The Council of Jamnia was a council held in 90AD, the significance of which is interpreted differently by Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Protestant scholars.
Christian scholars often describe the Old Testament as being formally codified at this meeting, but Jewish scholars usually state that the canon was fixed long before this date. Protestant scholars do not consider the Apocrypha to be part of the bible, and use their interpretation of this council as justification.
Jack P. Lewis writes in The Anchor Bible Dictionary Vol. III, pp. 634-7 (New York 1992):
- The concept of the Council of Jamnia is an hypothesis to explain the canonization of the Writings (the third division of the Hebrew Bible) resulting in the closing of the Hebrew canon. ... These ongoing debates suggest the paucity of evidence on which the hypothesis of the Council of Jamnia rests and raise the question whether it has not served its usefulness and should be relegated to the limbo of unestablished hypotheses. It should not be allowed to be considered a consensus established by mere repetition of assertion.
External links
- Robert C. Newman, 'The Council of Jamnia and the Old Testament Canon' (1983), an indepth discussion of the subject on the site of the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute.
- Steve Rudd, 'The Old Testament Canon: The council of Jamnia: 90 AD', a challenge of the interpretation of Jamnia current with some contemporary Catholic scholars.
- Protestant perspective
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