Judging the Classics
I'm not always sure of the criteria.
I missed my shot at doing a Christmas video for the channel because life just got busy in the week leading up to The Most Wonderful Time of The Year. I’d rather have a real Christmas with the family than look like it on YouTube, so there’s that.
Still, I read my share of Christmas books, the most substantial by far being BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST by Lew Wallace. Historically speaking it was a highly significant piece of literature in the late 1800s, on par with UNCLE TOM’S CABIN which apparently got people’s emotions flowing just in time for the Civil War. Lew Wallace was an officer in that war, earning medals and winning battles for the Union, and 15 years after it wrapped he decided to really do something with his life, so he wrote a novel.
That novel is a massive beast of a book, set in Judea two thousand years ago, with notes of The Count of Monte Cristo all throughout. Here’s the rundown:
BEN-HUR is the name of the main character, a Roman Jew named Judah of the House of Hur (or Ben-Hur). His father’s dead, he lives with his mother and sister, and he’s born in the year zero according to the only calendar that matters.
He’s got a childhood best friend who’s Roman, and in his teens he goes away to Roman Imperialism and Colonization Of Inferior Ethnic Minorities Academy, returning five years later to point at Judah and say “Ha! Silly Jew, be Roman or else.” Judah doesn’t worship Jove or forsake his ancestors, so his childhood friend is like “Aiight I’mma end this man’s whole career.”
When a Roman parade passes through Judea carrying a local governor, a tile dislodges from Ben-Hur’s roof and hits the governor in the head. It’s a total accident, but Judah’s childhood friend accuses him of an assassination attempt, so he’s screwed. Judah goes to prison, his assets are seized, and his mother and sister are sent to a leper colony.
From there, Judah earns his freedom from a Roman nobleman named Arrius, returns home to find his family assets have grown to ridiculous levels, and that his a-hole childhood friend (look it’s 1 in the morning and I’m blanking on his name, I do not care, I think it’s Marsala or something) now races chariots. Using his Batman levels of wealth, Judah gets himself into a chariot race against Marsala and Dale Earnhardts the hell out of him, leaving him to die on the tracks.
After that the story is a combination of his own personal dramas, a romance with the daughter of Balthazar (one of the three Wise Men), and the recovery of his mother and sister. In the end he crosses paths with a certain important religious radical/historical figure/Son of God in the flesh, and converts to Christianity. He lives his life according to the principles of righteousness.
I found this book to be beautiful, moving, slow, insightful, spiritual, overly long, and wonderfully affirming of the Christian faith. As the title of this article suggests, it’s hard for me to judge a classic because in plainest terms, a work of this age and importance does not care at all about my opinion of it. I spend all year reading books and passing judgment on them about their contemporary value, then when something as old and as well-executed as this one comes along, who cares what I think? The real metric is about me, and whether I recognize its value for what it is.
I get the feeling Wallace did a huge amount of studying to understand the time period. He obviously cares about his characters, about Christian doctrine, and about telling a story to help people understand the most significant movements of the Four Gospels. Why were the Wise Men seeking Christ? Why did they think Christ came to the Earth? What significance did this have for Roman-occupied Judea? This is mostly a single story about a Jew unjustly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, but in a broader sense it’s a portrait of its time, and of a core religious doctrine celebrated by a third of the world.
What I think about this book is not really a judgment of the book, it’s an assessment of my own ability to recognize truths when presented in what is otherwise a popular piece of entertainment. It feels more like a Sunday School lesson in novel format than regular book that I might read just for the heck of it.
IDK guys, I think you should check it out and enjoy it, I know I did. Go read BEN-HUR.
As a seventh grader, I read Ben Hur for the first time, and found it beautiful. Much like Owen Wister's Virginian, it is now considered to be overly long and wordy, but that may be more of a judgement against us as a society, than against the book as it was written. For me, the subject and time immersion was enhanced and completed by the love Lew Wallace had for his subject and story. In an age where there was no cinema, radio, or television, books became a Theatre of Imagination, words bringing worlds to life.