The Real Story of Ben-Hur Movie's "Tale of the Christ"

Teresa Neumann : Apr 18, 2014
Dawn Goeb and Wendy Griffith – CBN

The tombstone of Lew Wallace, author of "Ben-Hur" is inscribed with a quote from his book: "I would not give one hour of life as a Soul for a thousand years of life as a man."

(Crawfordsville, IN)—As is the case with many movies, the 1959 blockbuster hit "Ben-Hur" was made from the best-selling novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace in 1880. (Photo via CBN News)

What many people don't realize is, the story behind the author is as amazing as the book he penned.

CBN, which has written a thorough piece on Wallace's biography, details Wallace's early years as that of a spiritually drifting young "Renaissance" man who loved the arts and was drawn to Scripture even though he, as yet, knew little about it.

"I had no convictions about God or Christ," Wallace wrote in his autobiography. "I neither believed nor disbelieved in Them…yet when the work [on Ben-Hur] was daily begun, I found myself writing reverentially, with awe."

Convicted by his Biblical ignorance, he later wrote, "My ignorance of it was painfully a spot of deeper darkness in the darkness. I was ashamed of myself." (Photo via CBN News)

That conviction proved to be a pivotal moment in Wallace's life as he began studying The Word and subsequently began to see God through the eyes of the characters he was writing.

"Long before I was through with my book," wrote Wallace, "I became a Believer in God and Christ."

Click Here to watch the CBN video report, and read Wallace's story in its entirety.