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 link.

Audio File of Lecture (19Mb)

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-time Baptist pastor. He taught New Testament on a free lance basis in several institutions including the Dutch Baptist Seminary, and he served the Baptist Union of the Netherlands as editor of the Baptist periodical (the equivalent of England's Baptist Times). 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) 355-361 and 'The Acts of John as a Gnostic text' in Evangel 20.1 (2002) 9-15.

 

 

 

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