A group of individual rabbinic texts that interpret different books of the Pentateuch. The name reflects the fact that these books deal largely, though by no means exclusively, with matters of halakhah, the interpretation and application of biblical laws. (It is apparently because of their concern with halakhah that these texts were compiled exclusively on the biblical books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; Genesis, because it contains little of an overtly legal character, was not included in the scope of the halakhic midrashim.) The halakhic midrashim include the Mekhilta deR. Ishmael and Mekhilta deR. Shimon b. Yohai (both on Exodus), Sifra (on Leviticus), Sifrei Numbers and Sifrei Zutta (both on Numbers) and Sifrei Deuteronomy and Midrash Tanna’im (both on Deuteronomy).

Because of the apparent doubling of halakhic midrashim on each of the four books, David Hoffman and later scholars have pursued the possibility that the two different “sets” of halakhic midrashim derive from two ancient schools of rabbinic interpreters, those of R. Aqiba and R. Ishmael. While clear differences in content, approach, rabbinic scholars cited, and halakhic terminology do indeed characterize the different sets, Hoffman’s thesis has nonetheless been shown by later scholars to oversimplify matters somewhat: non-halakhic material in the two sets does not seem to derive from the same putative sources as the halakhic material, and it is far from clear, moreover, which characteristics in the two sets reflect differences fundamental to the texts themselves and which may merely reflect preferences of the texts’ final editors. With regard to date, since the rabbis cited in them are generally tanna’im along with some first-generation ‘amora’im, the halakhic midrashim are generally assumed to have been compiled sometime in the third century c.e. (though some scholars have questioned this assumption as well). If this dating is correct, the halakhic midrashim represent, after the Mishnah, Tosefta, and perhaps one or two other texts, the earliest stage of rabbinic writings.