Joseph Estlin Carpenter (5 October 1844 – 2 June 1927) was an English Unitarian minister, the Principal and then President of Manchester College, Oxford.

[1] He was minister of Oakfield Road Church in Clifton (1866–1869) and Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds (1869–1875).

[5] He was described in the Encyclopedia Americana as an important "Sanskrit scholar and Biblical critic".

[8] He wrote a biography of his aunt Mary Carpenter, the prolific social reformer and educationalist.

Congregationalist Reginald John Campbell wrote that the book contains a "temperate and scholarly criticism of the Christ Myth theories.