Eyewitnesses Still Standing In Luke 21

There seems to be a desire by more liberal scholars of the New Testament to date the gospels into the second century and say that they were written by 2nd century writers who were not eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus. Luke acknowledges in the prologue to his gospel that he was not an eyewitness to Jesus but states that he at least interviewed eyewitnesses when he writes:

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus.”

This siege started in AD 66 and the city of Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70.

But, for liberal scholars Luke 21 is the issue. How could he write so clearly about events that took place from AD 66-70 if they had not already happened? They seem to have an anti-supernatural bias against the possibility of predictive prophecy and therefore insist Luke must have written this chapter after the events prophesied in Luke 21 had already taken place. I believe this to be a moot point because even if Luke did write about them after the fact, Jesus still prophesied them in AD 30 when he preached this sermon. So, it was clearly predictive prophecy.

However, I find it harder to believe that Luke would not give some indication in the text that the temple and Jerusalem had been destroyed if he were writing after this siege took place. So, it makes sense to me to date the book of Acts from shortly after the events that it describes took place (AD 65) and then Luke would have been written shortly before the book of