to proclaim openly in public: to announce a message, above all the gospel, so that it is made widely and formally known
This word belongs to the public square. In everyday Greek it was the language of official announcements:
- declaring war
- publishing a decree
- denouncing someone before a court
- announcing the arrival or accession of a ruler
Its flavor is not private or mystical but public and formal, the kind of speaking that puts something on open record before an audience.
In the New Testament this civic word is turned almost entirely toward the gospel. It appears only in Acts and Paul's letters, never in the Gospels, and what gets proclaimed is nearly always Christ, the word of God, or a central part of the message: the resurrection, forgiveness of sins, the way of salvation, light for Jew and Gentile. It stands very close to two other proclamation words, one that pictures a herald delivering a royal message (κηρύσσω) and one that stresses that the news is good (εὐαγγελίζομαι); this word instead stresses the open, public manner of the announcing.
The act carries no built-in verdict on the one announcing. Luke can put the same verb on the lips of a fortune-telling slave girl driven by a spirit, of hostile accusers dragging Paul before the magistrates, and of rival preachers acting from ambition. The proclamation can be true and public even when the motive behind it is not clean; the word names the announcing, not the heart of the announcer.
Nuances
Whether καταγγέλλεται in Romans 1:8 ("your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world") is hyperbolic praise typical of a letter's opening thanksgiving, or a realistic claim that appropriates the vocabulary of imperial announcement for the faith of the Roman believers.
- contestedConventional hyperbole: a generous overstatement in the style of epistolary thanksgiving.; C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans, ICC, 1:75 n. 2
- contestedA realistic claim that ironically borrows Rome's own proclamation language and applies it to Christian faith.; Robert Jewett, Romans, Hermeneia, 120
The mode of proclamation in 1 Corinthians 11:26: whether the church proclaims the Lord's death through the enacted meal alone, or through both spoken word and enacted rite together.
- minorityEnacted without words: the Supper is a visible proclamation that preaches Christ's death by being performed rather than by speech.; BDAG, 3rd ed., s.v. καταγγέλλω (gloss at 1 Cor 11:26)
- majorityBoth verbal and enacted: a self-involving declarative act that joins spoken words to the ritual meal, performed by the whole congregation.; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, 886-89; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, AB 32, 445-47; I. Howard Marshall, Last Supper and Lord's Supper, 79-87
Disputed
How much weight the κατά- prefix in καταγγέλλω carries: whether it intensifies the verb toward an authoritative or binding proclamation, or is a conventional Koine compound that adds little beyond the sense of announcing openly.
- majorityThe prefix is largely conventional; in Koine the compound is functionally interchangeable with the other compounds of ἀγγέλλω and with κηρύσσω, its color supplied by context rather than by the prefix.; Julius Schniewind, 'ἀγγελία, ἀγγέλλω κτλ.,' TDNT 1:70-72; BDAG, 3rd ed., s.v. καταγγέλλω; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT
- minorityThe prefix intensifies, marking a solemn, authoritative, or binding public announcement on the model of official imperial and civic proclamations.; Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, on Colossians 1:28; J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. καταγγέλλω