Samuel Gobat (26 January 1799 – 11 May 1879) was a Swiss Calvinist who became an Anglican missionary in Africa and was the Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem from 1846 until his death. Biography Samuel Gobat was born at Crémines, Canton of Bern, Switzerland, and baptised a member of the Reformed Churches of Bern-Solothurn. After serving in the Reformed at Bettingen from 1823 to 1826, he went to Paris and London, whence, having acquired some knowledge of Arabic and Ge'ez, he went out to Ethiopia under the auspices of the Anglican church with the Church Missionary Society. In 1834 Gobat married Marie Christine Regine Zeller (1813–1879), daughter of Christian Heinrich Zeller (1779–1860), educator, pioneer of the inner mission and Pietist hymnologist. They had ten children, among them: Hanna Maria Sophie Gobat (1838–1922), married in 1859 Reverend John Zeller (1830–1902), missionary in Nazareth who later became the leader of the Gobat School in Jerusalem, Sophie Rosine Dorothea ("Dora") Gobat (1842–1923), a missionary of St. Chrischona Pilgrim Mission, married in 1867 Carl Heinrich Rappard (1837–1909), missionary in Alexandria for the Pilgrim Mission, Maria Sophie Elisabeth Gobat (1844–1917), married in 1869 the Swiss publisher Paul Kober, and Blandina Marianne Gobat (1850–1926), married Theodor Friedrich Wolters (1837–1910), pastor in Smyrna, missionary in Nazareth and Jerusalem. His nephew was Charles Albert Gobat. Missionary career He visited Ethiopia twice, the first time from the beginning of 1830 to the end of 1832; returning to Europe, he took his wife Maria May, 1834. He then returned in March 1835, but his own ill health (he writes that he was confined to his bed, "suffering cruel pains") forced him to return to Europe in 1836. His journal of his stay in Ethiopia (Sejour en Abyssinie) was published in 1835 at Paris, and later translated into English as Journal of Three Years' Residence in Abyssinia. From 1839 to 1842 lived in Malta, where he supervised an Arabic translation of the Bible. During this time he was a missionary of the Church Mission Society. Episcopate in Jerusalem In 1846 he was consecrated second Protestant bishop of Jerusalem, under the agreement between the British and Prussian governments (1841) for the establishment of a joint bishopric for Anglicans, Lutherans and Calvinists in the Holy Land, carried by the Anglican Church of England and the united Evangelical Church in Prussia. Gobat succeeded the late Bishop Michael Solomon Alexander. He carried on a vigorous mission