MYTH OF THE COUNCIL AT JAMNIA
Following the loss of the Jewish temple and its cultus,
Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai requested permission from the Romans to establish a
religious academy at Jamnia. … For more than a century, many scholars have
taught that the Jews officially closed the third part of their biblical canon
at the Council of Jamnia. … It is unlikely, however, that the Jewish religious
leaders who gathered together (there was no council as such) at Jamnia around
90 c.e. made a final or
binding decision about their biblical canon. … The Jewish religious teachers
met at Jamnia after the destruction of Jerusalem to clarify how a religious
faith that was once based on a temple and sacrificial cult could survive
without these institutions. …
A Jamnia council decision is attractive, since no other
prior time can be identified when a significant decision was made about the
scope of the Hebrew biblical canon by the rabbinic teachers. No evidence,
however, supports any formal action taken at Jamnia, and this view is largely
abandoned today. The scope of the Hebrew biblical canon within Judaism was more
likely settled in the second century c.e.,
and possibly even later than that. …
That the so-called Council of Jamnia did not stabilize the
canon of the hb/ot is also seen in
the widespread debate throughout the rabbinic period (i.e., second to sixth
centuries C.E.) whether certain writings "deified the hands," a
rabbinic designation for a canonical text.[1]
Neither Josephus nor ancient Christian literature knows
anything of a Council of Jamnia or of a closing of the canon of scripture at
its sessions.[2]
Books were discussed at Jamnia, but they were also discussed
at least once a generation before and several times long after the Jamnia
period. [Newman] saw the Jamnia rabbis testing a status quo which
had existed beyond memory. "But no text of any specific decision has come
down to us (nor, apparently, even to Akiba and his students)." [3]
Frank M. Cross designates the Council of Jamnia "a
common and somewhat misleading designation of a particular session of the
rabbinic academy (or court) at Yabneh. … Recent sifting of the rabbinic
evidence makes clear that in the proceedings at the academy of Yabneh the
Rabbis did not fix the canon, but at most discussed marginal books,
notably Ecclesiastes (Qohelet) and the Song of Songs. . . . Moreover, it must
be insisted that the proceedings at Yabneh were not a 'council,' certainly not
in the late ecclesiastical sense.[4]
[1]
The Biblical Canon, pages 173, 174, 175. McDonald
[2]
The Canon Debate, page 153. McDonald and Sanders
[3]
Canon Debate, page 153
[4]
Canon Debate, pages 161-162
