This was one of the most popular books in America in the late 19th century. There are shades of The Count of Monte Cristo with a winged man seeking revenge, but it gets a little lost along the way. Some elements were fascinating, like the chariot race, while others, like an Egyptian love interest, dragged. I loved seeing the story of Christ from an outside POV and his mother & sister’s healing. I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t read again. ( )

Old version in English. Collectable

It is debatable whether he was worse at writing than running an army ( )

Don’t know what happened, don’t care what happened ( )

It's more fun to watch the chariot race in both 1925 and 1959 film adaptations than it is to read about in Wallace's original novel. The book also suffers for lack of a proper confrontation with Messala and has none of the iconic dialogue that makes the 1959 version sparkle. While very readable, what's here is indulgent and spends more time scene-setting than developing characters. I also find it strange why something so overtly religious and dependent on the miraculous would omit any mention of the resurrection. Overrated, in my opinion. The (mentioned) films commit their own sins but largely improve on the material. ( )

Falsamente acusado de intentar asesinar al gobernador romano, Judá Ben- Hur es traicionado por su amigo de la infancia Mesala y es sentenciado a las galeras como esclavo. Judá jura vengarse en contra de los romanos y su antiguo amigo, pero un fortuito encuentro con un carpintero de Nazaret lo hace emprender un camino diferente.

I donated the book to the Friends of the Library because I didn't care for the outdated art.

A classic narrative of revenge and redemption that still thrills the reader. While the classic movie is one of the great films of all time, this book is also a great read and like most books it is better than the film version. ( )

My copy of Ben-Hur is over 50 years old – broken spine; brown, brittle pages; looks like it was written on a type-writer. It belonged to my father, who had an entire collection of books from the same publisher – Bancroft Classic. I’ve inherited this one, as well as Robinson Crusoe and A Tale of Two Cities. This one, I’ve been meaning to read the longest.

Ben-Hur follows the story of Judah, Prince of Jerusalem of the house of Hur, a young Jewish man who is wrongly accused of the attempted murder of a Roman General by a man he thought was his friend. After spending years as a galley slave, rowing the boat of another Roman General, Judas is set free and adopted by a Roman whom he saves from drowning. The rest…well, the rest is spoilers.

The novel ties in historical happenings around the time of Roman-Judea to the life of the infamous Jesus Christ. In fact, the whole novel is framed by his life and death. Judas, a faithful Jew, encounters Jesus Christ (and those affected by him) multiple times throughout the story, and it becomes most prominent at the very end.

The whole novel is, therefore, a very Christian tale. You can tell it is by the way Wallace wrote about people’s interactions with Jesus, and the way the miracles are portrayed. Rather than being a purely historical tale, the whole thing stinks of Christian propaganda and the teachings the religion brings.

Now, I’m not the most religious person in the world, but I did enjoy reading this. While the whole thing felt a bit like a morality tale at parts, and the glorification of the Christ figure is a bit too much for my taste, it’s still a classic that deserves to be read.

So, I did just that.

Final Rating: 3/5 – Not a waste of time to read, but I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. ( )

54979

Pretty good, if somewhat old-fashioned epic, during time of Christ. The Heston film led me to read this. I loved that the white horses had star names. ( )

Definitely an excellent example of 19th Century writing style. It's difficult to read with Charleston Heston constantly appearing in your mind. ( )

I remember loving this as a teenager in the 1970s. I wonder how well it would hold up for me today. Still remember the scene where he is a slave rowing a war galley. ( )

Just wow. Takes a bit to get into but a very compelling story. ( )

Yes it does involve the Christ but I don't recall it ever outlining His mission here on this earth. as far as relevancy to the story, He is only a man who can heal leprosy. The main character has a couple redeeming qualities (Devotion to family, despises fame and fortune) but essentially this is a story of revenge, not forgiveness loving your enemies. This ensures that the reader completely misses Jesus message. How sad, because the author does have some skill. ( )

It is an engaging and interesting book. Explores the life of Ben Hur and how life was for someone around during Jesus's life. ( )

Interesting. But the pace has an ebb and flow to it that threw me off. I did enjoy the chariot race though. Thank you, LM Montgomery for recommending this book. :) ( )

read half the book, and still wasn't into it. gave away.

I rate the writing as 4 stars but the narrator as only 2 stars. The narrator seems to have gone to the William Shatner school of speech. He can't go for more than three to five words without a pause. It became distracting in what is really a very excellent book. If you want to listen to this book, choose a version nor narrated by Lloyd Jones. There are several other versions available. As to the story: it starts slow, but is well written and interesting. It has soooooooo much more in it than what ends up in the movie. It's an involved story with some really nice events showing the path that Judah Ben-Hur takes from childhood until - well, i'm not going to give that away. The book has stood the test of time and there's a reason it's been made into a movie at least 3 times. It tells a great and uplifting story. ( )

This is the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a nobly born Jewish boy with aspirations of becoming a soldier and fighting against the Roman Empire. As a youth he is falsely accused of an assassination attempt by his boyhood rival. He is sentenced to be a galley slave and his mother and sister are taken away by the soldiers. He is fortuitously saved from slavery by a Roman who promptly dies, leaving Ben-Hur his estate.

Ben-Hur immediately goes in search of his family and believing them lost, he sets his sights on revenge. Ultimately, he decides to defeat his boyhood rival in a chariot race and bankrupt him. He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams as his rival is also permanently crippled by the fall he takes in the race.

Running parallel to this story is the Biblical narrative of the birth and ministry of Christ. Judah is aware of the rumors surrounding a mysterious star and the promise of the messiah that is heralds. He decides to devote his money and life to growing an army that will serve the prophesied king of the Jews and aid him in overthrowing the Roman empire.

Meanwhile, Judah's mother and sister have developed leprosy in their captivity. They are eventually freed from jail but do not seek out Ben-Hur because they are too ashamed to be seen in their affliction. Eventually, Jesus heals them and they are reunited with Ben-Hur. The end of the book is essentially just the Passion with Ben-Hur and his friends standing around watching and reacting. Afterwards, Ben-Hur settles down with a sweet Jewish girl and becomes a Christ follower, having realized that the coming king would not reign on earth but in the next life.

I thought this book was a bit strange. The characters were not deeply developed and were just playing out their little drama more to set the stage than for their own sake. There wasn't much tension and the stakes were very low. What this book is actually good for is a rich sense of the place and time in history. The historical backdrop was interesting, not the characters.

I guess I'm not sure why this was a book about Jesus? The Biblical story runs throughout the novel, but mostly in the background. It wasn't really clear what point or purpose it served. The author doesn't expound upon the story and most of the Biblical scenes are quoted practically verbatim from the gospels. Just weird. I didn't get the point of Ben-Hur's story and I didn't get the point of the rehash of the gospel story either. Other than to tell an "epic" tale, it didn't accomplish much. ( )

Ben-Hur is a prince of Judah in the days of ancient Rome, specifically around the same time that Jesus Christ is born. A terrible mistakes strips everything of value from Ben Hur -- including his family, his home, his wealth, and his freedom -- and he vows vengeance on those who took it all from him.

From the outset, I am going to note that I read this book solely because it is on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list and its accompanying movie is on AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time list. I did not really have that much interest in the subject matter, but I hoped for the best.

My first observation of this book is that it is looooong. The audiobook I listened to was 24 hours in length. It took 3 hours before the character of Ben-Hur was even introduced. Most of the beginning part was Wallace's version of the nativity story, which is told in the Bible with just a few paragraphs. If he wanted to do an expanded look at that story, that's fine. It just didn't need to be in a book that already had 21 more hours of content. That's just my opinion.

In fact, this book seems to be more about its subtitle "A Tale of the Christ" than it is about its title "Ben-Hur." Ben-Hur's story is essentially pretty short when it comes down to it, while Wallace fills out the pages by describing all the physical scenes in minutiae, as if the reader really needs to know about the color of the curtains are in every room Ben-Hur ever steps foot in throughout his life. In terms of characterization, there is really no one here who is well-rounded or grows in any way. Everyone is exactly what you predict they will be from the first moment they are introduced.

There were times here and there where the plot could be interesting or where Wallace showed some fine writing skills. But there was also just so much that seemed extraneous. If you really enjoy historical fiction and/or religious fiction (specifically Christian fiction), then you might enjoy this book more than I did. ( )

Yes, I know, it's one of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. And yes, it's all about revenge and redemption. But oh my goodness how tedious is this? Dull, overly verbose, what good story there may be lost in unnecessary words. I have no idea how much time I invested in reading this book. However much it was, it was about 75% too much! ( )

Ben-Hur is one of the best selling books of all times. This poignant novel intertwines the life stories of a Jewish charioteer named Judah Ben-Hur and Jesus Christ. It explores the themes of betrayal and redemption. Ben-Hur's family is wrongly accused and convicted of treason during the time of Christ. Ben-Hur fights to clear his family's name and is ultimately inspired by the rise of Jesus Christ and his message. A powerful, compelling novel. ( )

While the story itself is interesting, the writing felt a little forced and stilted. The style was simply not there and the writing felt a little archaic due to this. I felt a little cheated out of my expectations for this one and I would suggest that those interested in the tale might read a modern, or different, version of this story rather than resorting to this particular novel. Overall, a disappointing experience.

2 stars. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3240503.html

The film improved massively on the book, which is rare but not unique. My biggest regret about the adaptation is that the most interesting character, Balthasar's daughter Iras, who is Ben-Hur's alternate love interest (the Naughty Girl to Esther's Good Girl), is dropped from the film (as she is apparently from all the screen adaptations). But apart from that, the book is much more of a Shaggy God story, with Jesus healing Miriam and Tirzah (after a dramatic rescue from prison) much earlier, and Ben-Hur and Balthasar becoming active disciples of Christ in the years before the crucifixion (and it is Ben-Hur who gives the dying Christ his last drink via a sponge). The chariot race and downfall of Messala are also also much earlier in the book, and even if you haven't seen the film you get a sense that it's running out of steam in the last third or so, where Ben-Hur recruits an army of rebels who we don't hear any more of after he throws in his lot with Jesus, and then the biblical stuff is reiterated in some detail. Gone With The Wind would have been a much better film if it had been as ruthless with its source material.

It's interesting to note that Lew Wallace had not himself been to Palestine at that point in his life (he did go later, when he was American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire), so the very convincing descriptions of Palestinian landscapes and peoples are a combination of wide reading in the Library of Congress and observing the horse-crazy ethnically mixed environment of Santa Fe and New Mexico generally, where he was Governor while finishing the book. Indeed, I wonder if the relatively sympathetic treatment of Pilate comes directly of empathy from one colonial governor to another. New Mexico had been under US rule only a little longer in 1880 than Judæa had been under Roman rule at the time of Pilate.

Incidentally, Mary is explicitly fifteen years old at the time of the birth of Jesus in Wallace’s novel.

It's not a bad book, it just takes itself a bit too seriously and goes on a bit too long. ( )