THE JUDAS GOSPEL by PETER VAN GREENAWAY 240 pages. Atheneum. $6.95.
Lost gospels are in literary fashion.
This spring Irving Wallace parlayed the Gospel according to St. James into a ponderous bestseller. Now comes a man called Peter Van Greenaway with The Judas Gospel. Agnostic Wallace wears a cloying, counterfeit faith on his sleeve in The Word's mawkish denouement, but Van Greenaway has the courage and the talent to spill his venom straight. The result is a brisk, tough and intellectually provocative novel.
Judas Iscariot is its hero. Glimpsed in old age, he has...