Council of Jamnia

The Council of Jamnia (presumably Yavneh in the Holy Land) was a council purportedly held late in the 1st century AD to finalize the development of the canon of the Hebrew Bible in response to Christianity. It has also been hypothesized to be the occasion when the Jewish authorities decided to exclude believers in Jesus as the Messiah from synagogue attendance, as referenced by interpretations of John 9:22 in the New Testament. The writing of the Birkat haMinim benediction is attributed to Shmuel ha-Katan at the supposed Council of Jamnia.

The theory of a council of Jamnia that finalized the canon, first proposed by Heinrich Graetz in 1871, was popular for much of the 20th century. However, it has been increasingly questioned since the 1960s onward, and the theory has now been largely discredited.