate.
Since that time, however, older manuscripts have come to light that help to build a better picture of what the originals said or
might have said, even though we still cannot say with absolute certainty that we have succeeded in reconstructing the original text. Also, some other ā non biblical ā texts have since given us a better knowledge of the original
languages, which helps us to better interpret the often obscure āoriginalā texts. None of this would have been possible at the time of Trent.
But what is meant by āaccurateā ?
If your standard is the Vulgate, then the Jerusalem and New American bibles are not accurate. But if your standard is the Greek or Hebrew ā by the collection of manuscripts we have ā then they probably are, even if they are not absolutely literal. The Clementine Vulgate is not accurate when measured against the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts we now have, but it is still free from moral or doctrinal error, as the Council of Trent so confidently stated. Todayās bibles are too, which is why we have the
imprimatur ā human error notwithstanding, of course.
But bibles can be so literally accurate that we canāt make any sense of it. Taking the old Vulgate again: at times it makes no sense whatsoever, probably because St. Jerome couldnāt make any sense of it either. In that sense it is probably inaccurate, but these creative misreadings have led to some wonderful and very true mystical interpretations by the Fathers and medieval writers.
As Catholics we do not rely on one or two verses in isolation, we look at them in their context, in relation to other parts of the bible, and most importantly
the Faith of the Church. We do not rely solely on our own interpretations, but on those of our ancestors in the two thousand year history of the Church, and the long history of the Jewish people before that. And in our never-ending quest for a better understanding of the scriptures, we have also been helped by our separated brethren in the churches that came out of the Reformation.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=405472
In your previous thread you mention a muslim friend. As you know, Muhammad (pbuh) frequently mentions the Taurat (Torah) and Injeel (Gospels). You might reassure him with the knowledge that our scholars also make use of Arabic translations to help in understanding the scriptures. As a muslim he also has the prophet Isa (Jesus, our Lord), son of Maryam (Mary). We both worship the one and only God, even if neither of us can honestly say we
understand the mystery of the Trinity. And at this time of the year we can perhaps share the joy of the Nativity, which also occurs in a different version in a at least one surat of the Qurāan ā and why not share a box of dates at the same time.
It is a sign of Divine Providence that despite the misreadings, copying errors, typographical errors, and so on, our Bible has remained free from doctrinal or moral error. And even if an error does occasionally happen, it is immediately corrected in a dozen other places.
I could really some information such as this to help in my debate with skeptics of the Bible. 