Archtraitor

JUDAS--Eric Linklater--Farrar & Rinehart ($2).

Eric Linklater's novels range from the picaresque (Juan in America) to Aristophanes in modern dress (The Impregnable Women), from satire on English middle-class respectability (Ripeness Is All) to the saga of his Viking forbears (The Men of Ness). This week he adds to these a class-conscious study of history's archtraitor. Its thesis: Judas was a man of property attracted by Christ's teaching of peace and love, who finally betrayed his Master when he decided Christ was an anarchist whose success would mean the end of property rights.

The novel begins with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, ends the following Saturday when Judas has hanged himself after Christ's crucifixion. Like others who retell the Gospel narrative, Author Linklater is seldom as vivid as the original, is often unconvincing when he strays from it.

Judas wanted to see the Kingdom of Heaven achieved on earth. When he realized that the upsurge of Jewish nationalism inspired by Christ was likely instead to make the Romans sweep away the remnants of Jewish independence, he allowed the Sanhedrin to flatter him into thinking it was his glorious duty to stop the revolutionary movement. The payment of the 30 pieces of silver shocked him, showed him that he had been a common informer. "There was one refuge left."

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