Anyone interested in the Gospel of John and its
- strong themes of the god Dionysus on Jesus
- indebtedness to Philo’s discussion of the Logos/Word
- closely related Persian, Buddhist and Hindu concepts
- very different Jesus from that of the synoptic gospels
- and analysis of why the gospel was written
will find something of note in the two volumes on the Fourth Evangelist by Julius Grill — now “translated” from the German. I was alerted to Grill’s study by Robert Vipper who wrote:
A number of studies in Gospel criticism (particularly noteworthy is the work of Grill: Untersuchungen ϋber die Entstehung des vierten Evangeliums [=Studies on the Origin of the Fourth Gospel], 1908 and 1924) established the fact of the late origin of these works and their dependence on religious-philosophical currents in the literature of the 2nd century. (Vipper, 120 – translation, my bolding)
But a warning! I said that I “translated” Grill’s study. It might almost be better to say that I have “transcribed” it from the German. My initial motivation was to have a copy for my personal use only. I did not expect to make it public at the time. In a strenuous effort to avoid the AI translator from creative whims when translating, I set the parameters so strict that the result reads more like a word-for-word transposition from German to English. This can make it a tiring read. But for what it’s worth, here it is for anyone interested enough to make the effort.
The English language files are available at Julius GRILL – Origin of the Gospel of John Translated (see the right margin for this and other translation links).
- Vipper, Robert Iu. Rim i rannee khristianstvo
[Rome and Early Christianity]. Moscow: Izdatelʹstvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954.