Gilles Quispel (original) (raw)

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Dutch theologian and historian of Christianity and Gnosticism

Gilles Quispel
Born (1916-05-30)May 30, 1916Rotterdam, Netherlands
Died March 2, 2006(2006-03-02) (aged 89)El Gouna, Egypt
Nationality Dutch
Occupation(s) Theologian and historian of religion
Academic work
Main interests Gnosticism, early Christianity

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

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Born in Rotterdam, he was the son of a blacksmith from Kinderdijk. He himself was not handy enough to become a blacksmith,[1] 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.[2] 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

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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.

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).

Commemorative books

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  1. ^ "Emeritus-hoogleraar Quispel overleden | DUB".
  2. ^ "Emeritus-hoogleraar Quispel overleden | DUB".