While spending years in chains, he vows that someday he will have his freedom, reunite with his beloved family, and wreak his vengeance upon Messala. Ben-Hur is condemned to be a galley slave for life, and his mother and sister are taken away, he knows not where. When the Roman governor of Jerusalem is injured in an accident, Messala deliberately accuses Ben-Hur of an assassination plot. A Roman boy named Messala is his closest childhood friend, but as the two reach manhood their differing races and faiths set them at odds with each other. Judah Ben-Hur is the son of a wealthy aristocratic Jewish family in Jerusalem, then part of the Roman Empire. This realism is negated, however, by Wallace’s decision to pepper the book with supernatural phenomena, from choirs of angels to the miraculous healing of the sick. All this ethnographic and archaeological detail adds to the authenticity of the story. Wallace loads his narrative with vivid descriptive details of the clothing, architecture, food, animals, and multicultural peoples of the Middle East.

The book opens with an extensive rehash of the story of Christ’s birth, from the meeting of the Magi through the Nativity. Those who think they are familiar with the story from seeing the award-winning film adaptation will be surprised at how much Wallace focuses on the latter subject matter at the expense of the former. The best-selling American novel of the 19th century, it combines a Count of Monte Cristo-esque revenge tale with a retelling of New Testament accounts of the life of Jesus Christ. Ben-Hur, a historical novel by former Civil War general Lew Wallace, was published in 1880.

1880 lew wallace novel