Synod of Jabne

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Older research used the term Synod of Jabne (also: Council or Synod of Jamnia ) to refer to a meeting of Jewish authorities after the catastrophe of the destruction of the temple in AD 70 with the aim of realigning the Jewish religion. In the course of these consultations in Javne - Jamnia is the Greek name of the place - the scholars unilaterally broke with Jewish Christianity .

Until the most recent revision (2016) , the uniform translation published by the Catholic Church in 1980 still contained a chronological table of biblical history and the information: "At 100: The 'Synod' of Jamnia: Exclusion of Jewish Christians from the synagogue." But since the 1980s Research moved more and more away from this Synod.

Coining of the term

Heinrich Graetz coined the term “Synod of Jamnia” in 1871. He imagined that there had been a number of synodal assemblies. Only an authority endowed with authority was allowed to determine which books belonged to the canon of holy scriptures ( Tanakh ). Now, at the last synod in Jerusalem, shortly before the city was taken by the Romans, it was “tumultuous”. Due to circumstances, "the negotiations of this synod had not been recorded", and so in retrospect there were differences of opinion as to which books the Jerusalem synod had declared canonical. That is why the topic “at a later Synodal Assembly in Jamnia” was put back on the agenda. Graetz thus develops a picture of the Jabne assembly that is strongly shaped by his own time and culture.

The meeting of the Synod

Who proceeds from convening a synod Jabne, refers to a location in Mischnatraktat Yadayim (III, 5): On the day when we Eleazar ben Azariah .'Ve used patriarch instead of Gamaliel II (who had been deposed briefly) , the 72 elders would have made a positive decision on the canonicity of the books of Solomon and Ecclesiastes .

In 1978, Peter Schäfer assumed that there had indeed been such a meeting, but the aim was not to break with Christianity, but to clarify the controversial issues in which the schools of Hillel and Schammai were at odds. The result of the discussions was the Edujot mixed natractate , the oldest collection of halacha .

Fixation of the Jewish canon

The volume of the Jewish Holy Scriptures ( Tanakh ) was determined in a centuries-old process, beginning with the five books of the Torah. In Jabne, according to the Mishnah, the question was discussed whether the books of Ecclesiastes and Songs of Solomon belong to the canon or not. This was decided positively, but without lasting success, as the discussion about it (according to the same Mishnah) continued.

In his introduction to the Old Testament, Otto Eißfeldt , however, saw Christianity, which was “becoming dangerous from outside” to the Jewish faith, as the reason that the scope of the Jewish canon of writings had been established in Jabne, and Hartmut Gese went one step further : "There was no greater recognition of the New Testament events from the Jewish side than the completion of the formation of traditions on the level of the Old Testament."

Peter Schäfer, on the other hand, saw the Synod dealing with an internal Jewish clarification process: "The separation of Jews and Christians [...] was not a unilateral Jewish 'declaration of intent' at all, but a process that extended over a longer period of time and was influenced by both sides." is scientific consensus today.

Birkat haMinim (curse of the heretics)

Solomon Schechter studying texts from the Cairo Geniza (around 1895)

According to the Babylonian Talmud , Samuel the Little wrote a text on behalf of Rabban Gamliel , which was inserted into the Schmone Esre at the Synod of Jabne . Thus, one of the basic texts of the Jewish faith was expanded to include a cursing of the heretics ( minim ), which amounted to a self- cursing for any heretics present in the synagogue, thus keeping them away from the synagogue service.

After Samuel Krauss had already pointed out in 1893 that patristic literature repeatedly claimed that the synagogues were cursed three times a day, and that this was an allusion to the change in the Schmone Esre, Ismar Elbogen obtained this thesis almost canonical validity. In his standard work The Jewish Worship Service in its Historical Development , Elbogen formulated in 1913: “There can be little doubt that our prayer actually referred to Christians, it was one of the means to a complete separation of the two religions.” In the meantime he had Solomon Schechter published an uncensored text of the prayer of eighteen, discovered in the Cairo Geniza , which besides the "heretics" ( minim ) cursed the "Nazarenes" ( nozrim ):

“Let there be no hope to the apostate, and the presumptuous kingdom is hastily exterminated in our day, and the Nazarenes and the heretics may pass like a moment, be erased from the book of life and not written down with the righteous. Praise be to you, Lord, who humiliates the presumptuous. "

- Birkat haMinim in the Schmone Esre text of the Cairo Geniza, 9th century

The "presumptuous kingdom" is generally understood as the Roman government. Otherwise, according to Peter Schäfer, various dissident Jewish groups were cursed, including, but not exclusively, the “Nazarenes”. Maybe they weren't even in view when the original text of the Birkat haMinim was drafted.

Today's view

Today the meeting of the Synod in Jabne is regarded as a legend with which, in retrospect, the traditional rabbinical literature tried to stylize the new beginning after the catastrophe of 70 as a unified event under the leadership of recognized authorities. It has therefore become customary to speak of a “time of Jabne” that lasted until the Bar Kochba uprising . In this time window processes of identity development took place in Judaism. Jabne was undoubtedly a central place. In traditional literature, "diverse, controversial and reluctant processes became a selective event."

literature

  • Hubert Frankemölle: Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Prehistory - Course - Effects . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006. ISBN 3-17-019528-X .
  • Heinrich Graetz: Kohelet or the Solomon preacher (Appendix I: The canon and its conclusion). Leipzig 1871.
  • Peter Schäfer: The so-called Synod of Jabne. To the separation of Jews and Christians in the 1st / 2nd C. N. Chr . In: Studies on the history and theology of rabbinic Judaism (work on the history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, 15), Brill, Leiden 1978, ISBN 90-04-05838-9 . Pp. 45-64.
  • Günter Stemberger: Jabne and the canon . In: Biblische Theologie 3 (1988) pp. 163-174.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Holy Scriptures. Standard translation . Catholic Biblical Work, Stuttgart 1981, p. 1819 .
  2. ^ Heinrich Graetz: Kohelet . S. 149 .
  3. ^ Heinrich Graetz: Kohelet . S. 161 .
  4. ^ A b Heinrich Graetz: Kohelet . S. 162 .
  5. ↑ Peter Schäfer: The so-called Synod of Jabne . S. 59 .
  6. ↑ Peter Schäfer: The so-called Synod of Jabne . S. 60 .
  7. ↑ Peter Schäfer: The so-called Synod of Jabne . S. 57 .
  8. ↑ a b c Peter Schäfer: The so-called Synod of Jabne . S. 62 .
  9. ↑ Ismar Elbogen: The Jewish worship service in its historical development . 3. Edition. J. Kauffmann Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1931, p. 37.252-253 .
  10. ↑ Ismar Elbogen: The Jewish worship service in its historical development . 3. Edition. J. Kauffmann Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1931, p. 36 .
  11. ↑ Hubert Frankemolle: Early Judaism and Early Christianity . S. 270 .