Ben Hur (novel)

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Book cover from 1880

Ben Hur (in the English original Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ ) is a novel published in 1880 by the American general and politician Lew Wallace .

action

The novel describes the life of the fictional Jewish prince Judah Ben Hur, who at the beginning of the 1st century AD was sentenced to galley punishment for an alleged assassination attempt on the Roman governor of Judea , but later returned to his homeland and started an uprising movement against the Romans plans. In a chariot race , he defeated his former friend and later adversary, the Roman Messala. Ben Hur breaks off his plans for revolt when he is convinced of the message of faith of the crucified Jesus .

Impact history

The novel was a great success, translated into many languages. It was the most printed book after the Bible in the 19th century . At the beginning of the 20th century it was made into a play.

In 1907 a fifteen-minute silent film was made , which became one of the first high-profile cases of copyright infringement (see Ben Hur (1907) ). In 1925, the material was filmed with Ramón Novarro in the title role (see Ben Hur (1925) ). The color sequences in two-color Technicolor , in which Ben Hur is celebrated as the most important racing driver in Rome, are remarkable . The 1959 film adaptation, which is considered a classic and epitome of the monumental film, became even better known (see Ben Hur (1959) ). It was the first film that worked intensively with blue screen technology .

In 2003 a version was produced as an animated film for US television; the main role was spoken by Charlton Heston , who played Ben Hur in the 1959 film adaptation. In 2010, a film adaptation for television was completed ( Ben Hur (2010) ) in which Joseph Morgan plays the role of Ben Hur. Another film adaptation followed in 2016 .

Historical inaccuracies

The galley punishment depicted in the novel and the film adaptations did not exist in antiquity. Roman warships were rowed by well trained and paid marines. Rowing a large galley smoothly takes a great deal of skill and training, and with the professionalism of the Roman army, nothing was left to chance. Inexperienced rowing crews made up of slaves, whose strength and stamina would have been limited by physical punishment and insufficient food, and who might have mutinied about the hopelessness of their situation , would not have made sense.

Another historical impossibility is the participation of two members of the Roman upper class in a public race. As a member of the Jewish-Hellenistic upper class, Ben Hur would have been able to race, but not as the adopted son of a Roman senator, especially since he had already driven in the Circus Maximus under his eyes.

expenditure

  • Ben Hur. A Tale of the Christ . Harper, New York 1880 (first edition).
  • Ben Hur: A story from the time of Christ . Original version. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2015, ISBN 3-738-63998-5 .
  • Ben Hur. A story from the time of Christ . Complete edition. Edited, with an afterword and comments by Günter Jürgensmeier, who also re-created the translation of this edition on the basis of several contemporary translations. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag (dtv), Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-20503-2 .
  • Original text of the novel (English)
  • German text in the Gutenberg-DE project, translated by Wilhelm Cremer, Verlag der Schiller-Buchhandlung, Berlin 1906.

Audio books

literature

  • Krešimir Matijević : Not just a chariot race! On the reception of Roman history in the "Ben-Hur" film adaptations and the novel by Lew Wallace. In: Rainer Wiegels (ed.): Winding paths. Modern ways to antiquity. Marie Leidorf, Rahden 2011, ISBN 978-3-89646-737-9 , pp. 217-238 ( Osnabrück research on antiquity and the reception of antiquity. Volume 16).