Gilles Quispel

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.