Selsdon Baptist Church
A church at the heart of the community
Selsdon Baptist Church is a Registered Charity No. 1126971 Copyright Selsdon Baptist Church 2009
For text based navigation please use the sitemap
Faith Background
Resolving the Da Vinci Code
Resolving the Da Vinci Code
The book and film "the Da Vinci Code" whilst officially a work of fiction, starts by claiming that it all contains facts. It then goes on to allege that Jesus Christ was actually married to Mary Magdalene, had children, and that his descendants are still alive today. It then goes on to allege that the Roman Catholic Church has been involved in a conspiracy over the last 2000 years to suppress this information and eliminate the descendants.
On 18th June we were delighted to welcome Rev Dr Pieter Lalleman of Spurgeon's College, to give us a learned response to the book and film "the Da Vinci Code". He emphasised for us that the books of the bible are the most reliable and oldest texts of the church, and thus closest to the 'real' Jesus. He highlighted some of the many errors in the book, for instance that the 'Gospel of Phillip', which Dan Brown quotes, was written in Coptic, not Aramaic, and that the emperor Constantine did not select the books of the Bible as alleged by Dan Brown. In order to help you understand how you can rely on the traditional view of Jesus as both human and divine, you can hear Pieter's whole lecture by clicking the icon below.
Biographical Details - Pieter J. Lalleman BA BD MA PhD
Pieter Lalleman came from the Netherlands, with his wife Hetty, in 2000 to be tutor of New Testament at Spurgeons College. In 2002 he was also appointed Academic Dean of the College.
Pieter [pronounce Peter] is a graduate of Utrecht University and the Dutch Baptist
Seminary. Having taught Religious Education and PSHE in two schools, he became a
research assistant at Groningen University which resulted in a PhD thesis on the
Apocryphal Acts of John. In the same period he was a part-
Pieter's areas of interest for research include the reception and canonisation of the books of the New Testament, the genre and historical value of the Book of Acts, and biblical archaeology.
He contributed to a commentary on Revelation and wrote one on the Johannine Epistles
on his own, both of which are in Dutch. In addition he turns out popular essays on
archaeology and book reviews in Dutch as well as English. More scholarly essays in
English are 'Healing by a mere touch as a Christian concept' in Tyndale Bulletin
48.2 (1997) 355-
