Benjamin Kennicott

Benjamin Kennicott (4 April 171818 September 1783) was an English churchman and Hebrew scholar.

Life Kennicott was born at Totnes, Devon where he attended Totnes Grammar School. 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. 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. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls ended the transmissional monopoly of the Masoretic Text, but only in the Book of Isaiah and several much shorter passages, nonetheless comprising excerpts from almost every book of the Old Testament.

After Kennicott's death, his observations on Hebrew Bible passages were published as Remarks on Select Passages in the Old Testament (1787).

Kennicott Fellowship Kennicott's work was perpetuated by his widow, who founded two university scholarships at Oxford for the study of Hebrew. The fund originally yielded an income of £200 per annum. Past fellows include Hallel Baitner, S. R. Driver, Norman Whybray, Jocelyn Davey (Chaim Raphael), Anselm Hagedorn, Paul Joyce, Jennie Grillo, Timothy Lim, Daniel Falk, Katherine Southwood, and John Screnock. As of 2008, the value of the Kennicott Hebrew Fellowship was in the order of £19,263.

Publications A full facsimile of the Bodleian Library's Kennicott Bible, MS. Kennicott 1, has been published.

Family In 1771 Kennicott married Ann Chamberlayne, sister of Edward Chamberlayne the Treasury official, and sister-in-law of William Hayward Roberts. She survived him by many years, dying in 1831. A friend of Hannah More, she knew Hugh Nicholas Pearson and was influenced by his evangelical faith. With Pearson as executor, she left property from the Chamberlayne estate in Norfolk to endow the two Hebrew scholarships at Oxford, mentioned above.