Samuel Ifor Enoch

Samuel Ifor Enoch (26 December 1914 – 10 June 2001) was Professor of New Testament Studies and Principal of the Presbyterian United Theological College, Aberystwyth in Wales.

Early life Samuel Ifor Enoch was born on 26 December 1914 at Ciliau Aeron, Cardiganshire, one of three sons of Jennie Enoch and J. Aeronydd Enoch. As a school boy in Ferryside in south Carmarthenshire Enoch grew up with serious breathing problems and he lost much of his grammar-school years due to recurring pneumonia. Enoch had pneumonia four times, once even surviving double pneumonia. Despite all this ill-health he continued to read and study and gained access to the University of Wales at Swansea where he studied Greek and, having won a Lewis and Gibson Scholarship, later read Theology at Westminster College, Cambridge.

In 1933, Enoch contributed one shilling (5p) towards the public fund-raising campaign which bought the Codex Sinaiticus from the Russian government for £100,000. It is now in the British Library in London.

Student days Enoch joined Columbia University, in New York City, where he researched for a Master of Philosophy degree. Here he came under the influence of the brilliant scholars at Union Theological Seminary, especially the Professor of Applied Christianity, Reinhold Niebuhr and F. C. Grant.

In 1966, Enoch was invited to revise the commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians prepared by his predecessor David Williams. and a member of the University of Wales Subject Panel (1971–1974). Enoch was a member of the New Testament and Apocrypha Panel of the New Welsh Bible from its origin in 1964 and remained on it until the publication of the full translation in 1988. In addition, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Wales from 1971 to 1974, and played a prominent role in the university's committees, and especially in the administration of the University College, Aberystwyth.