THE PROPHET, by Sholem Asch (343 pp.; Putnam; $4) is the work of an expert at making a good thing out of the Good Book. As the high priest of the Neo-Apocrypha or Bible-improvement school of writing, Sholem Asch, 75, has racked up sales of more than 1,000,000 by gilding such subjects as the lives of Christ (The Nazarene), St. Paul (The Apostle), Mary and Moses. This time Asch has raided the Bible for the story of the second Isaiah, who roused the Jews out of their Babylonian captivity.* The book's religious message is swaddled in what Hollywood calls "production values,"...
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