Lew Wallace
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
eBook
( Oct. 20, 2018)
A classic story of redemption and forgiveness, Ben-Hur (subtitled A Tale of the Christ) is one of the most influential Christian novels of the nineteenth century, as it tells the stories of so many peripheral Biblical figures in addition to that of Jesus himself. From Roman tax collectors and charioteers, to lepers, fishermen, Pharisees, shepherds, John the Baptist and Pontius Pilate, Ben-Hur offers a narrative arc of redemption through piety, a theme cherished by Wallace’s Gilded Age readers. The story traces the life of the fictional main character Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman from Jerusalem whose future is upended when he is falsely accused of attempting to assassinate a Roman governor. Sent to the galleys as punishment, his mother and sister are caught up in his fate, jailed, contract leprosy, and are stripped of their family’s wealth and possessions. As Ben-Hur’s life intersects with the Biblical Jesus’s, compassion overrides his thirst for revenge against the merciless Romans who left his life in ruins.
The narrative is divided into eight books, or parts, each with their own sub-chapters, and the unfolding of Ben-Hur’s story runs parallel to that of Jesus’s. The first book begins with the story of the birth of Jesus as outlined in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: Three Magi following a bright star come to Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph have stopped on their way to Bethlehem. In labor, and refused from an inn, they resort to a cave in a nearby hillside, surrounded by shepherds watching their flocks. There, Mary gives birth to the baby Jesus, whose arrival is heralded by angels and the visiting Magi from the East.
The narrative is divided into eight books, or parts, each with their own sub-chapters, and the unfolding of Ben-Hur’s story runs parallel to that of Jesus’s. The first book begins with the story of the birth of Jesus as outlined in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: Three Magi following a bright star come to Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph have stopped on their way to Bethlehem. In labor, and refused from an inn, they resort to a cave in a nearby hillside, surrounded by shepherds watching their flocks. There, Mary gives birth to the baby Jesus, whose arrival is heralded by angels and the visiting Magi from the East.
- Pages
- 622
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