Books: 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...

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