Passages in the Talmud have been adduced to show that the Shammaite objections to the canonicity of Ecclesiastes “were overruled by the positive declaration from the 72 elders, _being a testimony anterior to the Christian era_ that Coheleth is canonical; but they do not support the opinion.”(66) “The sages” referred to in the treatise Sabbat and elsewhere is a vague expression, resting apparently on no historic tradition—a mere opinion of comparatively late date. If it refer to the Jerusalem synod A.D. 65, the Hillelites were simply outnumbered there by the Shammaites. The matter was debated hastily, and determined for the time by a majority. But the synod at Jamnia consisted of 72 persons; and a passage in the treatise Yadayim refers to it.(67) The testimony of the 72 elders to whom R. Simeon ben Asai here alludes, so far from belonging to an anti-christian era, belongs to a date about 90 A.D. And the fact that the synod at Jamnia took up again a question already debated at Jerusalem A.D. 65, proves that no final settlement of the canon had taken place before. The canon was virtually settled at Jamnia, where was confirmed what R. Akiba said of the Canticles in his usual extravagant way: “No day in the whole history of the world is of so much worth as the one in which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the Scriptures are holy; but the Song of Songs is most holy.”(68) As the Hagiographa were not read in public, with the exception of Esther, opinions of the Jewish rabbins might still differ about Canticles and Ecclesiastes, even after the synod of Jamnia.