Joshua Bowen’s Rebuttal of "Kidnapping Was Punishable by Death" Examined

Dr. Joshua Bowen is an Assyriologist and scholar of the Ancient Near East. He holds a Ph.D. in Assyriology from Johns Hopkins University, along with master’s degrees in Old Testament and Semitic languages. He is the co-founder of the educational platform Digital Hammurabi, where he focuses on bringing academic Near Eastern scholarship and critical biblical analysis to the general public. He is the author of several books, including Did the Old Testament Endorse Slavery? and The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament.  Dr. Bowen literally wrote the primary playbook that modern critics and skeptics rely upon in the biblical slavery debate.

The Verse in Question

"Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death."

— Exodus 21:16

Christian apologists, myself included, frequently cite this capital statute to argue that the Torah categorically outlawed the predatory human pipeline behind ancient chattel slavery.

Bowen’s Rebuttal

Bowen challenges this apologetic defense on two fronts:

1. The Legal Category of "Man-Stealing": Bowen compares Exodus 21:16 to §14 of the Code of Hammurabi ("If a man steals the minor son of another man, he shall be put to death"). He argues that ancient Near Eastern kidnapping laws existed solely to protect free citizens within the polity from illegal abduction by fellow citizens, not to abolish slavery.

2. Jurisdiction and Foreign Slaves: Bowen asserts that Exodus 21:16 is strictly a domestic statute governing crimes within the covenant community. It does not apply to state-sanctioned war captives (Deuteronomy 20) or purchasing foreign chattel (Leviticus 25:44–46). Treating Exodus 21:16 as a blanket ban on slave procurement, Bowen claims, creates a direct contradiction with Leviticus 25:44.

1. Universal Language vs. Elite Class Protection

Bowen’s parallel between Exodus 21:16 and Hammurabi §14 collapses under direct philological examination:

• The Code of Hammurabi (§14): Explicitly restricts capital protection to an awīlum (the patrician free noble class) stealing the minor child of another awīlum (mār awīlim). It leaves commoners (muškēnum) and enslaved persons (wardum) entirely outside this protection; stealing an enslaved person in Babylon was merely an offense against commercial property compensated via fines (CH §15–16).

• Exodus 21:16: The Hebrew text uses אִישׁ (’îš) in its most unqualified, generic sense: "Whoever steals an ’îš [any person]..." Biblical Hebrew had precise terms if it intended to restrict this protection to free covenant insiders, such as ’āḥ ("brother/kinsman") or ‘am ("countryman"). Deliberately choosing the universal noun ’îš establishes an absolute baseline: human beings, by virtue of their existence, cannot be stolen and commodified.

2. The Internal Biblical Evidence: The Qualification in Deuteronomy 24:7

The strongest internal refutation of Bowen’s thesis is Deuteronomy 24:7, where the author explicitly adds the restriction that Exodus 21:16 deliberately omits:

"If a man is found stealing an ’îš from among his brothers the sons of Israel... then that thief shall die."

If the Covenant Code’s earlier formulation in Exodus 21:16 already carried an inherent, implied limitation to free Israelite citizens, Deuteronomy’s explicit addition (mê’eḥāw mibbənê yiśrā’ēl) would be legally redundant. Legal codification moves from broad moral-legal baselines (Exodus 21:16) to specific civil case applications (Deuteronomy 24:7). Bowen errors when he reads Deuteronomy’s localized civil application back into Exodus 21:16 to force an artificial parallel with Babylonian class law.

3. Dismantling the Supply Chain

Bowen argues that applying Exodus 21:16 universally contradicts Leviticus 25:44 ("you may buy slaves from the nations around you"). This represents a category error regarding ancient commerce:

• In antiquity, the primary feeder pipelines for slave markets were war captivity, piracy, and kidnapping (brigandage). An international merchant peddling human chattel across the Levant acquired merchandise overwhelmingly through violent, unauthorized abduction.

• Exodus 21:16 does not merely execute the original kidnapper; it mandates the death penalty for anyone who sells the victim, or in whose hand the victim is found (wə-nimṣā’ bə-yādô). Under biblical law, purchasing a kidnapped person makes the buyer criminally complicit in trafficking stolen human life.

• If Leviticus 25:44 permits purchasing foreigners residing in the land, that permission operates under the non-negotiable moral constraint of Exodus 21:16: one could contract for labor with an individual seeking economic relief or client-patron protection, but trafficking the victims of abduction raids remained a capital offense.

Conclusion

Dr. Joshua Bowen’s critique of the traditional apologetic appeal to Exodus 21:16 ultimately falters because it relies on a flawed comparative premise: reading Israel’s covenant charter through the anachronistic lens of Mesopotamian imperial class law.

By forcing Exodus 21:16 into the mold of the Code of Hammurabi §14, Bowen commits the classic error of parallelomania. He artificially restricts the universal Hebrew term ’îš ("any human being") to mean only free covenant insiders - an interpretive move flatly undermined by Deuteronomy 24:7, where the author explicitly inserts the localized tribal qualification ("from among his brothers the sons of Israel") that Exodus 21:16 deliberately omits.

Furthermore, using Hammurabi as a statutory straightjacket ignores the fundamental findings of modern Assyriology. As scholars like Jean Bottéro, Martha T. Roth, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, and Dr. Amanda H. Podany have demonstrated, the Code of Hammurabi was an idealized monument of royal propaganda and scribal science, not a binding penal code cited in daily legal verdicts.

Rather than copying Babylon’s property-indexed valuation of human life, biblical law introduced deliberate, revolutionary breaks:

1. It placed the unlawful seizure and sale of any person under the penalty of capital homicide.

2. It criminalized the commercial trafficking chain by executing anyone found in possession of an abducted human.

3. It rejected standard Near Eastern extradition treaties by granting unilateral asylum to foreign runaway slaves (Deuteronomy 23:15–16).

When stripped of the artificial Babylonian framework, the plain meaning of Exodus 21:16 stands firm: an absolute, capital prohibition against the predatory abduction and trafficking of human life, severing the foundational pipeline upon which ancient chattel slavery depended.