Jonas first applied it, not to the Gospels, but to Gnosticism, in
his Gnosis und spatantiker Geist, a work published as early as 1930, with an important preface by Rudolf Bultmann.
(On the relation between mythology, philosophy, and science, cf. J. J. Bachofen, Der Mythos von Orient
und Okzident, Munich, 1926; Leopold Ziegler, Ueberlieferung, Leipzig, 1940; Georg Koepgen, Die
Gnosis des Christentums, Leipzig, 1940.)