to announce good news; in the New Testament, above all to proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This verb means to bring good news. Built from the same root as the English-borrowed word evangelize, it is the action behind the noun for good news (the gospel): to be the one who carries glad tidings and says them out loud.
The word can name any happy announcement. An angel uses it to tell an old priest that he will finally have a son, and Paul uses it when a friend brings back a cheering report about a church. But in the hands of the New Testament writers it became almost a technical term for one specific announcement: that God has acted to save people through Jesus, his death, and his resurrection. That is what the apostles travel from town to town to do.
So the two uses are not really two different words but one word at two settings of the dial. The common thread is news that is genuinely good, delivered to people who need to hear it. The narrow Christian use is simply this same verb pointed at the best news of all.
Unlike a more neutral word for proclaiming or heralding, this verb carries the goodness of the message inside it. You cannot announce bad news with it. To use this word is already to claim that what you are saying is glad tidings.
Nuances
1ato proclaim the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ; to preach the gospel
the Greek is one verb of announcing, not a verb plus a noun, and in most New Testament uses points specifically at the gospelLuk 2:10
Both
both describe carrying a genuinely glad report to people who need to hear itLuk 1:19
Only bring good news
the plain English keeps the message generic and everyday, missing how loaded the word usually is in the New Testament
“preach”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“proclaim”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How euangelizomai differs from similar Greek words
κηρύσσωto herald or proclaim openly, like a town crier; it stresses the public act of announcing and does not, on its own, say whether the news is good
Built on the word for good news, so the message itself is gladness: announcing the arrival of salvation, not merely making a statement. It is the natural word for declaring the gospel as good tidings.Luk 2:10Act 13:32Rom 1:15
Names the content rather than the manner, so it can take the message as its object (the gospel, the faith, Jesus) and is used for spreading the news in ordinary conversation, not only formal address.Act 8:4Act 8:35Gal 1:23
Both
Both name the public spreading of the Christian message and are used side by side for the same activity of Jesus and the apostles, so a single passage can pair them as one ministry of proclamation.Luk 4:18Luk 8:1
Both carry the good news of salvation to people who have not heard it, which is why the question of how anyone can hear answers them together.Rom 10:15Rom 10:8
Pictures a herald making a public proclamation: announcing openly and with authority, regardless of whether the content is welcome. The stress falls on the act of declaring, not on the message being glad.Mat 3:1Mrk 1:45Luk 12:3
Used for the act of preaching in its own right, often without a stated object, and even for proclaiming a person where no good-news content is in view, so it can describe announcing as such.Mrk 16:152Co 4:5Rom 2:21
καταγγέλλωto announce or make known formally; it names the act of declaring a matter publicly without the built-in claim that the message is glad tidings
The goodness is inside the word: it does not simply report a message but brings glad tidings, announcing something as welcome and joyful.Luk 2:10Luk 4:18Rom 10:15
Both
Both are verbs for openly proclaiming the Christian message to others, and both are used for preaching Christ and his resurrection.Act 8:35Act 17:3
A neutral public-declaration verb: it announces or makes something known, and what is announced has to be named because the word itself does not say whether the news is good; it can even report a charge that someone teaches unlawful customs.Act 16:21Act 4:2
This word carries its content in itself: to announce good news. What is proclaimed is glad tidings, a message of joy and salvation, so the word already says the news is good.Luk 2:10Luk 4:18Rom 10:15
It is the herald's act of carrying an announcement to those who have not yet heard, reaching out into new places and new audiences rather than instructing a standing group.Act 8:4Act 8:40Rom 15:20
Both
Both are the public spoken ministry of the word, and the same people carry on both together, so a single scene can describe teaching and announcing the good news side by side.Luk 20:1Act 5:42Act 15:35
This word is about imparting instruction and doctrine, forming those who are already listening. Its object is what is being taught: commands, how to live, a body of teaching that hearers are to learn and keep.Mat 5:2Mat 28:20Mat 15:9
It is the settled activity of a teacher working in fixed places, the synagogue and the temple, where a rabbi sits and instructs a gathered audience over time.Mrk 1:21Luk 4:15Jhn 7:14
Names the act of announcing, so almost anyone can be the one doing it: an angel to Zechariah and to the shepherds, Jesus himself, Paul, and ordinary believers scattered by persecution.Luk 1:19Luk 2:10Luk 4:18Act 8:4Rom 15:20
Regularly says what was announced, naming the content of the message: Jesus, peace, the promise made to the ancestors, the unsearchable riches of Christ, even the faith the speaker once tried to destroy.Act 8:35Act 13:32Eph 2:17Eph 3:8Gal 1:23
Because it is something done, it can be done wrongly, done under obligation, or done free of charge, and Paul can imagine even an angel announcing a different message and being cursed for it.Gal 1:8Gal 1:91Co 9:161Co 9:182Co 11:7
The announcing can also fail to land: Hebrews says the good news reached an earlier generation and did them no good because they did not trust it, and Peter can speak of it reaching even the dead.Heb 4:2Heb 4:61Pe 4:6
Both
Both are about the one message of good news about Jesus, and they can describe the same man from two angles: Philip announces that message to the Ethiopian official, and later Philip is simply called by this role.Act 8:35Act 21:8
Neither belongs to the apostles alone: the message spreads through believers driven out of Jerusalem, and the people named for that work stand as their own group alongside apostles and prophets.Act 8:4Eph 4:11
Names a person rather than an activity, and does so as a settled description attached to a particular man: Philip is introduced as "the evangelist" long after the announcing he did in Samaria.Act 21:8
Marks a recognized standing in the church, set in a list of the people Christ gave it, beside apostles, prophets, shepherds, and teachers.Eph 4:11
Carries a definable job that someone else can be told to take up: Timothy is charged to "do the work of an evangelist," which treats the word as a role with recognizable duties.2Ti 4:5
Appears only three times in the New Testament, so it never develops a range of uses; each of the three simply identifies someone by this one description.Act 21:8Eph 4:112Ti 4:5
Names the ACT of announcing the good news itself, the proclaiming of a message, whether or not anyone yet responds.Luk 4:18Act 8:4Rom 10:15
The content is fixed: it is always the good news, the message about Christ, so the word can stand alone for preaching that specific gospel.1Co 15:1Gal 1:8Eph 3:8
Both
Both belong to the work of spreading the faith and appear side by side: the good news is announced and, where it takes hold, followers are made.Act 14:21
Names the RESULT of bringing a person into a settled, ongoing role as a learner and follower, not merely the announcing of a message.Mat 28:19Mat 13:52
Can describe a single named individual who has become a follower, focusing on the person formed rather than the message spoken.Mat 27:57
euangelizomai in the other biblical languages
בָּשַׂרHebrew“to bear tidings”the Hebrew verb for bearing good news that this Greek word renders in the Greek Old Testament, especially the herald of good tidings in Isaiah whom the New Testament echoes
By the New Testament it has hardened into a term for one particular message, the good news of Jesus and the kingdom, and it never carries bad news; even a warning is framed as a rival, false good news.Act 8:351Co 15:1Gal 1:8
It names an ongoing mission: proclaiming that message from place to place as the sustained work of the church, not a single messenger reporting one event.Act 8:4Rom 15:20Act 14:7
Both
Both mean to announce news aloud to people who have not yet heard it, a herald publishing what has happened. The Greek word is the standard rendering of the Hebrew, and Paul proclaims his message by quoting the very Hebrew line.Isa 52:7Rom 10:15
Both can carry the specific good news of God's saving reign and rescue announced to his people, which is why Jesus reads the Hebrew promise and applies it to what he himself proclaims.Isa 61:1Luk 4:18
It is at home in ordinary reporting of events, above all the runner who brings word of how a battle went; the tidings can be neutral or even crushing, not necessarily welcome.2Sa 18:191Sa 4:171Sa 31:9
What scholars say about euangelizomai
BDAG distinguishes a general sense (to bring/announce good news) from the predominant New Testament sense (to proclaim the divine message of salvation, the gospel), treating the latter as a near-technical usage especially in Luke-Acts and Paul. Friedrich's TDNT article traces the word's force back to the Septuagint rendering of Hebrew bsr, above all the herald of good tidings in Isaiah 40:9, 52:7, and 61:1, the background the Synoptics and Paul invoke; the middle voice is the standard New Testament form. Stuhlmacher and the EDNT entry emphasize that for Paul the verb names the eschatological proclamation of God's saving act in Christ, with the act of announcing and the content announced bound together. The few non-technical occurrences (the angel to Zechariah in Luke 1:19, Timothy's report in 1 Thessalonians 3:6) confirm that the general sense survives alongside the specialized one rather than being displaced by it.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. εὐαγγελίζωlexicon
G. Friedrich, "εὐαγγελίζομαι κτλ.," TDNT 2:707-737theological-dictionary