Quote:The question then is obviously how trustworthy are they?
They are not trustworthy at all.... unless you think that a Roman stenographer was sitting in the Carthaginian senate while they debated going to war on Rome in 218 BC as Livy would have us believe.
This sort of thing was a common mechanism for an author to explain issues and events. It was all invention.
And your gospel writers were the descendants of such fabulists.
