Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is a novel by Lew Wallace, published by Harper and Brothers on November 12, 1880, and considered "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century".

On the journey to the ship, he meets a young carpenter named Jesus, who offers him water, which deeply moves Judah and strengthens his resolve to survive.

Biblical references: Matthew 27:48–51, Mark 11:9–11, 14:51–52, Luke 23:26–46, John 12:12–18, 18:2–19:30 During the next three years, that man, Jesus, preaches his gospel around Galilee, and Ben-Hur becomes one of his followers.

In Ben-Hur, this is portrayed through Judah's rise from poverty to great wealth, the challenges he faces to his virtuous nature, and the rich rewards he receives, both materially and spiritually, for his efforts.

[6] Wallace's novel explains that the crowd "had not seen the cunning touch of the reins by which, turning a little to the left, he caught Messala's wheel with the iron-shod point of his axle, and crushed it".

[4][5] Wallace cited one inspiration for Ben-Hur, recounting his life-changing journey and talk with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a well-known agnostic and public speaker, whom he met on a train when the two were bound for Indianapolis on September 19, 1876.

[42] Wallace explained: "I was ashamed of myself, and make haste now to declare that the mortification of pride I then endured… ended in a resolution to study the whole matter, if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another.

"[1][43] When Wallace decided to write a novel based on the life of Christ is not known for certain, but he had already written the manuscript for a magazine serial about the three magi at least two years before his discussions with Ingersoll.

[46] Ben-Hur was also inspired in part by Wallace's love of romantic novels, including those written by Sir Walter Scott and Jane Porter,[6] and The Count of Monte Cristo (1846) by Alexandre Dumas, père.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson argues that the novel drew from Wallace's experiences as a division commander during the American Civil War under General Ulysses S. Grant.

Wallace made some controversial command decisions, and he delayed arriving on the battlefield during the first day of the battle of Shiloh, when Grant's Union army sustained heavy casualties.

[6][51] To establish an authentic background for his story, Wallace gathered references on Roman history, as well as the geography, culture, language, customs, architecture, and daily life in the ancient world from libraries across the United States.

[51] Wallace found that his estimations were accurate in the mid-1880s, during a visit to the Holy Land after Ben-Hur was published, and that he could "find no reason for making a single change in the text of the book.

[1][55] It is ironic that an acclaimed biblical novel,[56] one that would rival the Bible in popularity during the Gilded Age, was inspired by a discussion with a noted agnostic and written by an author who was never a member of any church.

Wallace claimed that when he began writing Ben-Hur, he was not "in the least influenced by religious sentiment" and "had no convictions about God or Christ",[41][56] but he was fascinated by the biblical story of the three magi's journey to find Jesus, king of the Jews.

Wallace's depiction of Christ could have been considered by some as blasphemy, but the quality of his manuscript and his assurances that he had not intended to offend Christians with his writing overcame the publisher's reservations.

She wrote to Harper on January 3, 1885, in answer to a question about the true first edition: "I incline to the belief that the volume seen was one of the first issue of Ben-Hur, which would explain the gay binding."

[67] By 1886, the book was earning Wallace about $11,000 in annual royalties, a substantial amount at the time, and began to sell, on average, an estimated 50,000 copies per year.

[77] Ben-Hur was popular in its own day despite slow initial sales and mixed reviews from contemporary literary critics, who "found its romanticism passé and its action pulpy".

[67] For its readers, however, the book "resonated with some of the most significant issues in late Victorian culture: gender and family; slavery and freedom; ethnicity and empire; and nationhood and citizenship".

[5] It has been suggested that the Southerners' positive reception of a book written by Wallace, a former Union general, was his message of compassion overcoming vengeance and his sympathetic description of slaveholders.

[6] Members of the clergy and others praised Wallace's detailed description of the Middle East during Jesus's lifetime and encouraged their congregations to read the book at home and during Sunday School.

"[6] Readers also credited Wallace's novel with making Jesus's story more believable by providing vivid descriptions of the Holy Land and inserting his own character of Judah into scenes from the gospels.

[72][83] From 1899 until its last performance in 1921, the show played in large venues in U.S. cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore, and traveled internationally to London and Sydney and Melbourne, Australia.

The production had imported 30 tons of stage equipment from the United States, employed a cast of more than 100, and featured sets with fountains, palm trees, and the sinking of a Roman galley.

The landmark case Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros.[90] went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911, and set a legal precedent for motion picture rights in adaptations of literary and theatrical works.

[87] A BBC Radio 4 dramatization of the book in four parts was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in March–April, 1995,[97] starring Jamie Glover as Ben-Hur, with a cast that included Samuel West and Michael Gambon.

[99] Ben-Hur's success encouraged the publication of other historical romance stories of the ancient world, including G. J. Whyte-Melville's The Gladiators: A Tale of Rome and Judea (1870), Marie Corelli's Barabbas (1901), and Florence Morse Kingsley's Titus, A Comrade of the Cross (1897).

[93] It was not the only novel to have related popular culture products, but Wallace and his publisher were the first to legally protect and successfully promote the use of their literary work for commercial purposes.

[107] In the decades following its publication, Ben-Hur and its famous chariot race became well-established in popular culture as a "respected, alluring, and memorable" brand name and a recognizable icon that had mass market appeal.