 Most modern biographers of Herod, and probably a majority of biblical scholars, dismiss Matthew's story as a literary device.Contemporary non-biblical sources, including Herod's friend and personal historian, Nicolas of Damascus, provide no corroboration for Matthew's account of the massacre, and it is not mentioned in the Gospel of Luke.Classical historian Michael Grant states “[t]he tale is not history but myth or folk-lore”, while Peter Richardson notes that the story's absence from the Gospel of Luke and the accounts of Josephus "work[s] against the account's accuracy".