Page 223 - GQ-9

New Genizah Documents 15*

B ‘Responsa’ — communications between a doctor and his patient.
Responsa (Latin: plural of responsum, ‘answers’) is a literary
genre consisting of a body of written decisions. In the Roman
Empire responsa meant the responses and thoughts of jurists, as
one of the sources of legal authority, along with laws originating
from magistrates, from the Senate, or from the emperor. In Judaism
responsa are known as she’elot ve-teshuvot ‘questions and answers’,
and comprise the body of written decisions and rulings given by
‘deciders of Jewish law’. The responsa literature covers a period
of 1,700 years-the mode, style and subject matter progressively
changing during the course of migrations of the Jewish people
and through the development of halakhic literature, particularly
the codes. In addition to requests for halakhic rulings, many of
the questions addressed were theoretical in character, particularly
amongst the earlier responsa. Accordingly, responsa contain rulings
on ethics, business ethics, the philosophy of religion, astronomy,
mathematics, history, geography, as well as interpretations of
passages in the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Midrash.
Thus, while early Jewish literature has few historical works,
many references to the history of Judaism were introduced into
the responsa. A similar use of responsa (here called fatwa¯) is
found in Islam.29 The main characteristics of this kind are a short
communication (separate or part of a long letter — for example,
Maimonides letter to Tovia T-S Ar.30.286);30 less detailed; less

29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsa (29.2.12); M. Elon, Jewish Law (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 1975).

30 S. M. Stern, Corpus Codicum Hebraicorum Medii Aevi (Ejner Munksgaard, Copenhagen,
1956). Part I, Vol III, pp. 27y28; see S. C. Reif (ed.), Published Material from the Cambridge
Genizah Collections: A Bibliography 1896y1980 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
1988), p. 189; Baker and Polliack, Arabic Old Series (as in n. 12), p. 209; R. J. W. Jefferson
and E. C. D. Hunter, Published Material from the Cambridge Genizah Collections: A
Bibliography 1980y1997 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), p. 130.