Heiros Logos: The Gospel of John was based on Euripides as Dionysius ritual 6th C. BCE or Homer, mid 7th BCE

 Interview with Prof. Dennis McDonald

 He cites this University of Minnesota scholar!

Reading Dionysus: Euripides' Bacchae among Jews and Christians in the Greco-Roman World

 https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/8e6087d2-56fc-4bf7-909a-4cf4af0d0b09/content

 All the
surviving works of the three great tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—
were performed at the dramatic festivals of Athens in honor of Dionysus. The most
important, the Great Dionysia, was established in the sixth century and included several
days of civic rituals of Dionysus, culminating in at least three days of dramatic
competitions.5 On the day preceding the performances, there was a grand procession for
Dionysus (πομπή), in which a bull and other victims were sacrificed to the god

 ......

 H. J. Rose, “Dionysiaca,” Aberystwyth Studies 4 (1922): 19–29, esp. 24–28. Rose’s theory has
received little attention, perhaps because there is insufficient evidence regarding the pre-Euripidean myth
of Pentheus. The Bacchae (and others of Euripides’ myths), however, are remarkably innovative of the
received tradition. Jennifer March has argued, for example, on the basis of artistic representations that
Euripides’ version was the first in which Pentheus went to Cithaeron disguised as a maenad rather than
leading an armed force and in which he is killed by his own mother (“Euripides’ Bakchai: A
Reconsideration”).

 ..............

 Under the influence especially of Plato, the Dionysiac
experience was radically reinterpreted. Within Platonism the language of Bacchic
ecstasy could be used to describe the ascent of the soul to philosophical enlightenment
while replacing its traditional sensuality with a spiritual mysticism (see § 5.3 on Philo).
In this context, readers of the Bacchae could appropriate its emphasis on “seeing” in a
manner that muted its sensuality in favor of purely spiritual vision, as Clement of
Alexandria does, for example, in describing initiation into Christian gnosis (§ 8.4).

...................

 Both Yahweh and Jesus and their respective cults were conflated with Dionysus
by various Greco-Roman (and modern scholarly) observers, a fact which motivated
several Jewish and Christian writers to assert their religious difference.100 In view of this
political and religious landscape, when Jews and Christians living under Greek and
Roman imperial rule reflect on the god Dionysus, it is often amidst conflict in the
maintenance of their own religious commitments....

 Regarding the appropriation of Greek
philosophy by Christians in the Roman world, Sara Parvis writes of Justin Martyr that his
dual identity “undermines the purity of difference and therefore its authority.”
Consequently, he is “a subversive danger to both Christian orthodoxy and pure
Hellenism.”105

 Rebecca Lyman, “Justin and Hellenism: Some Postcolonial Perspectives,” in Justin Martyr and
His Worlds (ed. Sara Parvis and Paul Foster; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 160–68 (at 165).

Does Sara Parvis know of the work of Marian Hillar?

Or Rebecca Lyman? 

I emailed both of them....Rebecca Lyman bounced back....

 Justin Martyr and his worlds

is edited by Sara Parvis and has Rebecca Lyman's article...as a book chapter.

More on Justin Martyr and the Logos 

https://www.academia.edu/48624620/Justin_Martyr_and_His_Worlds_Edited_by_Sara_Parvis_and_Paul_Foster 

 not much in that review. Back to the Ph.D thesis:

 Dio’s description of the Alexandrian mob is significantly
colored by mythological literature.103 In his criticism of the Alexandrians’ response to
musical performances (47-74), Dio employs a number of mythological comparisons.104
He asserts, for example, that their entertainers affect them as Sirens (47) and that, by
contrast to the music of Orpheus, which tamed wild beasts, their musicians turn humans
into beasts (62). For my purposes here, however, his comparison to maenads is of special
interest. Whereas music ought to have a calming effect on its audience for them it is the
opposite. In a reversal of the experience of most others for whom drunkenness is an
inducement to song and dance, for the Alexandrians, “song brings about drunkenness and
madness” (ἡ γὰρ ᾠδὴ μέθην ἐμποιεῖ καὶ παράνοιαν, 55)....Dio further develops the connection between music and war in the following section by noting
that the ancient Spartans made war to the accompaniment of the kithara.........

 In the eighth century BCE, Greek colonists arrived in the south of Italy and
brought with them Dionysiac religion.1 Evidence for the practice of Dionysiac cult by
Greeks in Magna Graecia is available from the fifth century. For example, a famous mid-
fifth-century burial inscription from Cumae indicates a relationship between Bacchic
initiation and funerary rites: “it is not permitted to lie here if someone is not initiated into
Bacchus” (Οὐ θέμις ἐντοῦθα κεῖσθαι ἰ μὲ τὸν βεβαχχευμένον).2 A connection between
Dionysus and the afterlife is also found on a gold leaf from a burial chamber in
Hipponion (ca. 400 BCE), which speaks of “bacchoi” traveling along the sacred road in
the underworld.3........

 For the text, see Radcliffe G. Edmonds, ed., The “Orphic” Gold Tablets and Greek Religion:
Further along the Path (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 30–31. On the importance of the afterlife in Dionysiac ritual more generally, see Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical ...Walter Burkert argues that the Dionysiac mysteries had a focus on the afterlife which they
developed “especially in Italy as a kind of analogue to the Eleusinian rites” (Ancient Mystery Cults
[Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987], 21–23 [at 22]).

Dennis McDonald on the Gospel of John as being worship of Dionysius

 back to the Ph.D. thesis that McDonald cites:

this hieros logos that emphasizes the imperishability of the
soul (ἄφθαρτον οὖσαν τὴν ψυχήν) and the desirability of its release from the body (611e-
f).101 Thus, Plutarch’s interpretation of Bacchae 498 in application to death and the
afterlife is both Stoic and at the same time confirmed by his own experience as an initiate
into Dionysiac mysteries

 2 Justin exhorts the
emperors that “the logos dictates that those who are truly pious and philosophers honor
and cherish the truth alone, seeking to follow the opinions of the ancients” (Τοὺς κατὰ
ἀλήθειαν εὐσεβεῖς καὶ φιλοσόφους μόνον τἀληθὲς τιμᾶν καὶ στέργειν ὁ λόγος
ὑπαγορεύει, παραιτουμένους δόξαις παλαιῶν ἐξακολουθεῖν, 1 Apol. 2). He later asserts,
“we have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God and we announced in advance
that he is the logos of which every race of humans partakes” (τὸν Χριστὸν πρωτότοκον
τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι ἐδιδάχθημεν καὶ προεμηνύσαμεν λόγον ὄντα, οὗ πᾶν γένος ἀνθρώπων
μετέσχε), including, “among the Greeks (ἐν Ἕλλησι μέν), Socrates, Heraclitus” and
“among the barbarians (ἐν βαρβάροις δέ), Abraham [etc.]” (46). In opposition to such
claims, Celsus insists that there is an ancient logos that is the common possession of both
Greeks and barbarians but that Jews and Christians are excluded (1.14, 26, quoted
above).33

 Celsus is aware that, like Asclepius, many miracles of healing had
also been attributed to Jesus.36 He in fact does not deny them outright but rather
categorizes them as “magic” or “sorcery” (e.g., 1.6, 28, 38, 68, 71).37 Thus, whatever
Jesus may have performed, Celsus denies that these qualify as “noble deeds.” Moreover,
the most decisive miracle for Christians—Jesus’ resurrection—is also disputed by Celsus.
In contrast to the noble deeds of Celsus’ divinized humans which were performed
broadly for humanity (ὑπὲρ ἀνθρώπων), Jesus appeared only to a select group (τῶν ἰδίων
θιασωτῶν), which Celsus elsewhere reduces to a single “frenzied woman” (γυνὴ
πάροιστρος, 2.55).3

 As with Celsus’ discussion of the ancient logos, his comparison of these divinized
men with Jesus also relates closely to the writings of Justin. As Andresen observed, this
same group of figures—the Dioscuri, Heracles, Asclepius, and Dionysus—is compared to Jesus by Justin.39 Justin writes, “we do not hold anything new, divergent from the things
said by you regarding the sons of Zeus” (οὐ παρὰ τοὺς παρ’ ὑμῖν λεγομένους υἱοὺς τῷ Διῒ
καινόν τι φέρομεν, 1 Apol. 21). Although Justin does not provide an explicitly
Euhemeristic account of these figures, his mention in the same context of the apotheosis
of Caesar, whose human origin would be undisputed, points in that direction. For Justin,
a central question in evaluating such figures is, “what sort of deeds are recorded of each
of those called sons of Zeus” (καὶ ὁποῖαι ἑκάστου τῶν λεγομένων υἱῶν τοῦ Διὸς
ἱστοροῦνται αἱ πράξεις, 21). He then adds, for the sake of argument, “if indeed [Jesus] is
only a common human, he is worthy to be called Son of God because of his wisdom” (εἰ
καὶ κοινῶς μόνον ἄνθρωπος, διὰ σοφίαν ἄξιος υἱὸς θεοῦ λέγεσθαι, 22). Moreover, Justin
maintains that Jesus “has been demonstrated” (ἀποδέδεικται) to be greater than the
reputed sons of Zeus on the basis on his actions: “for the superior one is manifest from
his deeds” (ὁ γὰρ κρείττων ἐκ τῶν πράξεων φαίνεται, 22). These striking similarities
between the strategies of Justin and Celsus suggest that the latter was responding to
precisely this sort of Christian argument regarding Greek mythology