Was Mahabharata written before it actually happened?

No it was not. But I believe it was authored shortly after the death of Pandavas. Parikshit was the son of Abhimanyu and the grand son of the Pandavas and the only heir to the throne. read more

No, Mahabharat was not written before it actually happened. From victorious, writers wrote initially ~8000 verses|slokas, epicizing|poeticizing|prosaicizing the history, which the progenies of those writers of Mahabharat, keep on adding the verses while making heroes out of their families too, thus corrupting and worsening the real history and built it to an abormally huge size of ~1,00,000 slokas. read more

If you really believe that the Mahabharata actually happened, then Veda Vyasa never really wrote it. He dictated it, and Lord Ganesha wrote it down - both going non-stop with no rest. Therefore, all the documentation of events was done by the team of Vyasa/Ganesha post-facto, i.e., after their occurrence. read more

Ramayana and Mahabharata seem to have been composed as a reaction to this hermit revolution, so after the age of the Buddha, they argue in favour of the householder’s life and reveal how hermit’s wisdom can be used within the household. read more