Bible (Holy Bible) influenced Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Lew Wallace's subtitle is the claim: the novel runs a fictional Judean's life alongside the Gospel narrative, so that the Nativity, the ministry and the Crucifixion happen at the edges of the plot and determine it. Wallace said he began it as an inquiry into whether he believed any of it and finished as a believer, which is unusually well documented for a novel of its period.