The individual blessings contained in this prayer are probably older than the compilation of all eighteen benedictions, which apparently took place toward the end of the first century A.D. In this early phase, the wording of the benedictions seems to have varied, but their main purpose and contents were fixed. In the days of Jesus the wording and sequence of the elements of the synagogue service had attained such stability that we are fully justified in speaking of a synagogal liturgy. The echoes