Book review: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Ben-Hur the book is not dissimilar at least in outline plot to BH the movie, assuming the wiki plot is accurate; I don't think I've watched it. This rather surprises me; I'd expected the two to differ strongly. Lew Wallace turns out to have been a union general in the USAnian civil war.

I don't think I recommend reading it, other than for a sort of evocation of the kind of times where the gentleman of the frontispiece sits in his book-nook in front of a fire; notice the carefully drawn screen that shades his face, or rather would, if it were at the right height. The book is rather ponderous, the characters are impossibly noble and self-sacrificing.

BH, when travelling from Italy to Antioch on govt business as the vastly wealthy adopted son and heir of a vastly wealthy and important roman, travels alone: he has not even a single servant, no govt officials flock around him, he disembarks from his ship with no notice taken of him. This is all quite implausible. Later, a messenger turns up inviting him to meet someone at a palace; he goes alone without asking any identification from the messenger; ha ha, it is a trap, as any fule could have guessed; our hero is not a man cut out for any subtle work. Balthazar the Magus has a daughter, beautiful obvs, but as it turns out hard-hearted; her only function is to beguile BH, and then to end up raddled and old before her time as a terrible warning of the evils of dissipation at Rome. But she fits very awkwardly as a daughter of B, who is deeply noble and religious (as well as, as a king, weirdly not needed to govern his kingdom). She attends him, but they don't speak to each other. The disjunction grates more as the book proceeds.

The context is the-time-of-Jesus's-ministry: the Jews groan under the yoke of Rome, and long for a King of the Jews to lead a revolt; but of course Jesus isn't like that. BH though naturally somewhat disappointed realises this is all for the best and lavishes his vast fortune on the church. I rather wonder how much your everyday Jew was groaning under the yoke of aqueducts, sanitation, roads and peace and how much the upper stratum of Jewish society was groaning under the yoke of not getting to be in charge.