No one says the Apostles never met Jesus, but the authors of the Gospels were not Apostles.

First, it should be stated that none of the authors of the Gospels ever claim to have met Jesus or to have known anyone else who met Jesus. They were all originally anonymous works, and the titles and authorship traditions were attached in the 2nd Century by Church Fathers based specious evidence and speculation.

The evidence against the authorship traditions is voluminous, but some of the main problems (and I can unpack all this further if need be) are:

• the lateness of the dating (between 70-110 CE)

• The educated Greek language and literary styles (extremely improbable for illiterate, Aramaic speaking fishermen).

• Interdependence (for example Matthew copies most of Mark's Gospel word for word. Why would a witness copy from a non-witness?)

• Numerous mistakes of geography, history and law which would be extremely improbable for a witness.

• Significant contradictions where there is no shared source.

• Third person omniscient material which could not have come from eyewitness testimony (for example, who witnessed the temptations, Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane or his trial before the Sanhedrin?)

• Demonstrably fictive material, such as both Nativity stories and the trial before the Sanhedrin, as well as material which seem to be reworkings of stories from the Old Testament.

• Anachronisms which could not have come from witnesses.

Once again, the authors themselves never claim to be "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John," never claim to be witnesses, never identify themselves at all and never name any sources. The authorship traditions arose in the 2nd Century. The evidence supporting these traditions does not hold up and the evidence against eyewitness authorship is considerable. Mainstream scholarship, for some time, has regarded all four authorship traditions as spurious.