Council of Jamnia

Scholars refer to the Council of Jamnia (presumably Yavneh in the Holy Land) as a late 1st-century AD gathering that some claim finalized the canon of the Hebrew Bible in response to Christianity. Heinrich Graetz first proposed this theory in 1871, and many scholars accepted it throughout much of the 20th century. Since the 1960s, scholars have increasingly challenged and largely discredited the theory, arguing instead that the Hebrew canon emerged earlier, possibly during the Hasmonean period. Rabbinic and Messianic Jewish scholars, however, highlight Jamnia's role in consolidating Jewish textual tradition and communal identity, emphasizing its importance for scriptural interpretation and religious authority rather than formal canonical closure.