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Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל
The halakhic midrash on Shemot — Oral Torah organized as running commentary on the verse rather than by topic like the Mishnah (Mishnah). With the Sifra and Sifrei it preserves the tannaim's exegetical workshop: how law was actually derived from the written text.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל
- Also known as
- Mekhilta
- Era
- tannaim
II. When
- Traditional
- tannaitic; from the school of R' Yishmael, redacted after the Mishnah
- Academic
- redacted c. 3rd c. CE in Eretz Yisrael from tannaitic material
- Duration
- ≈70 years
- Precision
- disputed
IV. What
- Language
- Mishnaic Hebrew
- Redaction
- Anonymous; ascribed by its title and its hermetical fingerprint to the school of R' Yishmael, R' Akiva's (Rabbi Akiva) great interlocutor. The title "Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael" is attested only from the geonic period.
- Structure
- A halakhic midrash on Shemot, beginning at chapter 12 (the first communal mitzvah) and covering the legal portions through chapter 23 plus Shabbat passages; nine massekhtot (Pischa, Beshallach, Shirata, Vayassa, Amalek, Bachodesh, Nezikin, Kaspa, Shabbeta).
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The work is a tannaitic halakhic midrash on Shemot that begins at chapter 12 — the chapter of "This month shall be for you" (12:2), the point where (as Rashi's famous first comment on the Torah notes) the Torah's commanded law begins.
Confidence is for the checkable fact of the work's scope and opening. |
rabbinic tradition | ★★★★★ | |
| The attribution to R' Yishmael's school rests on the work's hermeneutics and the prominence of R' Yishmael and his students in it, not on a Talmudic statement; the title itself first appears in geonic literature. | tradition reconstruction | ★★★☆☆ |
|
| Academic consensus dates the redaction to the 3rd century CE in Eretz Yisrael, from genuinely tannaitic material; a minority view (Wacholder) arguing for a much later, pseudepigraphic composition has been generally rejected. | reconstruction | ★★★☆☆ |