position. The various Amidah prayers differ in many particulars, but they all have certain fixed features. The first three and the last three Benedictions are practically the same on all occasions. There can be no doubt but that these six Benedictions are very old in their primitive content, and that they originated early in the history of the Second Temple. The Priests recited some at least of these six Benedictions daily with the Decalogue and the Shema (Mishnah Tamid v. i, Rosh Hashanah iv. 5); some, indeed, are cited in the Mishnah under specific designations which unmistakably carry us back to the Temple services. It is, further, practically certain that most of the other intermediate Benedictions are also old, and that in substance they belong at latest to the Maccabean age. It is the opinion of several competent scholars that the Amidah is rather older than that period, for the Psalm discovered in the Hebrew text of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus li. 12 ff.) was imitated from, and not the source of, the Amidah (see in particular Marmorstein in the Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft xxix. 287). The date of Sirach is uncertain, but the latest possible date is the beginning of the second century B.C.E. This claim for antiquity is confirmed by the contents and style of the Amidah. On the former point more will be said below in the notes on the various Benedictions. As to the style, each benediction, in the original form, was constructed on a regular rhythmic scheme, such as we find in the older Hebrew poetry. Each paragraph consisted of two balanced members, followed by a Benediction. (See Dalman, Die Worte etc., p. 299, who bases his conclusions on such Palestinian texts as that published by S. Schechter in the Jewish Quarterly Review x. 654.)
There are three groups of Benedictions in the daily Amidah: (a) Three Blessings of Praise (i.-iii.); (b) Twelve (now thirteen) Blessings containing Petitions (iv.-xvi.); and (c) Three Blessings of Thanks (xvii.-xix.).
The Amidah is not a mere collection of independent
