Person · 325–1235 AM · 3436 BCE — 2526 BCE
Kenan קינן
the fourth generation from Adam
The fifth chapter of Bereshit is built like an inventory: for each generation it gives the father's age at the son's birth and the son's total years. Of Kenan exactly this is said: Enosh lived ninety years and fathered Kenan; Kenan lived nine hundred and ten years and died.
Not one deed, not one word of his is recorded. Yet the count is made of just such lines: take Kenan away and seventy years are missing between Adam and Noach, and with them the whole chronology from Creation falls apart.
He lived to see Noach born: Noach was born in 1056, Kenan died in 1235. The world before the Flood was so ordered that a man could see his great-great-great-grandson.
On the timeline
325 · 3436 BCEThe Births of Kenan, Mahalalel and Yered1140 · 2621 BCEThe Deaths of Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel and Yered
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereshit 5:9–14 — the years of birth and life in the inventory of chapter five
- I Chronicles 1:1–4 — the same line from Adam to the sons of Noah, repeated in the Writings a thousand years after the Torah
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.