Kenan was Adam’s great-grandson, Seth’s grandson, and Enosh’s son. He is the subject of Genesis 5:12-14. It says, “When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters.  Thus, all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.” Kenan is included in the genealogy of the kings in 1 Chronicles 1:2 and the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:37-38. Another “Kenan” is the son of Arphaxad and is called the post-flood Kenan or the second Kenan. According to the Handbook for translators, “In Hebrew, this name is similar in spelling to Cain’s name, and it is thought to be a variant of ‘Cain,’ without suggesting that it is the same person.”[1] The difference in the Hebrew spelling of the two names is that Cain’s name has only two consonants. Kenan’s name has three. Hebrew was originally made of only consonants, and the vowels were not added until around 900 AD by the Masoretic Scribes. English transliterates Cain’s Hebrew name beginning with a hard “C” sound. Still, the Septuagint transliterates it with a “K.” Greek does not have a letter corresponding to our “C.” To keep the spellings consistent, Cain’s name was KN, and Kenan’s name was KNN.

Kenan lived and died before the flood, according to our Hebrew and English Bibles lists. He appears to have died a normal death. There are more than 200 epic flood stories from around the world. They are similar, yet each has its variant, which makes them somewhat different. According to the Islamic flood tradition, Kenan died in flood. The Religion Wiki page says that there are miniatures of Noah’s Ark that depict a kind of manned diving bell next to it. The bell was the innovation of Kenan, who was trying to escape the flood in his own way. But he ended up drowning in his own “Urine inside his contraption as God punishes him with a bladder infection.”[2]

Kenan lived for over 900 years. It’s interesting to note that none of the Pre-flood patriarchs made it to one thousand years. According to one article from the “Friday Magazine,” we might be the first generation to live that long. It says, “The chief science officer at the California-based Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescene (Sens) Research Foundation, a regenerative medicine research centre, and his team of scientists are working on a project that could make age-related diseases a thing of the past. In a nutshell, their mission is to extend the healthy human lifespan to a 1,000 years. In fact, Aubrey made a breath-taking announcement three years ago that the first person who will live to be 1,000 years has already been born.”[3] This might be “breath-taking,” but I’m not going to hold my breath! From what I can gather, a thousand-year lifespan is being preserved for those who make it to the millennial kingdom.

[1] Reyburn, William David, and Euan McG. Fry. 1998. A Handbook on Genesis. UBS Handbook Series. New York: United Bible Societies.

[2] https://religion.fandom.com/wiki/Kenan#cite_note-3

[3] https://fridaymagazine.ae/life-culture/people-profiles/soon-humans-will-be-able-to-live-1-000-years-1.2199205