[Kolo to FK] Lying or insanity has nothing, usually, to do with what people see and hear and then recall even minutes later, let alone months or years later. Sometimes the differences can be dramatically different, not just in trivial matters but also in material ones.
Back in the early 1970's when the IRA and the British troops were in a real shooting war im Northern Ireland, a British reporter David Tereshchuk was narrating his own experience of an incident known as the Bloody Sunday (1972). He said he distinctly remembered a British paratrooper in a red beret (which is worn by British "paras" in garrison and nonocmbat situations) pointing a rifle directly at him. This terrifying moment was apparently indelibly burned into this reporter's memory as he could vividly recall the details.
Unfortunately, someone came up with a photograph of that moment taken by another reporter, which clearly shows the paratrooper had a steel helmet and it wasn't red! The only thing that was more bizarre is that the Tereshchuk admitted that even after seeing the photograph his brain refused to accept it and when he closes his eyes he still sees a paratrooper in a red beret!
Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, especially with passage of time. Just as people believe what they want to believe, what they are comfortable with, they also remember what they want to remember, consciously or unconsciously. This is a fact that has been established by countless repeated experiments and anyone who doubts is welcome to do their own research.
Now, someone will come up with "Yeah, but John was 'inspired' and God woldn't let him remember incorrectly," or something to thast effect. Of course there is no evidence that John was "inspired" suggesting any type of error-protection, writing almost 70 years after the alleged events, quoting supposedly verbatim what Jesus said.
Maybe he was inspired (moved, motivated) to write about his faith, and his own personal experience, as best as he could remember, which of course is not lying or seeking to deceive.
Besides, the Gospel of John is so heavily interpolated that one can't even be sure which of the authors was "remembering." And then there are copyists who added and erred all over the place with each successive hand made copy, it is pointless to even talk about what John & al originally wrote.
Considering that the earliest complete copies of John's manuscripts are almost a century removed from the purported original manuscript and that they exist in numerous variants, just think how many hand-made copies were made in that century, each carrying its own errors and omissions and deletions and additions and "harmonizations" and doctrinal "adjustments" as each scribe saw fit!
The Church even then was bending itself towards harmonizing the message to the faithful. After all, having dissonant messages is not a good thing. Look at all the trouble that the dissonant Paul still causes...