Quispel, Thomas, Juliana, Westerdam - Coincidences and Synchronicity

Hmm... I received my papers the other day for Gary Renard's Cruise, themed after his new book, due this fall, Love Has Forgotten No One, and suddenly noticed the name of the ship, MS Westerdam. Then I started reading Daniel Schorr's memoirs, and in the second chapter "Going Dutch" he described arriving in the city I grew up in, Rotterdam in 1946 to work for a Dutch press agency, onboard the SS Westerdam, one of the old Holland-America Line steamers.

Meanwhile, I'm writing an article about the Dutch Queen Juliana, and about the palace crisis of 1956, concerning her involvement with the "faith healer" Ms. Greet Hofmans. I'm reading Schorr, as part of my research since he originally wrote on the situation as a reporter for Life, but withdrew the article at the urging of Dutch government figures, except that it was moot anyway, since Henry Luce had already let himself be convinced by route of the Dutch Ambassador (in Italy) not to break the story.

Now Daniel Schorr actually had worked in a press agency in Holland, so he was a natural for this story. However, there is also a connection between Queen Juliana and the Thomas Gospel. Now Gary in turn writes about the Thomas Gospel. And in my opinion at least, it is through his work that the actual meaning of the Thomas Gospel is starting to make some sense to me. Meanwhile it was Queen Juliana who helped Prof. Gilles Quispel in 1955 to gain access to the manuscripts of the Thomas Gospel from Egypt, with the help of the Dutch foreign ministry. Prof. Quispel remained convinced to the end of his days that if it weren't for his intervention, the whole manuscript might have turned to dust in the Coptic Museum in Egypt, in the same suitcase in which it was brought up from Nag Hammadi in 1946. Subsequently, Quispel in turn was a key player in the very first translations of the Thomas Gospel, one of which is still sitting on my bookshelf today.

Not only that, but Quispel knew both Ms. Hofmans, and the Queen quite well, and so they all lived through the 1956 palace crisis, on which Daniel Schorr reported, pursuant to which the Queen was forced to sever contact with Ms. Hofmans, but Quispel maintained the contact to the end of his days. So suddenly a lot of seeming loose ends connected, seemingly with me in the middle. There will be more to this story before this year is out.