Nathan Brown (Assamese: নাথান ব্ৰাউন; 22 June 1807 – 1 January 1886) was an American Baptist missionary to India and Japan, Bible translator, and abolitionist.

In around 1843, based in Sibsagar, he began translating the New Testament into Assamese under the title Amar Trankôrta Yisu Khristôr Nôtun Niyôm (আমাৰ ত্ৰাণকৰ্তা য়িচু খ্রিষ্টৰ নতুন নিয়ম) which he published in 1848.

In 1835, David Scott, the Agent to the Governor General in the North-East Frontier invited American Baptist Missionaries working in Burma (now Myanmar) to come to Assam to spread Christianity and education;[5] Brown and Oliver Cutter were the first to arrive in 1837.

Brown's original intention had been to translate the Bible into Burmese, but he soon found himself pulled into a mission along with Cutter and Miles Bronson in the Indian region of Assam.

[1] He found that the Assamese Bible published by William Carey from the Serampore Mission Press (1832), in circulation at the time, consisted of Bengali and Sanskrit loan words, so it was idiomatically inadequate.

[3] Therefore, he undertook (together with Carey's old colleague Pandit Atmaram Sharma) the project of translating the New Testament into pure and simple Assamese.

[6] Following his return from Assam to New England in 1848, Nathan Brown joined the abolitionist movement,[7] delivering anti-slavery sermons in Boston.

Brown joined the American Baptist Free Mission Society and met with president Abraham Lincoln to discuss emancipation.

Brown published another satire showing America as seen through the eyes of one of these Japanese students, which was sharply critical of New England's materialism in place of spirituality.

One exchange student, for whom Nathan Brown wrote a letter of reference to the Bridgeport Academy, eventually became an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy.