Yavne > Yibna > Jabneh > Jamnia Israel Israel

Jamnia, settled also by Philistines, comes into Judah's hands in Uzziah's time.

Judas attacks the harbor of Jamnia in his anger at the inhabitants' hostility.

There is evidence that the ruthlessness exhibited by the Hasmoneans toward the Greek cities of Palestine has political rather than cultural origins, and that, in fact, they are fighting for personal power no less than for the Torah.

In any case, some of those who fight on the side of the Maccabees are idol-worshipping Jews.

Rabbi Johanan ben-Zakai had received Vespasian's permission during the siege of Jerusalem to withdraw to the town of Yibna (also seen as Jabneh) on the coastal plain, about twenty-four kilometers southwest of present-day Tel Aviv.

Here an academic center or academy is set up and becomes the central religious authority; its jurisdiction is recognized by Jews in Palestine and beyond.

Roman rule continues.

The Greek population of Jamnia in Judea erects an altar to the imperial cult (worship of the emperor) sometime in the winter of CE 39/40, and the resident Jews promptly tear it down, resulting in serious communal rioting.

…Jamnia (Jabneh, modern Yibna, about twenty-four kilometers southwest of present-day Tel Aviv), near the Judaean coast, and here he is joined by a number of his favorite disciples, including Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and Joshua ben Hananiah.

The two are credited with having smuggled their master out of Jerusalem in a coffin for burial, after pretending that he was dead.

The Pharisaic leaders, given the title of "rabbi" (Hebrew, "my teacher") shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem, rally the Jews for the reconstruction of religious and social life.

Jewish leader Johanan ben Zakkai, head of the Sanhedrin, has reconvened the Pharisaic assembly at Jabneh, where it becomes both an executive organ and an academy for the study of the Torah.

The Romans recognize the head of the Sanhedrin and give him the title of patriarch; Diaspora Jews recognize his authority and interpretation of Jewish law.

The Pharisees use the institution of the synagogues a center of worship and education, and to adapt religious practice to new conditions, maintaining a unified and informed Jewish community. (The synagogues of Palestine and the Diaspora were, for three centuries before the destruction of the Temple, the functioning centers of Judaism, though when and how the synagogue emerged is not known.)

The elaborate sacerdotal vestments, prescribed for the priests of the Temple in Exodus 28, disappear, along with the priestly function, after the Temple’s destruction.

The Jewish scholars and teachers called tannaim continue to elaborate and systematize the Oral Torah.

The Hebrew alphabet, under the influence of the related Aramaic alphabet, has evolved during the period of the Second Temple into the familiar Square Script still used today.

Gamaliel of Jabneh, a great-grandson of Gamaliel I who succeeds Johanan ben Zakkai as head of the Sanhedrin at Jabneh, organizes the synagogue service and standardizes the Jewish calendar, assigning fixed dates to festivals.

He petitions Emperor Domitian in 95 to rescind an edict expelling the Jews from the empire.

The Pharisees continue into the second century CE, working on the redaction of the Talmud and looking for the restoration of Israel through divine intervention.

Roman rule over Palestine continues.

Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and Joshua ben Hananiah by the end of the first century and the beginning of the second have become the leading teachers of their generation and are to have a profound influence on the greatest scholars of the next generation.

Gamaliel II of Jabneh, head of the Sanhedrin at Jabneh, who in 95 had petitioned Emperor Domitian to rescind Claudius's edict expelling the Jews from Rome, has organized the synagogue service and standardized the Jewish calendar, assigning fixed dates to festivals.

He also excludes sectarians from the synagogues.

The final canon of the Hebrew Bible is fixed about 100 at a meeting of rabbis held in Jabneh.

The break between Judaism and Christianity followed the Roman destruction of the Temple.

The adoption of the Septuagint by the Christians, who used it in preference to the Hebrew original, has aroused hostility among the Jews, who cease to use it after the fall of Jerusalem.

Starting approximately in the second century CE, several factors lead most Jews to abandon use of the Septuagint.

The earliest gentile Christians of necessity used the Septuagint, as it was at the time the only Greek version of the Bible, and most, if not all, of these early non-Jewish Christians could not read Hebrew.

The association of the LXX with a rival religion may have rendered it suspect in the eyes of the newer generation of Jews and Jewish scholars.

Instead, Jews used Hebrew/Aramaic Targum manuscripts later compiled by the Masoretes; and authoritative Aramaic translations, such as those of Onkelos and Rabbi Yonathan ben Uziel.

What was perhaps most significant for the Septuagint, as distinct from other Greek versions, was that the Septuagint began to lose Jewish sanction after differences between it and contemporary Hebrew scriptures were discovered.

Even Greek-speaking Jews tended less to the Septuagint, preferring other Jewish versions in Greek, such as that of the exceedingly literal Aquila translation of 130 CE, which seemed to be more concordant with contemporary Hebrew texts.

While Jews have not used the Septuagint in worship or religious study since the second century CE, recent scholarship has brought renewed interest in it in Judaic Studies.