The Men of the Great Assembly: Prayer, the Canon, and the End of Prophecy

The returnees spoke Aramaic, half the children did not understand Hebrew, and Temple service had resumed only partly. The answer was the institution tradition calls the Men of the Great Assembly: a hundred and twenty sages headed by Ezra, including the last prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, alongside Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, Mordechai and Daniel.

They did three things that shaped all later Jewish life. First, they fixed the text of prayer: the Amidah of eighteen blessings, Kiddush, Havdalah, the blessings over food. Until then each person prayed as he could; now there was a common form that would work even without a Temple. Second, they settled the contents and order of the books of the Tanakh, sealing the canon. Third, they formulated the motto of the generations to come: 'Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah.'

Around the year 3448 Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi died. The Talmud states it flatly: 'When the last prophets died, the spirit of prophecy departed from Israel.' From then on, access to Heaven's will runs through study and interpretation. The age of the prophets ends and the age of the sages begins.