On August 2nd, the Theophilus Center hosted its inaugural Summer Lecture! We had a great group of folks come out to participate in our discussion of lepra and Ben-Hur. Two things stood out to me following our reflection on this topic.

First, the influence of popular presentations of the Bible/ancient Judaism and Christianity is strong. We saw the impact of Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur on how people thought about Hansen’s disease in the twentieth century, but I’m also reminded of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis. I would say that Quo Vadis occupies a similar position to Ben-Hur in terms of its longstanding influence on popular perceptions of Neronian Christianity and its decades-spanning career across multiple stage and film adaptations. Even people who may not be directly aware of these stories or their historicity are likely influenced by them in some way. This includes careful and circumspect students of the Bible and religious history who may have unconsciously integrated these stories into how they conceive of ancient Judaism and Christianity!

Second, the influence of these presentations extends into how people perceive the present. We saw authors, politicians, patients, and medical care providers all affected by Ben-Hur and the ideas about lepra that it contains. Perhaps most strikingly, Stanley Stein’s dispairing response to his diagnosis of Hansen’s disease was directly informed by the characterization of lepra in Lew Wallace’s novel. In all of the examples we discussed, the accuracy of Ben-Hur was basically taken for granted. This is key because we’re presently in a time when biblical and religious literacy are on the decline. This makes our critical engagement with adaptations of biblical and religious texts as well as our wise reading of the primary sources all the more important.

Overall, the Summer Lecture was a delightful evening. I’m grateful to the participants for their enthusiasm, their interest, and their willingness to spend their Saturday night talking about lepra and ritual impurity. We’ll keep the ball rolling with our Fall Lecture, topic and other details forthcoming! Stay tuned.

You can watch a recording of the Summer Lecture below.