Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg

Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg was born on June 24, 1682, in Pulsnitz, in the German state of Saxony. His father was a grain merchant, and both of his parents died while he was young. He was raised in difficult circumstances. As a boy he was often sick, and he suffered long periods of weakness. A deep religious sense awakened in him when he was young, and he was drawn to the Pietist movement, which stressed personal faith and holy living. He went to study at the University of Halle, a center of Pietism, where he came under the influence of August Hermann Francke.

In 1705 the king of Denmark, Frederick IV, wanted missionaries to serve in the Danish colony of Tranquebar, on the southeastern coast of India. He had difficulty finding anyone in Denmark who would go, and he turned to Halle. Ziegenbalg and a friend, Heinrich Plütschau, volunteered. They sailed in 1706 and landed on the Indian coast after a long journey. They were the first Protestant missionaries to India.

The welcome was not warm. The Danish officials and merchants in Tranquebar were suspicious of the missionaries, and some of them wanted nothing to do with converting the local people. Ziegenbalg was put under pressure, and in 1708 he was arrested by the governor and spent several months in prison. He used the time to study Tamil, the language of the people. He learned to read and write it with great skill. He also studied the Hindu religion, reading the texts and speaking with priests, so that he could present the gospel in a way that his hearers could understand.

He translated the New Testament into Tamil, completing it in 1711 and publishing it in 1714. He also began work on the Old Testament, though he did not live to complete it. He set up a printing press, a school for children and a seminary to train Indian teachers. He built a church, the New Jerusalem Church, which was dedicated in 1718. He wrote letters back to Germany to describe the work, and they were widely read and stirred many to prayer. He also produced a study of Hindu gods and customs, which was one of the first careful accounts of the religion by a European.

His approach was marked by respect for the language and culture of the people. He did not treat them with contempt and insisted that they were made in the image of God. He worked to train a native ministry and believed that the Indian church must eventually lead itself. These ideas were ahead of his time.

His labors were not without fault. He was an intense man who drove himself hard, and he had quarrels with the Danish officials and with the mission board in Copenhagen. Some in Europe felt that he was too bold in his methods and too independent. He was also known to be harsh at times with those who disagreed with him. The conflicts wore him down.

He returned to Europe for a short visit in 1714 to defend his work and to raise support. He married and went back to India. His health had been broken by the years of work and by recurring illness. He died on February 23, 1719, at the age of thirty-six. He had worked in India for only thirteen years. Yet he left a Tamil New Testament, a church, a school and a pattern for the missionary work that followed. His short life shows how much can be done when a man of faith pours himself out in a single place.