Benjamin Kennicott

Benjamin Kennicott (4 April 1718 – 18 September 1783) was an English churchman and Hebrew scholar.

Kennicott was born at Totnes, Devon. He succeeded his father as master of a charity school, but the generosity of some friends enabled him to go to Wadham College, Oxford, in 1744, and he distinguished himself in Hebrew and divinity. While an undergraduate he published two dissertations, On the Tree of Life in Paradise, with some Observations on the Fall of Man, and On the Oblations of Cain and Abel, which obtained him a B.A. before the statutory time.

In 1747 Kennicott was elected a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and in 1750 he took his degree of M.A. In 1764 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1767 keeper of the Radcliffe Library. He was also a canon of Christ Church, Oxford (1770), and rector of Culham (1753) in Oxfordshire, and was subsequently given the living of Menheniot, Cornwall, which he was unable to visit and resigned two years before his death.

Kennicott's major work is the Vetus Testamentum hebraicum cum variis lectionibus (1776–1780). Before this appeared he had written two dissertations entitled The State of the Printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testament considered, published respectively in 1753 and 1759, which were designed to combat contemporary ideas as to the "absolute integrity" of the received Hebrew text. The first contains "a comparison of I Chron. xi. with 2 Sam. v. and xxiii. and observations on seventy manuscripts, with an extract of mistakes and various readings"; the second defends the claims of the Samaritan Pentateuch, assails the correctness of the printed copies of the Aramaic translation, gives an account of Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible known to be extant, and catalogues one hundred manuscripts preserved in the British Museum and in the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge.

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