Judah Ben-Hur

I'm over here, Fred.

Come here, will you? Ben Hur is back.

[laughs]

Very funny.

Okay.

Um, this is gonna go bigger than Ben-Hur in 2026 in the West.

Mm.

Texas, it's got-- They're making laws, everything now.

You can see that, for example, in the movie Ben-Hur.

At a certain point, Pontius Pilate offers Judah Ben-Hur, uh, tells him, "You've now been made a citizen of Rome." That's considered at that time being the, at the height as far as going from slave to citizen of Rome.

Uh, free persons enjoyed a lot of political and civil rights that the slaves didn't have.

To deny distinction be- between a slave and a free person, as Saint Paul does here, was just as subversive as denying the religious distinction between Jew and Gentile.

His novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, was published in 1880 after roughly seven years of research and writing.

It tells the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish prince in Roman occupied Judea, whose friendship with the Roman Messala turns into a bitter rivalry.

Judah is falsely condemned, survives slavery as a galley rower, returns to seek revenge, and ultimately encounters Jesus and the Christian message of forgiveness.

Jesus is important in the novel, but He is not really its central character.

In fact, Jesus only appears briefly.

Wallace instead tells the story through Judah Ben-Hur.

This allows him to combine religious fiction with an adventure story involving battles, romance, political intrigue, and most famously, a chariot race.

The combination of all these things was enormously successful.

There I waited until my favorite suspect left the hatchery and piled into another cab and off we went.

On a chase that would have made Ben Hur look like a plowing bee.

We skidded over to Lexington and headed uptown.

At 72nd, the cab turned right and pulled to a stop.

I got out of the club and into a taxi parked a half block down the street.

There, I waited until my favorite suspect left the hatchery and piled into another cab, and off we went on a chase that would've made Ben-Hur look like a plowing bee.

We skidded over to Lexington and headed uptown.

At 72nd, the cab turned right and pulled to a stop.