Would the Gospel of John begin the way it does if Genesis 1 hadn’t been part of the Torah? The structural parallel is unmistakable: both passages begin "in the beginning," both speak of God’s creation of the universe.

Does John’s reference to Christ as the Logos — the Word — rely on the Genesis creation narrative? That’s less clear. God certainly speaks words in Genesis 1, but the writer never says anything about "the word of God." Rather the creation formula is "God said… and there was." The Biblical use of "said" isn’t distinctive to God: in Genesis 3 the woman "said" to the serpent, the serpent "said" to the woman, the man "said" to God, etc. And while God’s words seem to have creative force in Genesis 1, the writer certainly never personifies God’s words the way John personifies the Logos. Neither does any other Old Testament writer, for that matter. Nor does any New Testament writer other than John.

Still, is it likely that the writer of the fourth Gospel drew his inspiration for this unique idea of Jesus as the Word from the Genesis 1 creation formula, wherein what God says comes into being? It’s hard to say for sure, but apparently not. John makes repeated references to God’s words
and even Jesus’s words, without ever repeating the personification of
Word from the first chapter. For John, "the Word" doesn’t just mean what God says — he seems to have a larger, more abstract concept of Logos in mind.

Long before Christ the Greeks imbued the word logos with philosophical importance. For Heraclitus (6thC BC) logos meant relation, proportion, meaning, universal law, truth. For Socrates (5thC BC) intellectual reflection through dialogue discovers the logos, the community understanding, of things. In the ancient mystery cults the lesser deities are said to have become logos, bringing form to the world, mediating between God on one side and matter/man on the other. The Hellenistic Jews of Jesus’s time associated Logos with the personified Wisdom of Proverbs 8 who existed with God before the creation. In sum, John’s applying the term Logos to Christ as God and Creator probably did not derive from his interpretation of Genesis 1.