Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ has Ben Hur among her lovers, which serves as one of the hints the "time travel" is actually a form of reality manipulation. More than one tribute to Wallace's most famous book and its fictional hero have been erected near Wallace's home in Crawfordsville, Indiana. The General Lew Wallace Study and Museum honors the character of Judah Ben-Hur with a limestone frieze of his imagined face installed over the entrance to the study. Wallace's grave marker at the cemetery in Crawfordsville includes a line from the Balthazar character in "Ben-Hur": "I would not give one hour of life as a
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ Christ's life, such as Reverend J. H. Ingraham's "The Prince of the House of David" (1855), preceded Wallace's novel, while others such as Charles M. Shedon's ""In His Steps": What Would Jesus Do?" (1897) followed it, but "Ben-Hur" was among the first to make Jesus a major character in a novel. Members of the clergy and others praised Wallace's detailed description of the Middle East during Jesus's lifetime and encouraged their congregations to read the book at home and during Sunday School. One Roman Catholic priest wrote to Wallace: "The messiah appears before us as I always wished him depicted".