Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

The concept of vengeance motivates most of the plot that is not directly concerned with the story of Christ. Messala’s desire to hurt Ben-Hur because his friendship has been rejected and Gratus’s vengeance for Ben-Hur’s perceived assassination attempt directly lead to the downfall of the Hur family and Ben-Hur’s enslavement on a galley.

Ben-Hur’s own desire for vengeance after his mistreatment drives the next decade or so of his life. Once he has been redeemed from slavery and is living in Rome, he dedicates himself to learning military skills. He does this not to serve faithfully in the Roman army, but to learn the techniques of his enemy and further his secret goal of retribution. In the course of his quest, several of Ben-Hur’s allies—such as Simonides and Ilderim—are also motivated by a hatred of Rome. Ben-Hur’s most questionable act, sabotaging Messala’s chariot on the final turn, is in direct service of vengeance.

In “Book Eighth,” however, the theme of mercy competes with vengeance as the Christian nature of the novel comes to the fore. Ben-Hur’s unwillingness to forgive Messala’s debt before the Crucifixion (405) contrasts with Esther’s treatment of Iras years later in Misenum once Esther and Ben-Hur are Christians (434). Ben-Hur’s willingness to bear the disappointment of being wrong about the Messiah’s mission and to still love Jesus contrasts sharply with the reaction of his Galilean warriors to Christ’s pacifism. Instead of placing their faith in the Messiah whom they have witnessed perform great miracles, the soldiers are angry at Jesus for disappointing them and endorse his execution (421).

English translations of Arabic and Sanskrit literature were widely circulated in the 1800s. Ben-Hur was published in 1880, a time in which interest in the Middle East and India was increasing in the United States. A new trend among more religious members of the middle and upper classes was to travel to the “Holy Land”; Wallace’s descriptions of Judea’s bazaars, palaces, and people are clearly oriented toward this market.

In part, this interest and understanding was hampered by the limited translated texts, meaning American and European audiences overemphasized the importance and purpose of these texts within their own cultures. Melchior, the wise man from India, references a variety of important Hindu religious texts, such as the Vedas, Puranas, and others, but Wallace then has Melchior describe his religion as monotheistic, a clear indication of Wallace’s misunderstandings of Indian religion (10-12).

The misconception that Hinduism is monotheistic can probably be attributed to the outsized importance that Western readers placed on the Baghavad Gita. The Gita was one of the first Indian religious texts translated into English, by Charles Wilkins in 1785, and can be misunderstood as averring monotheism due to its discussion of a universal soul. While many Americans and Europeans interpreted the Gita in that manner, it is generally not how the text was understood within Hinduism, in which it represented just one of many perspectives on the nature of the Universe.

Besides the vagaries of textual transmission, Western misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Middle Eastern and Indian cultural and social norms also lead to misconceptions during this period. The ultimate effect of this mix of intense interest and cultural illiteracy was an abstraction termed “The East”—a place defined by supposed sensual decadence, ancient and rich cities, a large capacity for both pleasure and cruelty, and deep superstition. This way of viewing and interacting with Middle Eastern, Indian, and other civilizations in Southwest and Southeast Asia was coined “Orientalism” by Edward Said in his 1978 book of the same name, which deconstructed Orientalist conventions.

In the novel, Orientalism pervades in the lavish descriptions of people, locations, clothing, and food sprinkled throughout the narrative, but the concept is directly personified by the characters of Messala and Iras. Although Messala is a Roman by blood, he was raised in the so-called “East” and thinks of himself in that way, extolling the ways of the “East” as his own (189). Iras goes so far as to order Ben-Hur to call her “Egypt” rather than her name and dresses in a Western-defined stereotypical “Eastern” manner, with expensive fabric cut in a revealing fashion and copious jewelry and makeup.