Gilles Quispel
Gilles Quispel 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 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. 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. This book including unpublished essays, such as an important paper on Jesus in Islam, in which he argued that the origin of most of the Islamic sayings of Jesus were from Judeo-Christian /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.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, 1951Het getuigenis der ziel bij Tertullianus , 1952Tertulliani De testimonio animae., 1952Op zoek naar het evangelie der waarheid , 1954The Jung Codex : a newly recovered gnostic papyrus. Three studies , 1955Evangelium veritatis. Codex Jung f.VIIIv-XVIv / f.XIXr-XXIIr , 1956Het evangelie naar de beschrijving van Thomas Het Luikse 'Leven van Jezus' en het jodenchristelijke 'Evangelie der Hebreeën’, 1958Makarius, das Thomasevangelium und das Lied von der Perle, 1967Faust: Symbol of Western Man, 1967.Gnosis and The New Sayings of Jesus, Rhein-Verlag, 1971.Het Evangelie van Thomas en de Nederlanden., 1971The 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 , 1978Het geheime boek der openbaring. Het laatste boek van de bijbel 1986.De Hermetische Gnosis in de loop der eeuwen, 1992Corpus Hermeticum , 1993Asclepius; De volkomen openbaring van Hermes Trismegistus, 1996Een jongetje uit Kinderdijk. Herinneringen van Gilles Quispel, 2001Valentinus de gnosticus en zijn Evangelie der waarheid., 2003- Het Evangelie van Thomas. Uit het Koptisch vertaald en toegelicht, In de Pelikaan Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, 2004De Keulse Mani-Codex, 2005Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica. Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel, 2008Hermetische geschriften, 2016
Commemorative books
- R. van den Broek and M. J. Vermaseren, ''Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions: Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday''