The prayers of the books of Maccabees and the Shemone Ezre

The studies on Jewish prayer underline the importance of Qumran texts and of Sirach 36 and 51 to decipher the religious and literary background of the Shemone Ezre. The present article examines the prayers written in Greek of I and II Maccabees. The author is convinced that the examination of these texts should be added in order to specify the milieu of the Shemone Ezre. It means that Hellenistic Judaism had an influence on the constitution of this prayer. Perhaps the division between Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism was not so sharp as some pretend it to be.