This should not surprise us, as there were many of his colleagues who expressly prohibited the work to be read.(6) It may well have been the case that, although
Judah Ha-Nasi, editor of the Mishnah, did not share their antipathy towards Ben Sira, and may have been quite prepared to include even a specific quotation from that work, yet he may well have been totally unaware of the origin of that quotation by Rabbi Levitas, and may consequently have assumed it to have been an original statement by the latter.
The codification was given final form early in the 3rd century AD by
Judah ha-Nasi. The Mishna supplements the written, or scriptural, laws found in the Pentateuch.