The great work with which his name continues to be associated in the annals of Biblical scholarship is the Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum cum variis Lectionibus, 2 vols, fol., Oxford, 1776-80. The course of the studies which resulted in it may be gathered from the nature of the publications by which it was preceded. Two dissertations entitled The State of the Printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testament considered, published respectively in 1753 and 1759, were expressly designed to combat the then curremt ideas as to the “absolute integrity” of the received Hebrew text. The first contains “a comparison of 1 Chrom xi. with 2 Sam. v. and xxiii., and observations on seventy MSS., with an extract of mistakes and various readings”; the second defends the claims of the Samaι , itan Pentateuch, assails the correctness of the printed copies of the Chaldee paraphrase, gives an account of Hebrew MSS. of the Bible known to be extant, and catalogues one hundred MSS. preserved in the British Museum and in the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. His labours provoked severe animadversion in some quarters, and even from such men as Warburton and Home; but they at least had the effect of drawing public attention to the subject to which they related, and in 1760 he issued his proposals for collecting all Hebrew MSS. of date prior to the invention of printing which could be discovered either at home or abroad. Subscriptions to the amount of nearly £10,000 were obtained, and many learned men addressed themselves to the work of collation, Bruns of Helmstadtmaking himself specially useful as regarded MSS. in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Between 1760 and 1769 ten “annual accounts” of the progress of the work were given; in its course six hundred and fifteen MSS. and fifty-two printed editions of the Bible were either wholly or partially collated, and use wasalso made (butoften veryperfunctorily) of the quotations in the Talmud. The materials "thus collected, when properly arranged and made ready for the press, extended to 30 vols. fol. The text finally followed in printing was that of Van der Hooght,—unprinted however, the points having been disregarded in collation,—and the various readings were printed at the foot of the page. The Samaritan Pentateuch stands alongside the Hebrew in parallel columns. The Dissertatio Generalis, appended to the second volume, contains an account of the MSS. and other authorities collated, and also a review of the Hebrew text, divided into periods, and beginning with the formation of the Hebrew canon after the return of the Jews from the exile. Kennicott’s greatwork was in one sense a failure. 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 MSS. But the negative result of the publication and of the Variae Lectiones of De Rossi, published some years later, was important. It showed that the Hebrew text can be amended only by the use of the versions aided by conjecture.