to speak out boldly and openly: to say the thing that must be said, holding nothing back, whatever it costs
This verb belongs to the family of the noun for free and fearless openness (παρρησία). The family is built from two pieces meaning "all" and "speech," so at root it is "saying everything, holding nothing back." It began in ancient Athens as the right of a free citizen to speak his mind in the public assembly, the one thing a slave could not do. The verb therefore never means simply "to talk." It means to speak the way a free person speaks: in the open, without veiling the point, and without trimming it for safety.
All but two of its uses are in Acts, where it is the standard word for what the first preachers did in public and under threat:
- Saul, newly turned around, speaks out in Damascus and then in Jerusalem in the name of Jesus
- Paul and Barnabas speak out to announce that they are now turning to the Gentiles
- Apollos begins to speak out in the synagogue at Ephesus
- Paul keeps it up in that same synagogue for three months, reasoning and persuading
Two things shift the shade from one verse to the next. Once the speech is not preaching to a crowd but candor toward a king: Paul tells Agrippa the whole story straight, because none of it happened in a corner. And in Thessalonians the courage comes first and a separate word carries the speaking, so the point is that after being beaten and humiliated in Philippi they found the nerve to speak at all.
The verb also keeps naming where the nerve comes from. Paul and Barnabas are bold "in the Lord"; Paul and his companions are bold "in our God"; the prisoner in chains asks other people to pray that he will speak boldly. So this is not merely to announce a message as a herald does (κηρύσσω), and not merely to dare something (τολμάω). It is speech that is public, plain, and risky, and in the New Testament it is given rather than mustered.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether this word names primarily an inward attitude of confidence or primarily an outward, public and socially risky practice of speech.
- majorityPrimarily a public, performative practice: frank speech delivered in the open at real social cost, not mainly a private feeling of assurance.; David E. Fredrickson, "Παρρησία in the Pauline Epistles," in John T. Fitzgerald, ed., Friendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech (NovTSup 82; Brill, 1996), 163-83; S.C. Winter, "Παρρησία in Acts," in Fitzgerald, Friendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech, 185-202; Richard I. Pervo, Acts (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2009)
- minorityPrimarily an inward disposition of confident, joyful assurance that then shows itself in speech.; Heinrich Schlier, "παρρησία, παρρησιάζομαι," TDNT V (Eerdmans, 1967), 882-86