Bron: Waar haalden de gnostici hun wijsheid vandaan? door A.P. Bos
At the time, Queen Juliana played an essential mediating role in the availability of Gnostic writings from the Nag Hammadi library found in Egypt in 1945. This is explained in detail in the text below.
In 1952, Professor Gilles Quispel (1916-2006), professor of church history at Utrecht University, gave a series of lectures to “soul doctors” about gnosis. a certain Philip Metman tells him there that he will soon receive an invitation to a meeting at Het Loo near Apeldoorn. According to Quispel, this Philip Metman was a spy. He does indeed receive an invitation and presumably gives a lecture on 29 May 1954 for Queen Juliana and the circle present at Het Loo:
‘We found a lot of people there: the banker Pierson with his lovely wife, a decent insurance company with his wife, a doctor Fenter van Vlissingen, baron Van Heeckeren van Molecate and his wife, as well as his mother who referred to the lackeys as’ those guys’. spoke. Furthermore, Mr. Kaiser, former secretary of the board of the Maatschappij Nederland, was an excited position with a beautiful woman, Queen Juliana and Miss Hofmans, who said nothing. Foreign speakers included Air Marshal Lord Dowding, leader of the Battle of Britain. Dowding gave a speech about the alien landing on Earth, in which he firmly believed, although he could not explain why those creatures spoke English. “
After Quispel’s participation in this meeting, an argument arises with Marianne Tellegen, the director of the Queen’s Cabinet, a resistance heroine and curator at Utrecht University. It’s about money. What is striking in this connection is what Quispel writes to Meier about a later visit to Juliana:
“Sie war vielleicht and weep entäuscht, dass wir keine finanzielle Hilfe brauchen.”
In addition to the meeting at Het Loo, Quispel goes to meetings at Soestdijk Palace. One of these visits took place on June 14, 1954. These meetings had a different character.
“There came the great connoisseur of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem to talk about the roles of the Dead Sea and how he got goosebumps from the murderous” Battle of the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness “, one of those roles. And when the gnosis connoisseur Henri Charles Puech received an honorary doctorate in Utrecht in 1956, he had to come and tell his wife about Nag Hammadi at the palace. I noticed that the queen spoke bad French. And that Greet Hofmans, as always, said nothing. “
According to NRC Handelsblad, Quispel organized two meetings and invited Gershom Scholem. Many wealthy people from Baarn were present, often members of the Vrijzinnige Faith community there. Politics, according to Quispel, was not discussed.
During the presentation of his new commentary, on Saturday October 2, 2004, Quispel spoke about the role of Queen Juliana. Especially the headline in De Telegraaf is significant: “Gnostic texts appear to be thanks to Juliana”. Trouw speaks about the “crucial role” of Queen Juliana: “Without her mediation (the Thomas Gospel) would still be in a suitcase in Cairo. The Hague Courant is more specific: “Queen Juliana (committed) to promote publication of the Codex Jung”. The Jung Codex was bought from Albert Eid and could be published by Peuch and Quispel. However, 40 pages of that codex were missing. Quispel hoped that these pages were in the suitcase in the Coptic museum. The Gospel of Thomas was not part of the Jung Codex. The reports in De Telegraaf and Trouw give the impression that Juliana has committed herself to the publication of the entire Nag Hammadi find, the Haagse Courant, that she only helped in the publication of the Jung Codex.
In the NCRV program Schepper & Co of February 7, 2005, Quispel also emphasizes this relationship between Juliana and the Gospel of Thomas. However, the headline of the Telegraaf does not bring any news, in the 1981 NCRV series De Losiezers a voice-over explains the relationship between Juliana and Thomas’s Gospel:
“By means of (then) Queen Juliana and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Quispel manages to get a photocopy of that Gospel.”
From 2003, this fact is discussed in more detail in Quispel publications. In the afterword of Quispel’s Valentinus the Gnosticus and his Gospel of truth it says:
“To cut a long story short: on May 10, 1952, bought the codex in Brussels. In 1955 I went to Cairo with the help of Queen Juliana … “
This is much clearer than the 1991 wording:
“Higher intervention allowed me to travel to Egypt in 1955.”
The influence of Juliana has not been written for a long time, but since 2003 Quispel has been speaking openly about this. In Trouw, in an interview with Cokky van Limpt on July 26, he says about this:
“Queen Juliana once visited her foreign minister Beyen in 1955, and she spent hours on the discovery of Nog Hammadi, which the good man knew nothing about. She ordered him to gain access to the manuscripts for me from the Egyptian authorities. I was later able to view correspondence about Nog Hammadi at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In a letter that Beyen sent at the time to our ambassador in Cairo, Cnoop Koopmans, it says: “This case interests Her Majesty very much and so do I”.
Juliana was one of me, you know, she is a witty and deeply pious woman. And she has meant a lot to science, that may also be said. I can assure you that if Juliana had not been there, the Nag Hammadi codices, including the Gospel of Thomas, would still be in that trunk in the Coptic Museum, at least what would be left. “
The same story about Juliana ‘s role in the publication of the Dag Hammadi codices appears in the August / September 2003 magazine Prana. It also discusses what happened before Minister Beyen came to visit. :
“At some point, people thought of doing something to promote that the Gnostic codices found at Nog Hammadi in 1945 and still in a suitcase in the Coptic Museum in Cairo would finally be published . The Queen insisted that the constitutional path should be followed. Some members of the Royal Academy turned to her to ask if she could do something about it. Then she discussed the case with her foreign minister Beyer. he gave instructions to his ambassador in Cairo, who in turn approached the Egyptian authorities. They gave permission. In this way the writings eventually became available to science. That is no small merit of Her Majesty and her circle of Het Oude Loo. “
The new information here is that the idea originally came from the group that held meetings at the Oude Loo. This is no longer about access to the manuscripts, but about the publication of the Tano collection. In addition, there is now talk of walking the constitutional path and a plan is being set up that some members of the Royal Academy write a letter to Juliana.
At the same time as these two sources of court events, a similar story appears in Bres magazine. Virtually the same report appears in an edition of 26 copies as a booklet with memories of Quispel about his life. This contains a number of striking data.
“Then the circle thought that they had to do something to get those manuscripts from Nag Hammadi, which were found in 1945, which once remained in the Coptic museum in Cairo. Greet Hofmans came to my house once before, why I don’t remember. And Juliana came up with a list of war. Wim van Unnik, professor in Utrecht and member of the Royal Academy, chartered a number of scholars such as H. Wagenvoort and A.W. Also to petition Her Majesty asking if she could do anything about the publication of Nog Hammadi’s papyrus books. When the then foreign minister H.C. Beyen came to her audience, she talked to him about those finds for hours. He knew nothing about it, but passed the request on to the ambassador in Cairo, Cnoop Koopmans. In the margin of his letter, this white and white wrote: “This case interests H.M. and me too.” And so I was able to go to Cairo in 1955 with the proposal that the Jung Codex be released. That happened. And so the Queen of the Netherlands, inspired by her friends, has done science a great service. “