Council of Jamnia

The Council of Jamnia (the Synode zu Jamnia in German) was the name given by 19th century Jewish Heinrich Graetz to a council he hypothesized had been convened by Pharisees in Jamnia (also called Javneh or Jabneh) in the Palestine region in the late 1st century CE. He proposed that at this Council the third and final phase of the canonization of the Jewish scriptures was completed.

Graetz's theory of a council of Jamnia that finalized the canon first proposed in 1871, was popular for much of the 20th century. It was increasingly questioned from the 1960s onward and has now been largely discredited. The historical debate on the time of finalisation of the Jewish canon is still ongoing.