Charles Rufus Brown (1849–1914) was an American Baptist clergyman and biblical scholar. He did not originally intend such a career, even though his father was a Baptist clergyman. Aiming at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, he graduated and was serving in the Navy when he felt a call to the clergy. Resigning, he spent the next several years learning the languages and scholarship of the Bible, publishing and teaching at last in the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. He came home to a small Baptist ministry in New Hampshire.