The purposes of this chapter are to describe briefly the wider historical and cultural setting in which the earliest manifestations of liturgical activity among the Hebrews and Jews are to be placed and to summarise the nature of that activity as it is recorded in both the pre-exilic and post-exilic books of the Hebrew Bible on the one hand and in the wider literature of the Second Temple period on the other. Establishing precisely the terminus a quo for Jewish worship is a matter that must remain controversial since it is bound up with the problem of identifying the relationship between Hebrews, Israelites and Jews and offering a judgement on the degree of religious continuity that one may genuinely trace from the biblical into the rabbinic period. It is the view of the writer that in the area of worship there is sufficient evidence of some degree of continuity to justify commencing this treatment from at least the period of the Hebrew monarchy. Aspects of the terminology, vocabulary, ritual, and the organisation of personnel and formulae which have their origins in the older, if not oldest, parts of the Hebrew Bible may still be traced, even if sometimes in mutated form, in the prayer-books that were written almost two thousand years later.