Samuel Gobat

Samuel Gobat ( born January 26, 1799 in Crémines in the Bernese Jura, † May 12, 1879 in Jerusalem) was a missionary and a Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem.

Life and work

Samuel Gobat occurred in 1820 in the Mission House of the Basel mission. In 1826 he undertook his first missionary journey in the service of the London Missionary Society. He subsequently spent three years in Cairo and three more in the Abyssinian highlands. In 1832 he returned to Europe in 1834 and married Marie Zeller, daughter of Christian Heinrich Zeller. The marriage went forth, among other things as a missionary became known daughter Dora Rappard. A nephew Gobats was the Nobel Peace Charles Albert Gobat and a grandson of the publisher Alfred Kober.

From 1835 to 1836 Gobat held back on in Abyssinia. He was then sent to Malta, where he began a translation of the Bible into Arabic. In 1846, five years after 1841, at the suggestion of Frederick William IV of Prussia, the Protestant bishopric of Jerusalem had been launched, Gobat was appointed as successor to the late Michael Solomon Alexander for the second bishop of the city. In his capacity as Bishop Gobat founded Protestant congregations and schools, orphanages and hospitals in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jaffa, Nablus and Nazareth. He was succeeded by Joseph Barclay.