Lew Wallace

Called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century," Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ was a best-seller in the 1880s, eclipsing the sales of Uncle Tom's Cabin and, later, Gone With the Wind to become the best-selling American novel of all time. The story recounts the adventures of Judah Ben-Hur, a fictional Jewish prince from Jerusalem, who is enslaved by the Romans at the beginning of the 1st century and becomes a charioteer and a...

The epic story of Judah Ben-Hur, a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother, an officer in the Roman army. After years at sea, Judah returns to his homeland to seek revenge, but finds redemption.

"Judah Ben-Hur [is] a Jewish nobleman in Palestine whose heroic odyssey includes enslavement by the Romans, vengeance against his tormentors during a furious arena chariot race and fateful encounters with Jesus Christ"--Container.

Judah Ben-Hur is a young Jewish nobleman from a prominent who is reunited with his childhood friend Messala. Messala returns to Judea as a Roman tribune. There is a genuine friendship between the two men, yet the clash of their cultures drives a wedge between them. That wedge finally drives Messala to banish Judah to the slave galleys and sends his mother and his sister to prison. From that point forward, Judah's life becomes a quest: a quest to survive...

In this Biblical epic, Jewish nobleman Ben Hur (Heston) struggles against Roman tyranny in 1st century Palestine.