Lexicon

G0405 - andrapodistes

Strong's: G0405 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: an-drap-od-is-TACE Part of speech: masculine noun Root: from andrapodizō, "to reduce to slavery, sell as a captive", built on andrapodon, a person taken captive and sold NT occurrences: 1. Measured in the Strong's-tagged KJV (kjv.json): the only verse tagged G405 is 1 Timothy 1:10, rendered "menstealers".

Semantic range

1. A kidnapper who sells people into slavery; a slave-dealer. The word names the person who makes slaves out of free people, by capture or abduction, and trades them. It is formed from the ordinary Greek word for a captive sold off after a raid or a war.
2. Translations divide the same meaning between the act and the trade: KJV "menstealers", many modern versions "kidnappers", others "slave traders" or "enslavers". All four are the same person seen from different ends of the transaction.

It does not mean a household master as such (Greek has despotēs and kyrios for that, the words Paul uses in the household codes). It names the supply side: the one who turns a free person into merchandise.

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Theological force

It translates a capital crime of the Torah

The list in 1 Timothy 1 is introduced with "we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully" (1:8). The man-stealing it condemns is the one the Torah punishes with death:

• Exodus 21:16: "he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." The verb is ganab (H1589), measured in kjv.json as the same Strong's number as the Eighth Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal" (Exodus 20:15). Man-stealing is theft of a person, and the possessor ("found in his hand") is as guilty as the seller.
• Deuteronomy 24:7: the kidnapper who "maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him ... shall die", closing with the purge formula "thou shalt put evil away from among you".

Its place in the list

Read 1 Timothy 1:9-10 beside Exodus 20:12-16 and the second half of the list runs in the order of the second table of the Decalogue:

So andrapodistēs sits where theft sits, and the theft it names is the Torah's gravest form of it, the stealing of a person.

Beside the sexually immoral

In the same verse, andrapodistai stands next to pornoi ("whoremongers", G4205). That matters for a common objection: "Paul forbids sexual immorality and disciplines it (1 Corinthians 5:11 uses the same word pornos), so why does he never forbid slavery?" The answer is in this list. The one form of slavery that is evil in itself, making a free person into property by abduction and sale, is placed in the same catalogue of lawlessness as sexual immorality. See Why Didnt God Ban Slavery Objection Defeater.

Apologetic load

1. The Atlantic trade stands condemned by name. The transatlantic system was supplied by capture and sale and sustained by buying and holding the captured. Exodus 21:16 reaches the seller and the holder; 1 Timothy 1:10 names the trader. See Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater and Chattel Slavery vs Biblical Servitude.
2. It answers "the Bible never condemns slavery". It condemns the act that creates chattel slavery. What the Bible regulates rather than forbids are other arrangements (debt service, the war captive in place of death); see Israelite Slavery Possession-vs-Ownership Defeater.
3. It exposed the proslavery reading in its own day. A reader who owned people acquired through the trade was holding what Exodus 21:16 calls stolen persons. See Christian Abolitionist Movement.
4. Honest limit. The word does not by itself abolish every form of servitude, and a defense should not claim it does. Its force is narrower and sharper: the trade that built modern chattel slavery is listed among the things "contrary to sound doctrine" (1:10).

Notable verses

• 1 Timothy 1:9-10, the only occurrence, in the vice list read against the Decalogue
• Exodus 21:16, man-stealing a capital crime; the possessor liable
• Deuteronomy 24:7, the kidnapper who "maketh merchandise" of a brother shall die
• Exodus 20:15, "Thou shalt not steal", the same Hebrew verb
• Revelation 18:13, Babylon's cargo list ending in "slaves, and souls of men"

See also

Lexicon

• G1401 - doulos, the slave or servant, the person the trade produces
• H5650 - ebed, the Hebrew servant
• H1865 - deror, the proclaimed liberty of the jubilee

Concepts and defeaters

• Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater
• Why Didnt God Ban Slavery Objection Defeater
• Four Pillars of Chattel Slavery
• Chattel Slavery vs Biblical Servitude