What makes you lose your place in olam habah?

Rappel

Thu, Sep 03 2020, 7:40 am

imasoftov wrote:

In the Gemara on that Mishna, it is explained that it means the books of the heretics (probably the early Christians). Rambam (included in the link) forbids reading the religious texts of idol worshipers.

In Modern Hebrew the term is used to refer to the Apocrypha, and in that Gemara Rav Yosef also forbids reading from Ben Sira and the Gemara goes on to discuss problematic passages (some of which are not in our editions of Ben Sira)

The Yerushalmi on the Mishna has Rabbi Akiva referring to the books of Ben Sira and Ben Laana (it's not known who the latter was) but the books of המירם (possibly a misspelling of Homer) and other later works are like "reading a letter". While it's not known precisely when Homer lived, he's referred to in other Greek sources older than Ben Sira, but it could be that his books only reached Chazal later.

I don't know whose idea this is, but I once heard that it could be that what was forbidden was to read from Ben Sira and such in shul as if they are part of Tanach.

Thorough and precise as always. I take my cap off to you.