Dutch theologian and philologist, professor of early Christian history at Utrecht University, Harvard and Leuven. He is most noted for the bringing to light of the Gospel of Thomas and other gnostic writings .
Gilles Quispel was the fifth and last child of the Protestant blacksmith Bartholomeus Quispel (13 Augustus 1873, Rotterdam – 8 February 1952, Alblasserdam) and Anthonia Maria Wagenaar (11 October 1879, Utrecht – 2 June 1945, Alblasserdam), who married 30 May 1901 in Rotterdam. His two brothers and sisters were born resp. in 1902, 1904, 1906 and 1908.
At early age he moved to famous mill village Kinderdijk. As he was rather clumsy, he was sent by his parents to the Municipal Gymnasium in the Calvinistic bastion Dordrecht, to do instead something with his head. Here he met the broad thinking Ph.D. classicist P.J.G.A. Hendrix (25 January 1896, Halsteren – 18 March 1979, Dordrecht), who had promoted on the teachings of the early Gnostic religious teacher Basilides and interested him in the Greek mysteries and Russian Orthodoxy.
Quispel studied classical languages and philology in Leiden. Later he also studied theology in Leiden , Groningen and Utrecht. He promoted cum laude in 12 April 1943 under Prof. H. Wagenvoort with a dissertation on the sources of Tertullian’s work Adversus Marcionem.
During the second world war, he worked as a teacher of Greek and Latin at Gymnasia in Enschede (1941-1945). During this time his near the German border city Enschede was bombarded several time by the Allies. He lost several pupils and it changed his view on life: “Er loopt een barst door het heelal. En toen heb in mijzelf gevoeld, aangeboord, een bron die eeuwig leven geeft” (There is a burst in the Cosmos. And then I felt myself, found the source, a cosmic well that yields eternity). He even more eagerly started to study the historical origins of early Christianity.
At the end of his search he would recognise himself in the lost and hidden words of the Gospel of Thomas: Saying 2 (pOxy. 654.5-9): [Jesus said,] “Let the one seek[ing] not stop [seeking until] he finds. And when he find[s he will marvel, and mar]veling he will reign, an[d reigning] he will [rest.]” Coptic version: Jesus said, “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All.”
After the war, he erected with Christine Mohrmann (1903-1988) and others the scientific Quarterly “Vigiliae Christianae” (1947), that studies “early Christian life and language” including the forgotten by history Gnostic and similar currents. In the first number Quispel published his essay “The original doctrine of Valentine”. He contributed forty original articles to “Vigiliae Christianae” and edited many other articles. His students like Johannes van Oort still contribute to it.
From 1948 till 1949 Quispel was awarded a Bollingen Fellowship to study in Rome. In Rome he met the German theologian and archaeologist Erik Peterson Grandjean (1880-1960), who would become his most inspiring teacher, along with the Church historian Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950), the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and the Jewish scholar Gershom Scholem. Both Quispel and Peterson stressed the Jewish origins of Gnosticism and also considered the 2nd century Encratism of major influence. In his interpretation of the Gospel of Thomas, Quispel noted duplicate versions of the Jesus sayings that had Jewish and Encratic origins.
With regard to religious experience and the decryption of the Gnostic and early Christian myths, Quispel learned a lot from Carl Gustav Jung. His later as a “youthful lapse” seen not that scientific book “Gnosis als Weltreligion” (1951) was the result of a series of lectures at the Jung Institute in Zurich he held to interest the Jungians in the December 1945 findings of Nag Hammadi, Egypt. He succeeded in his goal. On 10 May 1952 Quispel could act as an official representative of the Jung Institute to buy the ?rst codex of the Nag Hammadi collection to be presented to the world of science. The Egyptians were not willing to sell the works to the French colonialists, as they saw the French archaeologists, Jean Doresse who noticed Quispel on the existence if the books, and Henri Charles Puech, who firsts described the Nag Hammadi findings in 1950.
On 18 November 1951, Quispel he was elected as a professor of History of the Early Church at Utrecht University. His first oration was held 24 March 1952: Het getuigenis der ziel bij Tertullianus (The witness of the soul of Tertullian).
Quispel was also invited to the spiritual group around the mystic Greet Hofmans, which came together at the residence of the Dutch Queen Juliana “Het Loo” (lauhaz, from lówkos, clearing) at Apeldoorn. The group was dismantled August 1956, as the CIA and the Dutch government distrusted the influence of the pacifistic Hofmans on the Queen during the war. Quispel remembered to have heard on 29 May 1954 a speech of the foreign quest and Battle of Britain hero Lord Dowding, who proclaimed that aliens had landed on the earth. Lord Dowding could not explain to the other quests why the Aliens spoke English, Quispel said in Bres. Quispel also noted that the spiritual group attracted many spies, from both side’s during the cold war.
But thanks to his good relation with the Dutch Queen Juliana, Quispel was able to publish the Coptic Gospel according to Thomas, that could have otherwise been rotten away in the Coptic Museum of Cairo, as few persons realised the importance of it. Quispel recognised the in Nag Hammadi found Coptic papyrus writings as gnostic “Christ in you” Jesus words. Quispel saw Jesus as “an enlightened enlightener, an illuminator”.
His student Elaine Pagels would write the book “The Gnostic Paul” about the first reborn Christian and Jew, who is considered by most historians as the founder of Christianity. But in the evolution of the state church “Catholicism”, a precess that was initiated by the Roman Emperor Constantine and his wife, the bulldozer was used to wipe out the origins of Christianity according to Quispel and many other scholars on the origins of Christian religion.
From 1964 till 1965, Quispel was a visiting professor at Harvard University, and from 1969 until 1974 he was professor in the Hellenistic background of the New Testament at the Catholic University of Leuven. He retired 1 August 1984 as a professor in Utrecht, but he kept on teaching his rediscovered ancient wisdom.
He died 2 March 2006 in El Gouna, Egypt. He had just visited his beloved Coptic Museum in Cairo to see the Nag Hammadi codices. On 11 March 2006 his funeral took place in Bilthoven.
Personal
He was since 1944 happily married to Lien de Lange (1924, Surabaya- 18 Augustus 2010). She supported him a lot, and he needed this, as most Christians were opposed to his views. They got children.
His wholly words on the historical Jesus in his last Dutch television interview with Annemiek Schijver were taken from Thomas Logos 65: (65) “He said: A good man had a vineyard; he leased it to tenants, that they might work in it (and) he receive the fruits from them. He sent his servant, that the tenants might give him the fruits of the vineyard. They seized his servant, beat him, (and) all but killed him. The servant went away (and) told his master. His master said: Perhaps did not know . He sent another servant; the tenants beat the other also. Then the master sent his son. He said: Perhaps they will have respect for my son. Those tenants, since they knew that he was the heir of the vineyard, they seized him and killed him. He who has ears, let him hear.”

Link to Wikipedia biography