A conference of rabbinic leaders that was supposed to have taken place in Jamnia (or Yavneh), a small town located on Israel's coastal strip between Jaffa and Ashdod about 90AD, where the list of books in the Jewish canon (i.e., the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) was affirmed and recognized.
It remains a matter of scholarly debate whether such a conference ever actually took place, because the sources for establishing its historical veracity are so uncertain, consisting of only suggestive hints here and there in the rabbinic writings. The idea of the council arose only in the late 19th Cent, when Heinrich Graetz suggested it as a parallel to the Christian Council of Nicea. What is more certain is that Jamnia seemed to have became a rabbinic center of sorts soon after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. There it seemed, the plurality of Jewish traditions and learnings characteristic of Judaism before the Temple's destruction were streamlined, committed to writing, and their authority affirmed. More significantly, it also began the process of rethinking and reformulating a Jewish theology that takes into account the loss of the Temple and all that it meant. Jamnia was replaced after the Second Jewish Revolt by Tiberias; it was there in Galilee that the final shape of the Jewish Mishnah and the text of the Hebrew Bible were standardized.
RESOURCES:
Robert C. Newman, "The Council of Jamnia and the Old Testament Canon," Westminster Theological Journal, 38.4 (Spring 1976): 319-348. pdf N
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