Today I opened up RandomBible.com and re-set it until it gave me a verse I could say something succinct about.  (Don't laugh:  this entry is succinct by my field's writing standards.)

"And they that were in the boat worshiped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God."
 —Matthew 14:33

I will now quote the Metamorphoses,* a book-length poem written by the Roman poet Ovid before 8 A.D.  (The Gospel of Matthew is thought to have been written some time around 85 A.D., the Gospel of Luke is placed about five years later.)  I do not mean to say that the Classical poet, who had never heard of Christ or Christianity, influenced the Evangelists — but I am trying to make a point about the early hearers of Christianity and the world they lived in.

(I warmly recommend John Dominic Crossan's God and Empire, particularly pages 104-108, if this topic interests you.)

*  This very work is responsible for many of the Classical myths alluded to in Shakespeare (see Shakespeare's Ovid, Will in the World, and Michael Wood's In Search of Shakespeare), Renaissance sculptures, opera, and a great deal of other European art  (see also:  http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ovid/ ) — in fact Metamorphoses explains why Europe is called "Europe".

So, this passage from the Metamorphoses is about the assassination of Julius Caesar and the ascension of his adopted son, Augustus Caesar, as the first Emperor of Rome. (For a bit of orientation in history, see: ttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/cron.html )  Forgive the length (and the old-fashioned translation) of this passage, but read it and see if you find anything that reminds you either of the nativity or the crucifixion accounts in the New Testament:

.... [Julius] Caesar is a god in his own land.
... exalted ... as a new,
a heavenly, sign and brightly flaming star.
.... lest that son should come from mortal seed,
Julius Caesar must change and be a god ....
The gods were moved, and, since they could not break
the ancient sisters' [the Fates'] iron decree, they gave
instead clear portents of approaching woe.  [Julius Caesar's assassination]

It is declared, resounding arms heard from
the black clouds and unearthly trumpet blasts
and clarions heard through all the highest heavens,
forewarned men of the crime. The sad sun's face
gave to the frightened world a livid light;
and in the night-time torches seemed to burn
amid the stars, and often drops of blood
fell in rain-showers. Then Lucifer [the star, not the Devil] shone blue
with all his visage stained by darksome rust.
The chariot of the moon was sprinkled with
red blood. The Stygian owl gave to the world
ill omens. In a thousand places, tears
were shed by the ivory statues. Dirges, too,
are said to have been heard, and threatening words
by unknown speakers in the sacred groves.

.... In the Forum, it is said,
and round men's homes and temples of the gods
dogs howled all through the night, and silent shades
wandered abroad, and earthquakes shook the city.

But portents of the gods could not avert
the plots of men and stay approaching fate.
Into a temple naked swords were brought—
into the Senate House. No other place
in all our city was considered fit
for perpetrating such a dreadful crime!
.... the man ... already has completed his
alloted time. The years are ended which
he owed to life on earth. You with his son,
who now as heir to his estate must bear
the burden of that government, will cause
him, as a deity, to reach the heavens,
and to be worshiped in the temples here.

.... With peace established over all the lands,
.... Looking forward to the days
of future time and of posterity ... he ascend[s]
to heavenly dwellings and his kindred stars.
Meanwhile transform the soul, which shall be reft
from this doomed body, to a starry light,
that always god-like Julius may look down ....

kindly Venus, although seen by none,
stood in the middle of the Senate-house,
and caught from the dying limbs and trunk
of her own Caesar his departing soul.
She did not give it time so that it could
dissolve in air, but bore it quickly up,
toward all the stars of heaven; and on the way,
she saw it gleam and blaze and set it free.
Above the moon it mounted into heaven,
leaving behind a long and fiery trail,
and as a star it glittered in the sky.

.... [and likewise] when great Augustus shall foresake the earth
which he now governs, and mount up to heaven,
from that far height to hear his people's prayers!"
source:  http://www.perseus.tufts.edu
from: Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Brookes More. Boston:  Cornhill Publishing Co., 1922.

Roman religion was a great deal more complicated than it sounds:  it had heavenly omens and earthly signs, weeping statues, prophecies about contemporary nations, theories on what the soul was and what happened to it after death, complex ideas of the structure of the universe, the idea that men could become gods (although this was largely reserved for the Emperors thanks to their kinship with the deified Julius Caesar), and grave considerations of whether Fate could be changed, even by the most powerful of gods (this passage argues that not even Jupiter could do so:  later Mystery Religions are quick to claim *their* deity was able to do so.)

I don't wish to say too much, I just wish to offer this as food for thought.  It's less an example of how my field has changed in the last 40 years and more of a regression to the last turn of the century, when most scholars were Classically educated, knew the Classics in their original languages as schoolboys (and thus could read the New Testament in Greek, handily), and perhaps would not have blinked at the similarities I'm writing about, today.

(Most scholars now do not have such a background, the context of Second Temple Judaism has (naturally and rightly) become much more central to the study of Christian Origins.  I went to school long enough ago to learn Latin, and any awe I might feel here for Julius Caesar was quite  snuffed by suffering through his military campaign in Gaul.)

-Kushana
P.S.  If you'd like a more contemporary translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, I'm fond of Rolfe Humphries' — a poet, himself.