MAZZOCCHI, ALESSIO SIMMACO. — A highly learned biblical scholar, philologist, and archaeologist, born at S. Maria di Capua on 22 October 1684, died at Naples on 12 September 1771. A theological canon at Capua (1712) and subsequently at Naples, where Archbishop Spinelli also appointed him rector of the Gran Seminario, he devoted himself to biblical exegesis. Highly esteemed by the king, who proposed him for an archbishopric—an offer M. always declined—he accepted the teaching of Sacred Scripture and theology at the Royal University.
Among his many philological, archaeological, and literary writings, the foremost place is occupied by the Spicilegium Biblicum, published in 3 volumes at Naples: a literal exegesis of Genesis (I: 1762); Exodus and other pericopes of the Old Testament (II: 1766); the Gospels, Acts, and pericopes of St. Paul (III: 1778; cf. Introd., I, p. xvii ff.). Having obtained Calmet’s commentaries, which had just been published, he prefixed to them a genuine general introduction, on the canon, etc.; in numerous excursuses he dealt at length with the most debated questions.
M. was the first to discover and assess the law of Hebrew parallelism, which he called « epesegesis » (I, pp. 44 f., 67, 168, 224 ff.; notes on Gen. 4:23 f.; 11:4; 49:10 f.; II, pp. 102 f., 268; notes on Num. 23:7; Is. 63:1), as early as the unpublished booklet De poesi Hebraeorum of 1740; whereas R. Lowth’s book, to which this discovery was attributed, dates only from 1753. He advocated the correct pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (Jahveh).
M.’s principal archaeological writings are: a Distertatio historica de cathodrali Ecclesiae Neapolitanoe semper unica variis diverso tempore vicibus (Naples 1751). M. was the first to make known the discovery, made in 1742, of the calendar carved on two marble slabs. In vetus marmoreum S. Neapolitanoe Ecclesiae Kalendarium commentarius (3 vols., ibid. 1744–55). He also published the text of the Actorum Bononensium s. Ianuarii et soc. martyrum (ibid. 1759). Other writings: Commentariorum in reg. Herculanensis Musei aeneas tabulas Heracleenses, pars I et II (ibid. 1754–55); Opuscula (3 vols., ibid. 1771–1824).