Was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet?

If Jesus' beliefs were made up, they would have been more believable

Question: Was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet?
Position1 of 2›: Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet
Argument‹3 of 4›: If Jesus' beliefs were made up, they would have been more believable

Jesus often spoke about events such as all the temple being raised to the ground. If that was just retroaction, wouldn't it have been made more historically accurate?

The argument

In Mark 13:2 Jesus says ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’ This is Jesus talking about the end times; talking about the fact that the Temple in Jerusalem will be completely destroyed during the eschaton that is soon to arrive. However, there is a large problem with Jesus saying this. He is wrong - very wrong. The Temple in Jerusalem still stands to this day, 2000 years after Jesus' life. If the gospel writers made up what Jesus said in order to fit their own narratives, they would have made sure that he was correct when he was talking about what would happen to a huge structure the size of 12 football pitches. Since this would have been an embarrassment for the writers to have included it, it can't have been made up, therefore Jesus must have held these views in some form.

Context

A lot of the things that Jesus said and did were probably made up to try and emphasise his position as the Son of God. Whilst there are certain miracles, such as turning water into wine, that we have no evidence or historical records of so that the Gospel writers aren't obviously shown to be lying, others are fairly obvious. If they wanted Jesus to be shown as the Son of God - a divine omnipresent being - surely they would have altered the things that Jesus said to be historically accurate?

Premises

[P1]In Mark 13:2 Jesus predicts the Temple's total destruction in an imminent end-time. [P2] If the gospel writers had invented Jesus's words to fit their narrative, they would have made his prediction about so huge a structure come true rather than leave it an embarrassment. [P3] Because they would not have fabricated an embarrassing, unfulfilled prophecy, Jesus must genuinely have held this apocalyptic view. [C] Therefore, Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet.

Counter-arguments

Critics point out that the argument's own factual premise is mistaken: the Temple in Jerusalem did not survive. The Second Temple was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE, so a saying predicting that not one stone would be left standing was, in the event, fulfilled rather than left embarrassingly false. That removes the very 'embarrassment' the argument relies on. This matters because most scholars date the Gospel of Mark to around or shortly after 70 CE, which opens the alternative that the prediction was recorded, or shaped, after the destruction had already happened — a 'prophecy after the event.' On that reading the saying is not evidence that the historical Jesus held an apocalyptic view; it may reflect the writer's knowledge of a catastrophe that had recently occurred. The criterion of embarrassment can be a useful tool, critics add, but it applies only when a detail really would have embarrassed the author, and here it does not.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise mis-states the history: the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, so the prediction that it would be thrown down was fulfilled, not left standing as an embarrassment. [Rejecting P2] If Mark was written around or after 70 CE, the saying could be a 'prophecy after the event' shaped by the destruction, which is not something the writers would have needed to avoid, so the embarrassment criterion does not apply. [Rejecting C] Because the premise of an unfulfilled, embarrassing prophecy is false, the inference collapses; the saying does not establish that the historical Jesus held this apocalyptic view.