The Book of Irving

By Brad Darrach

by IRVING WALLACE 576 pages. Simon & Schuster. $7.95.

Christ did not die on the Cross. He survived Golgotha and the centurion's wound and lived on for 19 years of clandestine ministry. His death and Resurrection occurred in Rome in A.D. 49.

These statements and many other things, among them new and remarkable sayings from the lips of Jesus, appear in an ancient papyrus lately unearthed in the ruins of a Roman villa at Ostia Antica. The papyrus is a copy of the legendary "Q Document," the source book for the four Gospels, as well as a new account of Jesus' life written by his brother James. Its existence is known only to the small group of scholars who have prepared the translation and to a few wealthy men who are financing publication of a Bible containing the new revelations.

Even in this limited circle, the effect of the document is awesome. Everyone who reads it is filled with in explicable joy. Miracles begin to happen. While reading the text a lame girl loses her affliction, and a deaf man looks up from the pages amazed -- suddenly he can hear again. Even the project's public relations man, a worldly type who thinks of God as "some big bag of ooze in the sky," is seized with faith.

Now comes the twist: The p.r. man stumbles on evidence that the Gospel according to James may be a monstrous forgery. Deviled by doubt, haunted by hope, he enters an investigation that un foldsas an absorbing theological thriller. So absorbing in fact that readers may wonder if there isn't a misprint on the title page. There isn't. This entertaining puzzler was actually produced by Irving Wallace.

In the first 282 pages, Wallace writes down to his usual awful standard.

His villain has "beady, ferret eyes." His heroine wears "two wisps of bra which did little to contain the overflow of her provocative breasts." Scenes of perfervid theological discussion alternate plonkingly with episodes like one in which the p.r. man performs some ungodly acts with an ex-nun. Then Wallace stops pandering and starts attending to the plot. From there on the book takes off.

O ye of little faith who cannot believe that Irving Wallace could tell a lively tale in reasonably readable prose, who can blame you? But that's how the papyrus crumbles.

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