Gilles Quispel

Gilles Quispel (30 May 1916 – 2 March 2006) was a Dutch theologian and historian of Christianity and Gnosticism. He was professor of early Christian history at Utrecht University.

Early life and education Born in Rotterdam, he was the son of a blacksmith from Kinderdijk. He himself was not handy enough to become a blacksmith, and was thus sent to study at the gymnasium. He learned about Plato and gnosis from his teacher of ancient languages. After finishing secondary school in Dordrecht, Quispel studied classical philology from 1934 to 1941 at the Leiden University. He then became a secondary school teacher, but soon after went for the university, and he was appointed professor of the history of the early Church at Utrecht University in 1951, at the age of 35. He died in El Gouna, Egypt in 2006 during his holidays.

At Leiden, he also began to study theology, which he continued at the University of Groningen. Quispel completed his doctoral work in 1943 at Utrecht University with a dissertation examining the sources utilized in Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem. He devoted study to several Gnostic systems, particularly Valentinianism.

Career and research In 1948-1949, Quispel spent a year in Rome as a Bollingen fellow. Quispel served as a visiting professor at Harvard University in 1964-1965 and at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1968. He was engaged in first editing Nag Hammadi Codex I (the "Jung Codex") and devoted attention to the Nag Hammadi Library and particularly to the Gospel of Thomas throughout the rest of his career.

Quispel also made contributions to the study of early "Jewish-Christian" traditions as well as Tatian's Diatessaron (a second-century gospel harmony). He became emeritus on 1 March 1984. He published five more books afterwards, including a work on Valentinus. Together with J. van Oort, he published a work on the Cologne Mani Codex.

Legacy After Quispel's death, Johannes van Oort collected his works in Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel (2008). This book including unpublished essays, such as an important paper on Jesus in Islam, in which he argued that the origin of most of the Islamic sayings of Jesus were from Judeo-Christian / Jewish Christian sources (as opposed to Gentile Christians).

Publications De bronnen van Tertullianus' Adversus Marcionem, thesis, Leiden, 1943. The Original Doctrine of Valentine, Amsterdam, North-Holland 1947. A Jewish Source of Minucius Felix, 1949. Gnosis als Weltreligion, 1951 Het getuigenis der ziel bij Tertullianus (inaugurele rede Utrecht), 1952 Tertulliani De testimonio animae., 1952 Op zoek naar het evangelie der waarheid (with H.Ch. Puech; on the Codex Jung), 1954 The Jung Codex : a newly recovered gnostic papyrus. Three studies (met H.C. Puech and W.C. van Unnik), 1955 Evangelium veritatis. Codex Jung f.VIIIv-XVIv / f.XIXr-XXIIr (with Michel Malinine and Henri-Charles Puech), 1956 Het evangelie naar de beschrijving van Thomas (with A. Guillaumont and H.-Ch. Puech, 1959, 1991, 2005) Het Luikse 'Leven van Jezus' en het jodenchristelijke 'Evangelie der Hebreeën’, 1958 Makarius, das Thomasevangelium und das Lied von der Perle, 1967 Faust: Symbol of Western Man, 1967. Gnosis and The New Sayings of Jesus, Rhein-Verlag, 1971. Het Evangelie van Thomas en de Nederlanden., 1971 The Birth of The Child: Some Gnostic and Jewish Aspects, Leiden: Brill 1973. From Mythos to Logos, Leiden: Brill 1973. Gnosis and Psychology, Leiden: Brill 1973. Gnostic Studies, 2 vols., Istanbul, 1974. Tatian and the Gospel of Thomas: Studies in the History of the Western Diatessaron, Leiden: Brill 1975. Van Unnik als geleerde (herdenkingsrede), 1978 Het geheime boek der openbaring. Het laatste boek van de bijbel (also translated into English: The Secret Book of Revelation: The Last Book of The Bible, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979. and French. Jewish and Gnostic Man, (Eranos Lecures) 1986. De Hermetische Gnosis in de loop der eeuwen (also translated to German), 1992 Corpus Hermeticum (with Roelof van den Broek), 1993 Asclepius; De volkomen openbaring van Hermes Trismegistus, 1996 Een jongetje uit Kinderdijk. Herinneringen van Gilles Quispel, 2001 Valentinus de gnosticus en zijn Evangelie der waarheid., 2003 Het Evangelie van Thomas. Uit het Koptisch vertaald en toegelicht, In de Pelikaan Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, 2004 De Keulse Mani-Codex (with Johannes van Oort), 2005 Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica. Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel (redactie Johannes van Oort), 2008 Hermetische geschriften (with Roelof van den Broek), 2016

Commemorative books

R. van den Broek and M. J. Vermaseren (eds.), Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions: Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Leiden 1981)