the jesus files...

The gentile cultures, religions and mythologies during the time of Christian beginnings around the first century CE were filled with stories of divine incarnation. For example in the Greek myth, Perseus was born of the virgin Danae. Danae was conceived by the God Zeus who took the form of a shower of gold. In another Greek myth Dionysius was born of the virgin Semele. Semele was impregnated by Zeus with a bolt of lightning.

And in almost all the popular mystery religions around the Mediterranean, the beliefs of the uneducated masses, the divine personalities are born of virgins. For example, Horus, a major god of the Egyptian mystery religion, was born of the virgin Isis (like Jesus in Luke, Horus was also born in a stable). And Mithra, an derivative of the Persian sun-worship, whose cult rivalled Christianity during the first few centuries of its existence, was conceived when God himself, in the form of light, entered a virgin.
Phoenician mythology had Adonis being born of the virgin Myrrh.

The popular culture also ascribed to many famous men miraculous, divine and, sometimes, even virgin birth. Thus the emperor Augustus, the reigning sovereign during the time of Jesus, was reputedly miraculously begotten when a snake descended upon his mother in the temple of Apollo. So too, Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, was born of a vestal virgin.

the Virgin Mary apparates in an underpass