Benjamin Kennicott, an English clergyman, born in Totness, Devonshire, April 4, 1718, died in Oxford, Sept. 18, 1783. He was of humble parentage, and certain gentlemen contributed funds to send him to Oxford in 1744. Here he so distinguished himself by the publication of two dissertations on the "Tree of Life" and the "Oblations of Cain and Abel," that he obtained his degree of B. A. before the regular time. Soon afterward he was chosen fellow of Exeter college, and in 1767 he became keeper of the Radcliffe library at Oxford. He undertook to purify the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, maintaining, in an essay entitled "The State of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament considered," that the extant MSS. contained important errors, and that the text of the standard Hebrew Bible was in many parts corrupt. The publication of this dissertation excited a violent controversy. Among his opponents were Rutherford, professor of divinity at Cambridge, Bishop Warburton, and Horne, afterward bishop of Norwich. At Kennicott's suggestion a subscription of £10,-000 was raised to defray the cost of making a collation of all extant MSS. of the Old Testament. Several eminent scholars engaged in the work, Kennicott himself examining and collating all the MSS. of Great Britain and France, and Prof. Bruns those of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The task occupied nine years, during which 16 Samaritan and over 600 Hebrew MSS."were either wholly or in part collated; and the materials resulting from this investigation filled when transcribed 30 folio volumes.

As the result of this labor, Kennicott published his Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum cum Variis Lectionibus (2 vols, fol., Oxford, 1776-'80), founded chiefly on the text of Van der Hooght.