Quote from vhehn:
maybe because no one knows what jesus might have said if anything. nothing he might have said was written down in his generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiUCN_e2dgY&feature=channel_page
Bible scholar Bart Ehrman on his book "Misquoting Jesus". Cynthia talks with author Bart Ehrman about his latest book, "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why," an exploration of how scribes changed the bible.
Load of crap. From Wikipedia ...
"... The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of differences are due to the mistakes of scribes;[8] these have little or no effect on the meaning of the passages or core tenets of Christian dogma. Ehrman argues however that some changes could not have been mistakes, but were purposeful alterations by early church writers to support their interpretation of Christianity.
Two key examples illustrate the critical nature of the variations. Two of the most striking additions occur in the last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark, and in 1 John.
Ehrman points out that the last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark are not found in the earliest manuscripts,[8] an omission which is noted in the New International Version (a translation used by many Evangelicals),[9] and argues that these verses were added on to the original text many years later.[8]
In the King James Version of the First Epistle of John there is a passage often taken as an explicit reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. Ehrman points out that this section does not appear in any Greek manuscript before the 9th century.[8]"
Ok, so 12 verses of Mark and a passage in 1 Jn. A really lame attempt at changing the Bible.
The NT is the most accurate Greek text in existence, by virtue of the sheer number of manuscripts extant. This doesn't address the accuracy of the quotes, since they were written down some time after the events (about 30 years or more).
I read once about the earliest (earliest being how long after the events or author does the manuscript occur) classic Greek text vs the earliest Greek NT manuscript. I think the earliest classic Greek manuscript occurred about 300 years after authorship (Illiad ?). The earliest NT manuscript about 30 years after the events.
The very fact of some differences in the versions attests to their veracity, just as the testimony of different eye witnesses don't normally agree on all points.
Texts that agree on all points would allude to a conspiracy. Texts that differ in some (or even many) aspects would allude to eye witness accounts (i.e so and so remembers such and such, etc ...)