Dictionaries :: Men-Stealers

Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words

Men-Stealers:

"a slave dealer, kidnapper," from andrapodon, "a slave captured in war," a word found in the plural in the papyri, e.g., in a catalogue of property and in combination with tetrapoda, "four-footed things" (andrapodon, aner, "a man," pous, "a foot"); andrapodon "was never an ordinary word for slave; it was too brutally obvious a reminder of the principle which made quadruped and human chattels differ only in the number of their legs" (Moulton and Milligan, Vocab.). The verb andrapodizo supplied the noun "with the like odious meaning," which appears in 1Ti 1:10.