During these years, he won various prizes and scholarships and was taught by William Manson, John Baillie, Norman Porteus and A. M. Hunter.
He then completed a PhD on Gnosticism at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Wilfred L. Knox; the thesis was submitted in 1945.
He translated and edited the work of the German scholars Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher as an English-language anthology New Testament Apocrypha, which was published in 1963–64.
[3] He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1977; that year, he became editor of the journal New Testament Studies (serving until 1983).
[4] Retiring in 1983, Wilson was the dedicatee of a Festschrift: The New Testament and Gnosis, edited by Alastair Logan and A. J. M. Wedderburn (1983).