Benjamin Kennicott

[1] 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.

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.

Subscriptions to the amount of nearly £10,000 were obtained, and many scholars agreed to participate, Paul Jakob Bruns [de] of Helmstedt making himself specially useful as regarded manuscripts in Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

Between 1760 and 1769 ten "annual accounts" of the progress of the work were given; in its course 615 Hebrew manuscripts and 52 printed editions of the Bible were either wholly or partially collated, and use was also made (but often very perfunctorily) of the quotations in the Talmud.

It yielded no materials of value for the emendation of the received text, and by disregarding the vowel points overlooked the one thing in which some result (grammatical if not critical) might have been derived from collation of Massoretic manuscripts.

[2] It showed that all Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament,[3] whatever their affinities and distinctions, were the result of an editorial process in antiquity that shields the original text from inquiry except indirectly through the study of versions and quotations.

With Pearson as executor, she left property from the Chamberlayne estate in Norfolk to endow the two Hebrew scholarships at Oxford, mentioned above.