1. A Jewish critical work on the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, composed by several learned rabbis of the school of Tiberias, in the eighth and ninth centuries. 2. a vast body of textual criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures including notes on features of writing and on the occurrence of certain words and on variant sources and instructions for pronunciation and other comments that were written between AD 600 and 900 by Jewish scribes in the margins or at the end of texts
