What did the rabbis inherit from the rituals and worship that are documented in the Hebrew Bible? How did they maintain some of those and in what way did they change others? Is it true to say that biblical texts always had a central role in the liturgy of Rabbinic Judaism? Did the theory and practice of rabbinic prayer evolve through the talmudic and post-talmudic periods? If so, what is the nature of that evolution and what motivated it? This article will attempt to answer these and related questions.
The Temple that existed in Jerusalem in the centuries leading up to the axial age (800–200 bce) was an inspiration to those who formulated the ideology and practice of Rabbinic Judaism, not only during that period but also in the centuries that followed its destruction in 70 ce. That building was constructed late in the sixth century bce following the return of groups of Jews from the Babylonian Exile that had been imposed upon them seventy years earlier. It became the center of formal Jewish worship for the Persian state of Judah and for its political successors in the Hellenistic world. Although there is evidence that other Jewish shrines existed in Jewish communities in Transjordan and Egypt, the importance and centrality of the Jerusalem cult grew in the era that is unsurprisingly known as the Second Temple period. The power of the priesthood also increased and gradually became a political as much as a religious institution. The rituals, conducted by a caste of priests but including some that were assisted by the levites, attracted pilgrims from the Diaspora as well as from the homeland, and the Temple went through a successful process of expansion and aggrandizement during the reign of Herod the Great.
Whether or not the Psalms that are known from the Hebrew Bible had their origins in or around the Temple ritual is a controversial topic. What may be stated with confidence is that the contents of some of them indicate that they were recited by Jews who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They refer to visits to the holy shrine, are enthusiastic about its rites, and express a desire for those to be conducted sincerely. It may even be the case that at some point during the Second Temple period psalms won themselves a place within rituals that were conducted on or around the Temple Mount. Nevertheless, the sacrificial offering was normally made in silence. The officiating priest, or the Israelite making the offering, was required in a few instances to make a declaration confessing that a sin had been committed. In addition, a special formula was recited when the first fruits from the farm were brought by an individual to the Temple. Such a declaration may have had an ancient pedigree, incorporating as it did references to the people’s origins and utilizing phraseology that had historical and theological significance, as well as an agricultural context. Another declaration that was undoubtedly a familiar one in Temple circles, and that was used on special occasions, was the priestly benediction of Num 6:24–26.
The rabbinic traditions of the first two centuries describe a custom known as the ma’amad, which catered for those Jews who did not make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem with the priests and levites from their area when those religious functionaries took their turn in conducting the cultic arrangements of the national shrine. They gathered in their hometown, fasted and recited biblical passages, possibly also offering prayers of some sort. Since that tradition is not a part of later rabbinic liturgy, it is reasonable to assume that the rabbinic report about it has at least a degree of historical accuracy.
Although the literary and archaeological sources attest to busy activity on the Temple Mount and to a major use of the cultic facility by many Jews, the role of the Temple towards the end of the Second Temple period was by no means an uncontroversial one. While the Sadduceans and their priesthood undoubtedly saw the Jerusalem shrine as the center of their worship, there were others who were less enthusiastic. The sect or sects whose writings are represented by the finds in the Judean Desert had become disillusioned by the politicization of the Temple and the priesthood under the Hasmonean dynasty and had adopted other methods (to be noted below) for expressing themselves liturgically. The Jews who saw Jesus of Nazareth as their spiritual leader were also uncomfortable about the commercial aspects of what transpired on the Temple Mount.
For their part, the Pharisees and proto-Rabbis appear to have been the driving force behind the development of the synagogue as a center of Jewish religious expression. Remarkably for an institution that later became so central for Rabbinic Judaism, scholars have been unable to state in anything like categorical and clear terms the nature of its origins and early development. It may have had its roots in the Babylonian Exile, in the Egyptian Diaspora, or in the Judean state during the Persian and Greek periods, and it may first have served as a social, educational, and recreational center, rather than a place of prayer. It is now widely recognized that it existed at the same time as the Jerusalem Temple and did not replace it as a place of worship at this early period. A Greek inscription from the first (or second?) pre-Christian century records that a certain Theodotos built and presided over a synagogue that was used for reading the Torah, practicing religious traditions, and hosting visitors, but does not include prayer among its activities. Philo and Josephus record that Jews met to read biblical texts and to study but make no mention of any statutory liturgy, and the Gospels testify to the synagogue as mainly a center of study, exposition, and even healing of the sick. It took some three or four more centuries before the role of the synagogue as a center of Jewish ritual and worship become more authoritatively established.
If the Temple still constituted the place where formal Jewish worship was conducted by way of the sacrificial cult, with its attendant rites and procedures, it is necessary to clarify where the earliest proponents of Rabbinic or proto-Rabbinic Judaism found precedents for a spiritual concern with individual prayer. Pre-exilic biblical texts are in no doubt about the importance and value of individual prayer and there are many examples of leading figures expressing their needs, wishes, and feelings to God and their recognition of His unique nature and powers. For the Hebrews and Jews, such prayers were a matter of personal rather than communal religiosity. They had more in common with oaths, curses, blessings, and prophecy than they did with formalized congregational ritual, and they were democratic rather than elitist, given that they were not subject to intermediaries such as priests. This dichotomy between the national cult and the personal entreaty gradually weakened during the Second Temple period, which saw a growing degree of fusion between the two Jewish religious elements. The Temple location came to be more closely associated with the recitation of psalms and prayers and the spontaneous approach to God evolved into a more standard genre. The penitential prayers in Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel testify to such a literary and liturgical evolution and exhibit a lengthiness and formal structure that constituted a novel development. The worshippers contrast their people’s failures and guilt with God’s greatness and forgiveness and humbly promise to improve on their religious behavior. Such prayers, although they included historical and didactic elements, did not yet constitute any form of fixed ritual to challenge that of the Temple. The books of the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha also record such elements and indicate that the Jews of the period included cosmological, angelological, eschatological, and mystical themes among the prayers of righteous individuals. They also employed personal prayers for divine assistance at times of personal or national hardship, as well as requests for divine blessings in particular circumstances.
The Jews in the streets of the hellenistic world enjoyed a closeness with the Temple in Jerusalem but, like the scholar and writer Simeon Ben Sira in Jerusalem, they could complement such an allegiance with other expressions of liturgy and spirituality. For Ben Sira himself, there appears to have been neither fixed timetables for prayers nor specific compositions. He was also not especially interested in angels, apocalypse, and eschatology but acknowledged the possibility of worshipping God by intellectual and educational means, as well as by way of his beloved Temple. It was the groups represented in the manuscripts found in the Judean Desert almost seventy years ago that chose to recite regular prayers at specific times, even if their formulation and contexts were not yet wholly consistent. They were undoubtedly instrumental in taking formal liturgy forward by using their prayers to achieve a greater spiritual intensity, and by attaching their own linguistic and religious significance to the notions that they had inherited from the Hebrew Bible. Such notions related to the election of Israel, the status of Zion, the holiness of Jerusalem, the return of the Davidic dynasty, and the manifestation of God’s great power in their own day and in the future.
Like those groups whose literary remains were found in and around Qumran, the earliest rabbis or their predecessors had to formulate a religious response to the changing political, social, and intellectual situation in which they found themselves. This was already true in the last decades of Jewish independence, but the response became a matter of considerable urgency when the Temple was destroyed in the 70 ce and when, with crisis following crisis, the Jews were also deprived of their state, their freedom, and even some of their religious practices. Large numbers of Jews were murdered, publicly tortured, and carried off as slaves. Establishing the place of prayer within their theological hierarchy was neither a simple nor an uncontroversial matter. For some, the centrality of the Temple ritual had to be replaced by a total devotion to the study of Torah, while others argued that charitable and ethical behavior of the highest standard was the equivalent of that earlier form of worship. The new “liturgy” (ʾavodah) was therefore in the intellect and in the conscience, rather than in a physical location. Prayer might be one of the Jewish religious precepts but had no more special status than any of the other daily practices that characterized observant Judaism. Other teachers saw the need for a formalized set of prayers and blessings that could stand at the center of Jewish worship but there was no agreement as to whether this would be a permanent arrangement or merely a temporary compromise until such time as the Temple buildings and rituals had been restored. It was therefore a moot point whether such prayers and blessings should be allocated a communal location, in the study center or the synagogue, or maintained as a matter for the individual within the domestic setting.
The earliest rabbinic traditions record ambivalent attitudes to other aspects of prayer. One of these concerned the role of the mystic and of mysticism. They discussed whether the efficacy of prayer was dependent on the assistance of especially pious individuals who would make entreaty on behalf of their more ordinary Jewish fellows. These spiritually charged pietists could by some magical or mystical means obtain access to Divine favor. Was prayer therefore to be conducted primarily by such spiritual intermediaries? The alternative view was an acceptance of the reality that, even if most Jews were not so spiritually blessed or ascetically inclined, this did not rule out their success in reaching out to the Divine and having their prayers answered. They could achieve that by more mundane means. Their recitation of fixed formulas three times a day, together with the use of the tallit and tefillin, would meet the religious requirement and maintain their close relationship with heaven. The language to be used for such prayer was to be exclusively Hebrew in only a minority of cases while other languages—with Greek being accorded pride of place among them—could be used if they were better understood by the worshipper.
The repetition of verses, or of parts of verses, and the use of antiphonal responses, were also matters of debate, as was the issue of brevity against prolixity in the prayers. How necessary was it to pray in the direction of Jerusalem? The maximalist position laid it down as a clear directive while its minimalist counterpart stressed that physical direction was not as essential as the metaphorical direction of one’s heart and mind towards heaven. Early rabbinic and early Christian sources document that there were readings from the Pentateuch and the Prophets at synagogue meetings in the first and second centuries, but there is no evidence to suggest that any more than a limited number of such readings were authoritatively stipulated, or that they took on the form of annual lectionaries. Of the five biblical scrolls (megillot), only the book of Esther had yet acquired a regular slot in the synagogue, since it was obviously read as a central feature of the ritual on the feast of Purim. The recitation of the books of Job, Ezra and Chronicles was suggested as a suitable way of ensuring the correct mood on the part of the High Priest before he conducted the Temple service on Yom Kippur.
Within, or rather around, the context of the Temple service, at least as it was conducted in its latest decades, there is good reason to conclude that the simplest forms of the shemaʿ, the hallel, the priestly benediction, and the Decalogue were employed in some of the rituals, even if not in association with the actual sacrifices, at least within some of the rituals closely associated with the pilgrims’ visits to the Temple. At the same time one should not rule out the possibility that the rabbinic traditions that note the use of some, if not all, of these biblical texts date from later times and may have postulated their existence in the Temple context as a way of promoting their later use in the synagogue.
Since, as earlier suggested, the early rabbinic traditions were keen to adopt and to adapt the biblical formula of benediction, as documented, for instance, in 1 Chron 29:10, it is not surprising to find that benedictions stood at the heart of the prayers as they were composed by such leading teachers of the second century ce as Rabban Gamaliel. There is an indication in the description of the Yom Kippur ritual in the Temple that such benedictions were already in existence in the period before the war against the Romans that led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 ce, but the rabbis of the subsequent decades laid down formulas that reflected not only notions to be found in the Hebrew Bible but also their own forms of these and the religious ideologies that they appended to them.
The earliest items that were included in the prayers of Rabbinic Judaism were the Decalogue, the shemaʿ, the ʿamidah, and the birkat ha-mazon. These last three items subsequently enjoyed a long history at the center of Rabbinic liturgy and will shortly be described. The choice of the Decalogue, which was already included in the Nash Papyrus of the second or third century bce and in tefillin (often but not very accurately described as phylacteries) from Qumran, became controversial in the second century ce, since there were rabbis who regarded it as bordering on the heretical to give some parts of the Pentateuch such a status while apparently denying it to others. It was therefore omitted in most authoritative circles, especially in Babylonia, but seems to have survived in at least some communities in the land of Israel, since it is found in numerous Genizah manuscripts of about the eleventh century.
In the second century the rabbis, especially inspired by the determined efforts of Rabban Gamaliel, provided authoritative guidance as to how, when, where and by whom the shemaʿ, the ‘amidah and the birkat ha-mazon, which were each of a different hue and content, were to be recited. The idea was to ensure that they reflected rabbinic theology as it was then being understood and to introduce some degree of consistency between them. Given that these sets of readings and blessings originated within a variety of contexts and were perhaps even promoted by different groups, the central rabbinic principle was they should be linked together in formal acts of worship and recited, where appropriate, together with the use of a ṣiṣit (the fringes prescribed in Num 15:37–41) and the tefillin (said by rabbinic tradition to be prescribed in Deut 6:8).
Though also borrowed from the Pentateuch, the shemaʿ is less baldly prescriptive than the Decalogue but nevertheless expects those who adhere to the Torah to cultivate devotion to God, ritual detail, and the didactic element in religion. Its earliest liturgical form may have constituted no more than Deut 6:4, or perhaps 6:4–9, to which were later added Deut11:13–21 and Num 15:37–41. Although it has been suggested that the shemaʿ had its origins among the scribal groups that were in various respects the precursors of the rabbis, an equally valid case can be made for suggesting that it was the priestly class, as strongly represented among the Sadduccees who were closely tied to biblical texts and their authority, who accorded its reading a special status. The rabbis gave their own flavor to these texts by attaching to them benedictions that reflected what they regarded as important ancillary messages. The benedictions preceding the shemaʿ dealt with the creation, especially of light and darkness, and with the role of Israel, especially in connection with the gift of the Torah. Those that were recited after the shemaʿ stressed the redemption from Egypt and the matter of divine protection, especially at night. It hardly needs noting that the basic ideas are to be found in biblical texts but they were formulated and adjusted by the rabbis in the light of their own religious doctrine.
If the shema’ may justifiably be placed in an elitist milieu, the anthology of benedictions that was known to the early rabbis as the prayer (ha-tefillah), and was later entitled the ‘amidah, was borrowed from the more popular setting of benediction recitation. The likelihood is that the oldest of these benedictions are those that have survived as the introductory three and the concluding three in all forms of the ‘amidah. These introductory benedictions are on the topics of the biblical patriarchs, life-after-death, and the holiness of God, while the final three praise God for the cult or its promised restoration, for his goodness towards us, and for peace (including the priestly benediction that stresses the divine blessing of peace). Once again, there are roots for most of these in the Hebrew Bible but life-after-death is a novel rabbinic concern. Equally, even if the cult is biblical, the plea for its restoration obviously postdates the first century. While the patriarchs, as well as divine sanctity, peace, and goodness already came into Jewish theological prominence in the early part of the Second Temple period, their use in the ‘amidah represented their expanding and specialized significance for the early rabbis. On Sabbaths and festivals there was also a benediction concerning the gift of those special occasions as described in the Torah while the ‘amidah for weekdays replaced that one benediction with a long list of the Jewish people’s mundane requirements. These consisted of requests for knowledge, repentance, pardon, redemption, healing, plentiful produce, an end to exile and persecution, restoration of autonomy, removal of apostasy, blessing of the righteous and of converts, the re-establishment of Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty, and the success of prayer. Although known as the shemoneh ‘esreh, that is, the “eighteen,” it eventually had nineteen benedictions in Babylonia where Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty were treated not as one subject but as two. It is noteworthy that in their early form, the ‘amidot did not generally contain biblical verses, the exception being that of New Year, which included sets of verses relating to divine sovereignty, the topic of remembrance, and the sounding of the shofar.
There is a rabbinic tradition that ascribes the first three benedictions of the birkat ha-mazon (“the blessing after a meal”) to Moses, Joshua, and David, and the fourth to Rabban Gamaliel. The kernel of historical truth in this may be that these first three sections represent an evolving rite that existed prior to the second century ce. It began with a very general blessing implementing the prescription in Deut 8:10 and praising God for providing food for the world; expanded into a second and more specific Jewish one that thanked him for the land of Israel; and then included a third on the theme of Jerusalem. This third benediction was then altered after the destruction of the temple, the capital city, and the Jewish state, into a plea for their restoration. The fourth section is an acknowledgement of God’s goodness that probably reflected a rabbinic trend to offer thanks to God precisely when the ordinary Jew might feel more inclined to offer criticism of how He had handled the people whom His prophets had designated as the chosen ones. This theological notion was also employed when the rabbis instructed their followers to recite a blessing that declared God to be an honest judge precisely on hearing of the death of close relative, when one might have in mind thoughts of a less charitable type about the Almighty.
There was also a set of rabbinic liturgical traditions the core of which almost certainly predated the destruction of the second Temple; these dealt with the rituals required of the community when there was a serious drought. They were included in a mishnaic tractate entitled Ta’anit (“Fasting”) and described how the people would gather in a public place and perform acts associated with mourning, as well as fasting, offering supplicatory prayers and reciting biblical texts. Since not all of these acts of worship are strictly consistent with the formulations and customs laid down by the rabbis of the second century ce, it seems that they made an impact on later forms of rabbinic prayer, rather than vice versa. The formulations reported in the tractate may also have been overwritten by the rabbinic leadership. Once again, the rabbis took on board a set of liturgical traditions and reworked them for their own theological purposes.
There are three other liturgical formulations that testify to the nature of early rabbinic or perhaps pre-rabbinic prayer. The beginning of the Sabbath, which had been ordained by the Pentateuch, was marked by the recitation at home of a qiddush, that is to say, a declaration of the sanctity of the day just beginning. This act was performed on Friday evening of course and not on Saturday and represented a kind of “toast” to the special occasion. It was clearly of earlier pedigree than the introduction of a communal ‘amidah for Friday evening with its special welcome for the Sabbath. Once the latter became the norm, the qiddush was relegated to a formal introduction to the Sabbath meal since the official welcome to the Sabbath had been offered at synagogal prayer. The same process of development occurred with regard to the termination of the Sabbath. This was first marked by a domestic havdalah prayer that declared a distinction between the Sabbath and the weekday, as a formal introduction to the conclusion of the former and a restoration of the latter. When the communal evening ‘amidah was introduced, one of the benedictions included precisely such a havdalah and made the subsequent ceremony at home somewhat redundant. As an ancient usage, however, it maintained its existence, a conservative phenomenon that became characteristic of rabbinic prayer throughout its many centuries of usage.
The hallel was a collection of psalm chapters that was associated with the offering of the paschal lamb in the Jerusalem temple and at the family meal that took place afterwards. As with so many psalms, its earliest purpose was to mark a deliverance of some sort and it was applied specifically to the rescue from Egyptian slavery. Serious scholarship has yet to establish which psalms were original to the Passover celebrations and how they were originally sung. It seems that there were various formulations of hallel and that one of these became a daily act of piety in one’s prayers and another came to be adopted on festivals. It was not until post-talmudic times that the recitation of Psalms 113–118 became standard. That development brought with it the introduction of a rabbinic benediction. Such a benediction or its predecessor may have been recited in the Temple and/or the home on the first night of Passover but it was gradually eradicated from there and given a place in the synagogal service.
With regard to the Passover Haggadah recited at home on the first evening of that festival, its earliest format surely lays claim to be a remnant of biblical custom and one of the predecessors of the rabbinic liturgy. The passages in Exod 12:26–27 and 13:8 testify to an ancient tradition to explain the origin of the paschal offering in the Israelite exodus from slavery in Egypt, and their journeys into Sinai for the revelation and into the land of Israel for permanent settlement. In addition to this biblical background, the Jews of the late Second Temple period were undoubtedly influenced by the ideas and practices of the hellenistic world around them. Their paschal meal may also therefore have given them the opportunity of indulging in thoughtful discussions after the meal, as some of the Greek intellectuals did, but giving the discussions a Jewish flavor. The earliest form of the Haggadah consisted of explanations of why those assembled were eating the paschal lamb, the unleavened bread, and the sharp-tasting vegetables dipped in some other edible substance. A suitable narrative, including biblical verses, made the link with the Exodus and praise was offered to God, in the form of a hallel, for the deliverance. The whole ceremony amounted to a form of liturgy but it is important to note that praise of God was only one element and that the event was centered in the home and not the synagogue. The rabbis of the first two centuries appear to have developed the Haggadah as a way of renewing the ethnic consciousness and the religious confidence of people who had lost so much under Roman domination. The message, via the Exodus theme, was that the Jews were still free to be themselves, to maintain their traditions and to praise their God. Behind the various rituals, liturgical formulations, and exegetical readings added in the early Christian centuries lay the idea that the Roman persecution of the Jews, like the pharaonic enslavement of the Hebrews, would not destroy God’s chosen people but would end in their deliverance.
It will be recalled that, in its earliest manifestations, the synagogue was a simple communal building where Jews studied, socialized, used washing facilities, and, if necessary, spent the night, perhaps also praying there but not apparently by way of fixed liturgies. What happened to this institution in the Roman and Byzantine periods in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora? The literary and archaeological sources indicate an increasing grandeur, a growing conviction of its sacred status, and the involvement of communal leaders in its construction, furnishing and management. Its sacred status may also have been influenced by Greek and Roman attitudes to their cities and Temples. The structures and the decorations of synagogues certainly reflect the Classical world as much as the Jewish one. There is no clear standard or prescription for any of these or any definitive evidence that women were always separately seated. Many talmudic rabbis consistently and powerfully argued the advantages of communal prayer recited in the synagogue and their strident comments appear to indicate that a substantial number of Jews did not attend synagogue regularly. Even the most observant Jews might prefer to pray in the study-house (bet ha-midrash) where they were sharpening their skills in the rabbinic interpretation of Scripture and of religiosity.
At the very beginning of its existence the synagogue was not seen as competitor of the Temple, but the centuries after its destruction saw a lively debate about the degree to which Temple status, custom, and symbol could be justifiably usurped by the synagogue. As the communal prayers formulated by the rabbis became the norm and the synagogue the location, so the latter attracted a higher degree of spiritual importance for those who worshipped there. Interestingly, the ideas of a sacrament, a priesthood, and special vestments were adopted more enthusiastically by the Christian Church than by the synagogal authorities. Paradoxically, the role of the priestly caste within Jewish worship gradually diminished within the growing formalization of synagogue prayer. Jews and Christians may have visited each other’s places of worship for the first four Christian centuries, and they perhaps had a liturgical impact on each other. They did, however, ultimately go their separate ways and one should be cautious about claiming categorically that Christian prayer originates in earlier Judaism. Prayer could be led by any male member of the community and, although it became progressively more structured and authorized, there was never any notion parallel to the Eucharist.
The liturgical traditions of the land of Israel and of the Diaspora were broadly similar but did have their differences. The language of the prayers might be Greek for some Jews while it was Hebrew and Aramaic for others. The Jewish biblical lectionaries used in the synagogue on Sabbaths and festivals were totally different in Sassanid Persia from what they were in Byzantine Palestine, primarily because the former completed their reading of the whole Pentateuch in precisely a year while the latter spread it over some three-and-a-half years. Although conducting the synagogue service was regarded as a male privilege, women were prominent in some centers in at least the administration of the institution. There were also some early rabbinic rulings that suggested female equality with regard to certain liturgical practices, but these seem to have remained theoretical rather than practical in the Babylonian community. There the rabbinic leaders developed a less egalitarian position, especially when they became dominant after the fifth century, and perhaps even more so under the later Islamic hegemony.
Towards the end of the talmudic period, in the fifth and sixth centuries ce, a novel genre of liturgy appeared that was destined to make a major, even revolutionary, impact on Jewish prayers. Perhaps under the influence of forms of Classical poetry and of the hymnology of the early Church, lyrically minded Jews created piyyuṭim, that is, liturgical poems, even giving them a name derived from the Greek word for poetry. The genre began its life in the land of Israel where its earliest composers took great delight in coining new versions of biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, in referring in the most cryptic and allusive ways to biblical and rabbinic ideas and characters, and in supplying extensive poetic supplements to the Torah readings and to the statutory prayers. The earliest liturgical poets attempted to restore the status of the Temple ritual and the priesthood by placing them at the center of special compositions and by their dramatic recitation. Challenging as they were to the worshipper’s knowledge and understanding, these poems acquired great popularity and ultimately threatened to replace the statutory prayers themselves with the poetic expansions appended to them. Content, meter, and rhyme developed differently and successfully in the various Jewish communities, and it required major effort on the part of some leading rabbinic authorities to ensure that the piyyuṭim were eventually assigned a more limited role. The truth is, however, that they remained an integral part of most Jewish liturgy throughout the medieval period.
Another form of poetry was that of the mystical hekhalot (“celestial palaces”). Jewish interest in angels, the end of time, the divine chariot, the cosmos, and apocalyptic visions is already demonstrated by some of the later books of the Hebrew Bible and in other Jewish literature of the Second Temple period. In the early rabbinic period, such themes, and speculation about the celestial palaces and the nature of God, occupied the minds of groups of Jewish mystics. Such spiritual individuals had come under the influence of the Gnostic teaching that was then a feature of intellectual life among Christians and pagans. Their ideas and compositions were at times regarded with suspicion and even animosity by some of the talmudic teachers. They were, however, popular and inspiring enough to win over many Jewish worshippers so that they had eventually to be incorporated into the prayers. A solution to the problem of their questionable theological acceptability lay in the elimination of some of their more esoteric and even grotesque representations and a sanitization of their contents by way of their inclusion in the more mundane contexts of the Jewish liturgy.
Closely related to liturgical poetry is the genre of rabbinic midrash, the exegesis of Scripture. It is a matter of considerable controversy whether these commentaries on biblical texts stemmed from the study-house or from the synagogue. Either way, they also represented a form of liturgy, since study was regarded as an act of worship and verses from the Hebrew Bible were expected to offer religious guidance for people and events that occurred many centuries after their original composition. The reading and interpretation of biblical and rabbinic texts therefore became an integral part of the prayer services of the synagogue. It became customary to attach to them, by way of introduction and conclusion, lists of biblical verses concerning Torah and they even sometimes had their own rabbinic benedictions, as did the biblical lectionaries.
It was the Geonim, or “excellencies” of the rabbinic academies who led and inspired their students and communities from the seventh to the eleventh centuries ce. Given all the previously described developments during the talmudic period, it is often thought, and indeed taught, that these post-talmudic teachers merely consolidated what had been achieved by their predecessors in the realm of liturgy, as in so many others area of Jewish religious expression. This is to deny them the central and innovative role that they carved out for themselves, as has become clear from many Genizah documents. Truth to be told, the Geonim were anxious to give the impression that they were merely applying the talmudic rites and customs, so that their innovations could be more acceptable. What they effectively did was to transform a system of advice and suggestion about what best constituted Jewish prayer into an authoritative liturgical canon.
The precise wording of prayers, the introduction of new benedictions, the reading of specific Scripture, and the customs to be carried out in the synagogue service, had all been matters that had often been optional rather than mandatory. As a result, there was considerable variation among the widespread communities of the homeland and the Diaspora. For example, it was recognized that the level of spirituality required for the efficacy of prayer could best be achieved by the recitation of chapters and verses from the Hebrew Bible before the commencement of the service proper. Anthologies of such biblical material were compiled but there was no unanimity about their content, extent, and precise place in the service. In such matters, it was left to individual communities to express their preferences. Such a variety in liturgical practice was a particular feature of the Jewish communities of Islamic Palestine and they tended to champion and defend their elasticity in this connection. In the Jewish world as a whole, the Babylonian academies were more powerful, successful, and influential than their counterparts in the land of Israel. They saw it as their task to impose their halakhic rulings, their religious ideas, and their liturgical practices whenever and wherever they could. When communities in Spain in the ninth and tenth centuries ce requested guidance about how best to conduct the liturgy, the Babylonian authorities were more than ready to lay down the religious law as they saw it.
What made it possible for such a process of ritualization, centralization, and standardization of the rabbinic liturgy, driven by the Babylonian rabbis, to succeed widely and within a relatively short time? The overall political situation in the early medieval era was certainly an important factor. At its peak, the Islamic empire that had its base, as did the Geonim, in Mesopotamia, stretched from Spain to the borders of India and generally controlled much of the Mediterranean area. Its authority was theological as well as religious, and its medium was the Arabic of the Qur’an. Messages could be exchanged between distant parts by making use of what amounted to a postal system. Authority and communication were at the center of the system, and the Geonim appear to have followed the regime’s example and adopted its philosophy with regard to their far-flung communities. A second factor is related to the first but is more religiously specific. It was part of the Geonim’s achievement to master the Talmud, to make major progress with its interpretation, to disseminate and give authority to its teachings, and to begin the process of codifying its halakhic legislation. One of the reasons why they felt the need to undertake these tasks lay in their response to the theological challenges of Byzantine Christianity, Arab Islam, and the rising movement of Karaism within Judaism with its rejection of the rabbinic tradition and its virtually exclusive adherence to the Hebrew Bible as they understood it. It was that movement that provided many of the scholars who created the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible that came to be widely adopted by Jewry from the eleventh century. But there was an even more practical impetus for the creation of what amounted to a canonized set of prayers.
An early principle of rabbinic Judaism was that the Written Torah (Torah She-Bikhtav), as recorded in Hebrew Scripture, was from its outset accompanied by an Oral Torah (Torah She-Beʿal Peh) that represented its authoritative interpretation and application. Both forms of Torah were integral to the understanding and practice of Judaism, but it was essential not to confuse the nature of the two. To that end, the Oral Torah was studied, transmitted, and explained only by word of mouth in the study-house and not committed to an authorized text. The same generally applied to the liturgical field, and this made possible the degree of elasticity in content and formulation already noted. The circumstances of the early medieval period made it advisable in the views of the later Geonim, in the ninth and tenth centuries ce, to commit their talmudic and wider rabbinic traditions to writing. The physical medium for doing this was the codex. This had been inherited by Christian and Muslim culture from the Classical world and had made the dissemination of their holy writings and religious teachings that much more consistent and authoritative.
This was now applied by the rabbis to the liturgical fields and the first lists of benedictions and prayer-books were written by the heads of the Babylonian yeshivot (academies) such as Naṭronai ben Hilai, ‘Amram ben Sheshna, and Sa’adya ben Yosef. The last-mentioned provided a highly rational and comprehensive treatment of the subject of prayer, as well as a detailed transcription of the texts of the prayers for many occasions. He wrote it in the Jewish vernacular of his day, Judeo-Arabic, and it was widely disseminated. He was anxious to explain the precise status and function of each of the part of the liturgy and how the rabbinic formulations were in their own way no less authoritative than the biblical Psalms. He saw the liturgical variations not as valid versions but as a reflection of error and subversion. As he put it (in Robert Brody’s translation), the accurate prayers and blessings “were forgotten and eradicated completely…and there are those that have been added to and subtracted to such an extent that they were altered.” The codices carrying all or parts of these new prayer-books made the kind of impact on rabbinic prayers that was not matched until the invention of printing half a millennium later. The biblical texts that they approved by way of pietistic introduction and the biblical verses that they included within the ‘amidot for special occasions broadly became the norm for many communities. The sacrificial details borrowed from the Pentateuch also won a place as a way of compensating for the lack of the Jerusalem cult. The synagogal reading of Ecclesiastes on Tabernacles, Song of Songs on Passover, and Ruth on Pentecost became a widespread custom during that period. The medieval rabbinic leaders were still able to argue some details about the prayer texts, agreeing to some and rejecting others, but the overall nature and structure of the rabbinic Judaism’s system of worship and the content of its liturgy followed what was laid down by the Babylonian Geonim. The role of the texts from the Hebrew Bible and the attitude adopted towards the place of the Temple and the sacrifices within the prayer-book did not change substantially until the rise of the progressive movements in the nineteenth century. Then, totally different considerations applied and the atmosphere was no longer one of textual tradition and communal authority but rather of compositional novelty and individual preference.