Jamnia

Jamnia , biblical Jabneel and Jabneh [Heb.,=God causes to build], ancient city, central Israel. Its modern name is Yavne. A central city of Philistia, the Bible refers to its walls being destroyed by Uzziah. It was pillaged by Judas Maccabaeus and later rebuilt. In the last years before the sack of Jerusalem (AD 70), Jamnia became a great Jewish cultural center. At the prayer of Johanan ben Zakkai , Vespasian spared Jamnia and permitted Johanan to settle there as leader of the Jewish community after the fall of Jerusalem. The Great Sanhedrin was moved to Jamnia, and the city became the capital of the Jews until the rise of Simon Bar Kokba . In the Middle Ages the Crusaders fortified the city.

Jamnia or Jabneh, a city c.13 miles south of Joppa. After the fall of Jerusalem (AD 70), an assembly of Jewish religious teachers was established there. The subjects discussed by the rabbis apparently included the status of certain biblical Books, but there is no evidence to support the suggestion that a particular synod, held here c.100, settled the limits of the OT canon.

Jamnia A city (also spelt Jabneh or Javneh) south of Joppa where after 70 CE a body of Jewish teachers met by way of succeeding to the role of the Sanhedrin but without any formal constitution. It has been suggested that the canon of the Hebrew OT was settled here, but this is unlikely. It was at any rate in the Jamnian period, up to 135 CE—when it was important to come to terms with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and to reconstruct a new and authentic Judaism—that the status of books like Ecclesiastes would have been discussed. It is likely that the condemnation of heretics (Christians) was agreed. See baraitha.