With the box-office release of The Da Vinci Code movie about one month away, even those in the academic field are getting excited.

Last night, before an audience of about 300 people at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, Peter Jones, co-author of the book Cracking the Da Vinci Code, gave his account of the religious undercurrents pulling at Dan Brown's best-selling novel, on which the movie is based.

"It's a spiritual book with some deeply spiritual messages," Jones said.

Jones dissected the religious aspects of the novel in two ways -- first by speaking about what he said were Brown's negative claims about the New Testament in the novel.

Jones said Brown made his claims in the novel based on gnostic texts that he called "radical New Testament scholarship."

Secondly, he explained the historical value of both the New Testament and the gnostic texts. "Which set of books do we believe?" he asked the audience.

In his speech, Jones also examined the "religious agenda" that he said carried the novel. "I believe that Dan Brown is on a religious quest -- that is a good thing," he said.

In a question-and-answer session following the speech, an audience member asked Jones if he liked the book, if he planned to see the movie and if he thought Tom Hanks was a good choice for the lead role. "Yes to all three," Jones responded. "But knowing Hollywood, it may just take the elements of adventure and do an Indiana Jones sort of thing, which would be a shame. The book is more ideologically interesting."

About one-third of the audience members raised their hands when Jones asked who had read the book.

"I thought it was really interesting, hearing it from his perspective," said Nathan Gray (freshman-visual arts). "It made me think about the issues in the book a lot more."

Johanna Schmidt (freshman-psychology) attended even though she had not yet read the novel. "I thought that he was well-versed," she said of Jones.