Birkat HaMinim: Jews and Christians in Conflict in the Ancient World

Since the patristic period, the birkat haminim has attracted Christian attention. This twelfth benediction of the central, thrice-daily Jewish weekday prayer of eighteen benedictions (actually, for most of its history, nineteen), calls for the downfall of various categories of humans who harm the Jewish community. Instituted at Yavneh in the late first century according to talmudic tradition, it was understood by Jerome and Ephiphanius and perhaps even by Justin to curse Christians. The earliest preserved liturgical texts, from the end of the first Christian millennium (though not from Christian lands), would seem to confirm this, naming Christians explicitly. But was this the original intent and/or language of the prayer?