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The Council of Jamnia (presumably Yavneh in the Holy Land) was a council that some claim was held late in the 1st century AD to finalize the development of the canon of the Hebrew Bible in response to Christianity; however, the canon was set at an earlier date.[1][2][3] 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.[4] 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,[5] 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.[6]