The Review Professor Samuel Ifor Enoch Master of Arts, was Professor of New Testament Studies and Principal of the Presbyterian United Theological College in Wales.
Background
Samuel Ifor Enoch was born at Ciliau Aeron, Cardiganshire, one of three sons of Jennie Enoch and the Rev 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.
Education
Enoch joined Columbia University, in New York City, where he researched for an Master of Philosophy degree.
Career
Enoch had pneumonia four times, once even surviving double pneumonia. 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. lieutenant is now in the British Library in London.
He was delighted when in 1964 Harold Wilson was elected Prime Minister.
From Aberdare Enoch went to, where he stayed for nearly 50 years, as Professor of Greek and New Testament Studies (1953-1962), and then as a very successful and popular Principal of the United Theological College from 1963 (after the death of WR Williams), until his retirement in 1978, when he was succeeded by Professor Rheinallt Nantlais Williams.
He was deeply interested in the archaeological findings of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Gospels in 1945 and the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.
Politics
He was proud of his left-wing credentials as a Christian Socialist and gave his support to the Labour Party.
Membership
He was a prominent member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas 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.