History of responsa in Judaism

History of responsa in Judaism spans a period of 1,700 years. Rabbinic responsa constitute a special class of rabbinic literature, differing in form, but not necessarily in content, from Rabbinic commentaries devoted to the exegesis of the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and halakha (the codes of Jewish religious law). The codes themselves contain the rules for ordinary incidents of life. The responsa literature covers all these topics and more. The mode, style and subject matter have changed as a function of the travels of the Jewish people and of the development of other halakhic literature, particularly the codes. Forumulation of responsa, or she’elot ve-t’shuvot, which literally translates to questions and answers, generally involve an individual or group asking either teachers, rabbis, or heads of yeshivot about halakhah (Jewish law) and the party responding via an exchange of letters. Responsa literature spans 1700 years and there are even responsa being developed based on questions posed today. The development of responsa literature can be divided into four periods: the Tannaitic Period, the Geonic Period, the First Rabbinic Epoch,the Second Rabbinic Epoch, the Third Rabbinic Epoch, and the Fourth Rabbinic Epoch.

The responsa of the first five centuries are not contained in special works; they are scattered through the writings of both Talmuds (the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud). Works devoted especially to responsa first appear in the post-Talmudic period. Many responsa have been lost, but those extant number hundreds of thousands, in almost a thousand known collections.

No responsa are known to exist from before the Mishnah (200 CE); it is doubtful whether any were written before this period. A tradition held that no halakha (law) should be written down (see Oral Torah). Even when reluctance to write down rulings became obsolete, letters of a legal nature might be written only in cases where laws might likewise be reduced to writing. While the rule prevailed that no laws should be written, no communications of legal content were made by means of letters. Questions were usually communicated orally, or proposed to the academy by a teacher, who transmitted the answer and decision by word of mouth. The rarity of letters on legal problems in the Tannaitic era (the period the Mishnah covers) may be seen from a passage in the Tosefta (Ter. ii. 13 [1]), which states that Rabbi Gamliel secretly dispatched a messenger with an answer to a question; for if he desired to keep his decision secret, he would probably have sent a letter had such replies been customary at that time.

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