MOCHA viriln '1) of Palestine or Tiberias, flourished circa A. D. 570. Very little is known about the personal history of this remarkable scholar, who immortalised his name by fixing and amplifying, or, as some will have it, by inventing the interlineary system of vocalization kcvc, (ririnn), called the Tiberian or Palestinian (11N Inn) riN), which has for centu ries been commonly adopted both by Jews and Christians in the pointed editions of the Hebrew Scriptures, to the exclusion of the superlineary system oyr,, 163/n iptin), called the Babylonian or Assyrian ('rip), 1171 which was invented or extended by Acha of Irak in the first half of the 6th century. Like his predecessor R. Acha, the author of the oppo site system, R. Mocha also compiled a large and small Masson?, in which he discusses the writing of words with or without the vowel letters (89n nom), the affixing of certain accents (111)1))), accented syllables, Dagesh and Raphe, rare forms, archaic words, homonyms, etc. etc., as is evident
from an ancient MS. of the Pentateuch by Firko witsch, where the following Massoretic gloss fre quently occurs, Rabbi Mocha writes this with and that without the vowel letters.' These Massoretic glosses he wrote in Aramaic and in the Tiberian dialect, being the language of the Palestinian Jews, in order to make his labours accessible and intelli gible to the people at large. Not unfrequently, however, these Massoretic glosses are intermixed with notes written in Hebrew (comp. Pinsker, Likule Kadmonijot, Vienna 186o, p. 62, appendix ; Graetz, Geschichte der yuden, vol. v., Magdeburg ,86o, p. 552 ; Furst, Geschichte des Karderthums, vol. i., Leipzig 1862, pp. 15, ff. ; 134, ff.)—C. D. G.