Origin[edit]

There has been a general consensus that the eighteen blessings of the Amidah generally go back to some form in the Second Temple period.^[5] In the time of the Mishnah, it was considered unnecessary to fully prescribe its text and content. This may have been simply because the language was well known to the Mishnah's authors.^[6] The Mishnah may also have not recorded specific text because of an aversion to making prayer a matter of rigor and fixed formula.^[7]


According to the Talmud, Rabban Gamaliel II, the first leader of the Sanhedrin after the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE, undertook to codify uniformly the public service, directing Simeon HaPakoli to edit the blessings (probably in the order they had already acquired) and made it a duty, incumbent on every one, to recite the prayer three times daily.^[8] But this does not imply that the blessings were unknown before that date; in other passages the Amidah is traced to the "first wise men",^[9] or to the Great Assembly.^[10] In order to reconcile the various assertions of editorship, the Talmud concludes that the prayers had fallen into disuse, and that Gamaliel reinstituted them.^[11][12]


The Talmud indicates that when Gamaliel undertook to codify the Amidah, he directed Samuel ha-Katan to write another paragraph inveighing against informers and heretics, which was inserted as the twelfth prayer in modern sequence, making the number of blessings nineteen.^[13] Other Talmudic sources indicate, however, that this prayer was part of the original 18;^[14] and that 19 prayers came about when the 15th prayer for the restoration of Jerusalem and of the throne of David (coming of the Messiah) was split into two.^[15]