In recent studies of ancient messianism the rabbinic "Eighteen Benedictions," now called the Amidah, are conspicuously absent. (1) This is surprising in the light of the vision of national redemption found in blessings 10-15. (2) It is unlikely that this oversight is due to the lateness of the text, for although the Mishna and its two commentaries, the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, fail to provide a full text of the Amidah, they do discuss its motifs, concluding perorations, structure, and sequence. Admittedly, a full text becomes available only in the ninth century in the Order of Prayers by Amram Gaon, known as the Babylonian version, and that of the fragments of the Genizah of the synagogue of Fostat, Cairo, built in 882, known as the Palestinian version. (No sweeping generalization on which version came first is yet possible.) Nonetheless both versions, in the main, hark back to the first centuries of the Common Era as their structure and motifs pervade early liturgical poetry (piyyutim), whereas their angelology and Qeddushah/Sanctus are linked to Second Temple literature. (3) Moreover, as we shall see, the vision of redemption of the Amidah corresponds to what is known from other sources about the tannaitic perspective that emerged from 70 CE to 200 CE. Blessings 10-15 commence with the great shofar's blast of freedom, announcing the ingathering of the exiles (10), and continue with the restoration of divine rule through righteous leaders (11), the meting out of appropriate deserts to the righteous and the wicked (12 and 13), the rebuilding of Jerusalem (14), and the return of the Davidic line (15). (4) Since the motifs are all biblical, the distinctive contribution made by this liturgy to the idea of national redemption lies in the particular linguistic formulation, in the sequence of events, and in the uncompromising emphasis on divine involvement, all of which converge to make the point that God alone is the redeemer as opposed to any human redeemer. (5)
