Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Because the novel is primarily didactic, intending to teach the story of Christ and highlight its theological elements, the role of Christ’s life and death in Christianity is a recurring concept in the novel.

Of particular importance is the spiritual nature of Christ’s mission. As Jews, Ben-Hur and Simonides anticipate that Christ, as the Messiah, will conform to their expectation that the Messiah’s mission will necessarily be political. They base their understanding in the prophecies contained in Jewish scriptures (256-57) and believe that the Messiah will overthrow Roman rule in Judea and perhaps even install Jerusalem as the new Rome ruling over the other nations of the world.

As an Egyptian man, however, Balthasar has no preconceived notions of the Messiah and has intuited the nature of God purely through his own piety. Because he lacks the preconceptions of Judaism and because his own salvation would otherwise be impossible, Balthasar understands that the Messiah’s mission must be on behalf of all mankind, not merely the Jews, and cannot be political in nature (211-13). As Ben-Hur gets to know Jesus, Balthasar’s argument begins to convince Ben-Hur, but neither he nor Simonides truly accept it until they witness the Crucifixion.