More importantly, Yamauchi admits that a parallel legend, specifically a legend of a deity impregnating a woman & fathering a child who is eventually worshipped, predates Christianity by hundreds of years! (336 BC was the date given by Yamauchi.) Further, note that there is a parallel of a dream: In the account of Alexander, the mother is foretold of the event in a dream, and in Matthew, Joseph is told in a dream that Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit. Looks like a parallel to me!

Does it? That's only because Jacobsen collapses down terms ("impregnating," "worshipped," "a dream") while ignoring the vast differences in the stories. I have shown the folly of such argumentation here and here.

It is true that Jesus' virgin birth was not based on lust. However, it is worth noting that the OT has incidents of spiritual beings, if not God Himself, lusting after and impregnating humans. As an example, take the Nephilim in Genesis. Although the scripture in Genesis is lacking details and open to several interpretations, one of the more common interpretations is that the Nephilim were the offspring of human women and spiritual creatures created by God (perhaps like angels) that lusted after the women. It is a similar idea, even if not identical.

And this relates to Jesus how?

One of the claims made by the authors is that some of the alleged pagan parallels to Christianity occurred after the origin of Christianity, which would disprove them. Yamauchi claims that most of the evidence of parallels to pagan religions dates to the second century or later. I'd like to remind him that ALL of the evidence of Christianity dates to the second century and later! The first scrap of a manuscript we have dates to the second century. Of course I understand that the originals of the NT documents were written in the first century, but if the original Christian documents were written before the earliest copies we have, then it is reasonable to conclude that the original pagan works were also written before the earliest copies of them we have!

Jacobsen claims there is some "double standard" at work because one interviewee touts the "early" copies of the NT in the second century, and then another interviewee dismisses possible pagan influence because the copies of the pagan documents we have are too "late" because they are from the second century! He is forgetting that the former matter is one that is comparative (the NT versus other documents) whereas the latter is not.