06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Acts — English → Arabic

Purpose

This analysis identifies where Arabic’s existing theological vocabulary is adequate, where it is absent, and where it is dangerously crowded by competing Islamic-tradition referents, across the full Acts curriculum (chapters 1–28) and its nine assigned doctrines. It extends — and does not contradict — the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json / doctrine_risk_registry.json. Every term already resolved in the Romans package is treated here as settled; this document’s job is to (a) map each of the nine Acts doctrines onto available Arabic vocabulary and its weaknesses, (b) flag genuinely missing vocabulary versus overcrowded semantic neighborhoods that require deliberate “fencing,” (c) rule on transliteration-versus-paraphrase for every new Acts-specific term, and (d) rank the curriculum’s highest-risk ambiguities for downstream Phase 1 steps (doctrine risk registry, AI translation requirements) and Phase 2 review routing.

The core passage, Acts 2:1–41 (Pentecost, Peter’s sermon, the altar-call, mass baptism), concentrates an unusually high density of this curriculum’s hardest terms — الروح القدس, عطية الروح القدس, بلغات أخرى, التوبة, المعمودية, غفران الخطايا, الاسم, المدعوون/الدعوة, الخلاص — and is used throughout as the anchor test case for each ruling below, per the mandate that the core passage is the theological anchor, not the scope of analysis.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the nine curriculum doctrines: the Arabic terms available (reused from Romans TM or newly proposed in 08_core_glossary.md), the specific weakness of each, and the recommended handling strategy.

1.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
الروح القدس (Holy Spirit) — Reused, Critical	Identical phrase in Qur’an 2:87, 2:253 but mainstream tafsir = the created angel Jibril, not a co-equal divine Person	Every occurrence in Acts (esp. 2:4, 5:3-4) must carry explicit personhood/deity framing; 5:3-4 (“lying to the Spirit is lying to God”) is the strongest available in-text proof and should be cross-referenced at every other occurrence
عطية الروح القدس (Gift of the Holy Spirit) — New, Critical	Risk of collapse into المواهب الروحية (plural enablements); عطية alone can also just mean “a present”	Always render as the full compound; teaching notes must state explicitly this is the Spirit-as-Person given, contrasted with 8:20’s rejected purchase attempt
العنصرة (Pentecost) — New, Medium	Established Eastern-liturgical calque, but opaque without prior exposure to the Christian calendar; no Islamic-referent collision	Gloss at first use in every lesson (“the fiftieth day after the resurrection, coinciding with the Jewish harvest feast”)
بلغات أخرى / ألسنة (tongues) — New, Medium	ألسنة alone reads ambiguously as “tongues” (body part) or unintelligible ecstatic speech; must not be confused with 2:3’s distinct “tongues of fire” image	Prefer بلغات أخرى (Van Dyck’s own phrasing) to keep the known-human-language sense forward; treat ألسنة نارية (2:3) as a visually separate motif, never merged

Strategy summary: No missing vocabulary here — every needed term exists — but three of the four entries are Critical/High precisely because the same words denote incompatible referents in the two traditions. Fencing (explicit disambiguating notes at first use, repeated at climactic occurrences) is the primary tool, not word substitution.

1.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
الإنجيل (Gospel) — Reused, High	Presumed by mainstream Islamic tahrif doctrine to be a corrupted successor to a lost original revelation	Segments must not concede the tahrif framing; treat النص الحالي as the authoritative NT record itself
الأمم (Gentiles) — Reused, Medium	Root-shares with الأمة (ummah), the pan-Islamic community term, but plural generic sense is safe and standard	No change; retain as-is
لا محاباة (No Partiality) — New, Medium-High	Narrative enactment of Romans 3:29-30’s unity doctrine; risk is under-connection, not mistranslation — readers may not link Acts 10:34 back to the Pauline argument	Cross-reference explicitly in teaching notes to unity_of_jews_and_gentiles
متقي الله / خائف الله (God-fearer) — New, Medium	Positive overlap with Islamic taqwa risks readers assuming this is a general term for “any devout non-Christian” rather than a specific first-century sociological category	Explain the historically bounded sense explicitly; do not let it function as a generic bridge label
الإله المجهول (Unknown God) — New, Medium-High	Valuable apologetic bridge but risks being misheard as endorsing prior worship as already valid	Pair every use with 17:29-30’s explicit call to repentance from idolatry

Strategy summary: Vocabulary is present; the risk is entirely in framing — several of these terms function as genuine bridges to Islamic religious categories (taqwa, tawhid-adjacent “unknown god” apologetics) but each bridge must be closed on the gospel side, not left open as equivalence.

1.3 Repentance and Baptism

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
التوبة (Repentance) — New, Critical	CRITICAL: Islam’s central, self-sufficient, human-initiated act of turning from sin (Qur’an 66:8), requiring no substitutionary mechanism and explicitly denying one soul can bear another’s burden (6:164)	Never present as free-standing; always co-occurring in the same breath with باسم يسوع المسيح (2:38) and grounded in Christ’s atoning work, exactly as the term itself is bound grammatically in the source text
المعمودية / يعتمد (Baptism) — New, High	No competing sacrament in Islam (wudu/ghusl are repeated purificatory washings, not a once-for-all initiation); risk is under-distinguishing baptism from those washings, not over-collision	Teach explicitly as a single, decisive, non-repeated, public rite of identification with Christ, inseparable from repentance/forgiveness/Spirit-reception (2:38)
غفران الخطايا (Forgiveness of sins) — New, High	غفران is shared vocabulary with Allah’s names (al-Ghafur/al-Ghaffar) but Islamic forgiveness is deeds/sincerity-responsive, with no substitutionary ground	Anchor every occurrence to the atonement basis supplied elsewhere in Acts (20:28, “with his own blood”)

Strategy summary: This is the single most doctrinally exposed cell in the entire matrix. التوبة is not a weak or ambiguous word choice — it is the correct and only word — but it is also the exact technical term of Islam’s own alternative soteriology. No substitute exists or should be sought; the fence must be built entirely in the surrounding teaching apparatus (see §4, Ranked Ambiguities, #1).

1.4 The Church as Community

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
الكنيسة (Church) — Reused, Medium	Everyday usage reduces it to a physical building of a minority-religion enclave	Reinforce the living, gathered-people sense per Acts 20:28’s shepherding charge
الشركة (Fellowship) — Reused, Low	ش-ر-ك root resonance with shirk (idolatrous partnership) — unrelated senses but an uncomfortable echo	Avoid pairing with vocabulary that could accidentally suggest “partnership with God”
مشتركة / كل شيء مشترك بينهم (All Things Common) — New, Medium	Shares κοιν- root with the doctrinally opposite “common/unclean” entry (see §2 below); real risk of institutional over-application	Frame as voluntary, Spirit-motivated, historically situated generosity — a genuine bridge to zakat/sadaqah’s voluntary-giving ethic — not a repeatable rule abolishing private property
الشيوخ / الأساقفة (Elders/Overseers) — New, Medium	شيخ carries independent tribal-elder, religious-scholar, and Sufi-guide resonance	First-use note: a plural, accountable, congregational office, not a solitary mystical or tribal-patriarchal role
الخدمة (Service/Ministry) — New, Low-Medium	Minimal risk; must simply retain the dignified parity of word-ministry and practical service (Acts 6)	No fencing required beyond standard care
وضع الأيدي (Laying on of Hands) — New, Medium	Spans three distinct senses (ordination, Spirit-impartation, healing) under one Arabic phrase	Disambiguate per occurrence in teaching notes; never generalize from a single instance

Strategy summary: Mostly adequate vocabulary; the main task is sense-disambiguation (laying on of hands) and correcting an everyday-register drift (كنيسة as building).

1.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
الرسول (Apostle) — Reused, Medium/High in Acts context	Al-rasul is Muhammad’s own defining title (shahada); Acts 1:21-26’s strict eyewitness qualification for replacing Judas actually strengthens the needed distinction	Foreground the bounded, closed, eyewitness-based NT office against Islam’s open prophetic succession culminating in a “seal of the prophets” claim
آيات وعجائب (Signs and Wonders) — New, High	آية is the standing term for a Qur’anic verse and for God’s signs in creation	Established, necessary, unavoidable rendering (parallel to messiah); must always be taught as evidentiary miracle-acts attesting to Jesus, with a first-use note distinguishing this sense from the Qur’anic textual-verse sense
السحر (Sorcery/Magic) — New, Low-Medium	Genuinely low-collision; Islam also condemns sihr as bordering on shirk	Rare bridge-friendly term; keep Simon’s later attempted purchase of spiritual power (ch. 8) taught as a distinct error (simony) from sorcery itself
روح عرافة / روح تنجيم (Spirit of Divination) — New, Low-Medium	Low collision; overlaps with Islamic condemnation of kahin-practice	No special fencing required
قوة الله (Power of God) — Reused, Medium	Broadly compatible with Al-Qawiyy	Keep power specifically Spirit-given, contrasted with Simon’s siḥr in ch. 8

Strategy summary: آيات وعجائب is the load-bearing risk here — see Ranked Ambiguities #3.

1.6 Persecution and Bold Witness

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
شاهد / شهود (Witness) — New, High	Shares root with الشهادة (Islamic creedal confession) and الشهيد (honored martyr, frequently war-context)	Distinguish NT eyewitness legal-testimony sense from both; Acts 7 (Stephen) genuinely moves toward willing, nonviolent martyrdom — surface this contrast explicitly rather than avoid it
الجرأة (Boldness) — New, High	Explicitly prayed-for (4:29,31), not a personality trait; real safety weight given apostasy-law sensitivities in many Arabic-speaking contexts today	Reject الشجاعة (generic courage) as too broad; flag safety sensitivity every time the term recurs
الاضطهاد (Persecution) — New, Medium-High	Not primarily a word-collision risk but a live, real-world safety-sensitivity risk	Consistent cautionary framing in every teaching note, parallel to baseline evangelism routing

Strategy summary: All three terms are linguistically settled; the outstanding risk is pastoral/safety, not translation. This should be flagged for native-speaker (and where applicable, security-aware editorial) review, not merely theological review.

1.7 Conversion of Paul

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
اختيار الله (Election) — Reused, High	Risk of collapse into folk qadar fatalism	Keep tied to Saul’s specific redemptive commissioning, not generic “fate”
إناء اختيار / وعاء مختار (Chosen Instrument) — New, High	Extends election into Paul’s personal call narrative; same qadar-collapse risk applies	Teach 9:15 as a specific, purposive commissioning, not impersonal predestination trivia
الرب (Lord) — Reused, Critical	Applied to Jesus at the moment of Saul’s conversion (9:5) — the paradigm confrontation text	Never soften; 9:5’s “Who are you, Lord?” / “I am Jesus” exchange is itself the curriculum’s cleanest single deity-of-Christ proof text
الاسم (the Name) — New, Critical	Saul is sent specifically to suffer “for my name” (9:16)	Preserve exclusivity language consistently with 4:12

Strategy summary: Vocabulary adequate; Paul’s conversion narrative should be actively used as the cross-reference anchor for Lordship-of-Christ and Name-exclusivity teaching, since it supplies uniquely vivid, low-ambiguity textual support.

1.8 Justification apart from the Law

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
التبرير (Justification) — Reused, Critical	Never substitute التزكية (Qur’anic self-purification through deeds)	Acts 13:38-39 explicitly pairs justification with الناموس in a contrast structure (“what the law could not do”) — preserve the contrast intact
الناموس (Law) — Reused, Critical	Never substitute الشريعة/الشرع	Central to Acts 15 and 13:38-39, the curriculum’s own thesis doctrine; substituting shari’a would reframe Paul’s argument as an attack on Islamic law specifically
الختان (Circumcision) — New, High	Positively regarded, widely practiced rite in Islam and Judaism	Frame the Council’s ruling as soteriological (not required for salvation), not a verdict on the rite’s continuing cultural/familial legitimacy
نجس، دنس / مشترك عام (Common/Unclean) — New, High	Active halal/haram framework brought by Muslim-background readers; shares κοιν- root with fellowship (see §2)	Teach as fulfilled boundary-markers, not an arbitrary reversal or a “new dietary code”
اشتراها بدمه الخاص (Redeemed with His Own Blood) — New, Critical	Compact substitutionary-atonement statement	Inherits baseline’s mandatory-theologian-review escalation for atonement language
النعمة (Grace) — Reused, High	Acts 15:11 is the Council’s own summary argument against circumcision-as-requirement	Reinforce apart-from-Torah-observance sense explicitly here

Strategy summary: This doctrine concentrates the highest density of Critical-risk already-forbidden-substitution terms (التبرير, الناموس) inherited directly from the baseline; Phase 2 validation must apply the baseline’s forbidden-substitution checklist with zero exceptions in every Acts 13, 15, and 20:28 segment.

1.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled

Available Arabic Terms	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
الإرسالية (Mission) — Reused, Medium	Prefer over الرسالة to avoid comparison with a prophet’s personal risalah	No change; retain established preference
أقاصي الأرض (End of the Earth) — New, Low-Medium	Structural outline verse (1:8)	Keep sending-direction (God → church → nations) distinct from human-initiated da’wah
بلا عائق (Unhindered) — New, Medium	Book’s climactic closing word	Pair with boldness/persecution entries: confident hope in ultimate gospel advance, not a promise against personal suffering
ملكوت الله (Kingdom of God) — Reused, Medium	1:6’s disciples still expect political restoration; by 28:23,31 fully reframed around gospel proclamation	Surface this narrative arc explicitly; avoid khilafah-style political resonance

Strategy summary: Adequate vocabulary; primary task is narrative-arc framing (from political expectation in ch.1 to unhindered gospel proclamation in ch.28) rather than term-level correction.

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2. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

Unlike missing vocabulary (§3), these are cases where Arabic supplies too much pre-loaded, doctrinally-charged meaning attached to the correct word, requiring deliberate boundary-setting (“fencing”) rather than substitution.

2.1 The ق-د-س root family (holiness)

مقدس / القديسون / التقديس / القدوس (as a personal title for Jesus, 3:14) all share this root with al-Quds (Jerusalem) and al-Quddus (a name of Allah). Generally safe shared vocabulary at the common-noun level, but القدوس والبار applied personally to Jesus (3:14) is a direct divine-title ascription and must be fenced with the same unsoftened handling the baseline mandates for “Lord” and “Son of God” — not treated as merely honorific.

2.2 The ش-ه-د root family (witness/testimony)

شاهد, شهود, and by extension الشهادة (creedal confession) and الشهيد (martyr) all share this root. Acts uses شاهد/شهود in the specific legal-eyewitness sense (1:8, 22; 2:32; 22:15). Fence: always specify eyewitness testimony to the resurrection, and treat the trajectory toward Stephen’s death (ch. 7) as a distinct, secondary, textually-earned development — never assume the reader’s prior شهيد associations transfer automatically.

2.3 The ر-ب-ب root and ر-س-ل root families

الرب (Lord, applied to Jesus) sits inside the same neighborhood as Rabb al-‘Alamin. الرسول (apostle) and الرسالة/الإرسالية (mission/commission) sit inside the neighborhood of Rasul Allah and Muhammad’s risalah. Both are inherited Critical/High risks from the baseline, reconfirmed here because Acts uses both terms with far greater narrative frequency and density than Romans (الرسول occurs in nearly every chapter). Fence: reinforce the bounded, closed, eyewitness-qualified nature of the apostolic office (1:21-26) every time الرسول recurs at scale.

2.4 The κοιν- root family (a Greek-side crowding, Arabic-side triple fork)

κοινωνία (fellowship, → الشركة), κοινός (common/unclean, → نجس، دنس / مشترك عام), and ἅπαντα κοινά (all things common, → مشتركة) share one Greek root but require three distinct Arabic renderings with opposite theological valences (positive shared participation vs. negative ritual defilement vs. positive voluntary economic sharing). This is a wordplay lost in translation regardless of strategy; the risk is not mistranslation of any single term but a downstream assumption — by translators or reviewers scanning for consistency — that one Arabic equivalent should serve all three. Fence: flag this explicitly in the automated glossary-consistency check (already noted in 08_core_glossary.md §C.4); do not let it trigger a false-positive consistency flag in Phase 2 Step 17.

2.5 التوبة (repentance) and the wider Islamic tawba doctrinal complex

Not merely a word-collision but a full competing doctrinal system: tawba (sincerity + cessation + resolve) is Islam’s self-sufficient mechanism of pardon. Fence: never let التوبة appear without its co-occurring baptismal/Christ’s-name qualifier, on the model already established for grace and faith in the baseline.

2.6 الطريق (the Way) and الطريقة/tariqa, الشريعة, and الصراط المستقيم

الطريق sits in a genuinely crowded neighborhood: it echoes (a) الشريعة’s etymological root (a way to a watering-place), (b) الطريقة, the standard term for a Sufi order/spiritual path, and (c) الصراط المستقيم, “the straight path” of the Qur’an’s opening surah (Al-Fatiha 1:6), recited by Muslims multiple times daily. Fence: teach هذا الطريق (Acts’s self-designation) as an exclusive, decisive-commitment label for the earliest apostolic movement — not a path among several legitimate paths, and not to be confused with a Sufi order’s particular spiritual discipline.

2.7 آية / آيات (signs) and the Qur’anic verse-sense

آيات وعجائب is unavoidable and correct but sits inside the single most frequently encountered word in Muslim religious life (every verse of the Qur’an is an آية). Fence: first-use note in every lesson distinguishing “evidentiary miracle-act attesting to Jesus” from “scriptural verse.”

2.8 عبد / فتاه (Servant of God) and universal creaturely servanthood

عبد is the standard term for any human’s relationship to Allah (Muhammad: ‘abduhu wa rasuluh). Fence: never let “God’s servant” (3:13, 26; 4:27, 30) stand alone as Jesus’s complete identity — always pair with the sermon’s higher titles (3:15, “Author of life”; 3:14, “Holy and Righteous One”).

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3. Missing Vocabulary (Genuine Gaps, Not Just Collisions)

Unlike §2, these are cases where Arabic has no single existing term and a compound, calque, or explanatory strategy must be constructed:

Concept	Gap	Resolution
Pentecost as a dateable Christian-calendar event	العنصرة exists but presumes prior catechesis	Mandatory first-use gloss (see §1.1)
“Gift of the Holy Spirit” as the Spirit-as-Person given (distinct from spiritual gifts)	No single existing Arabic noun cleanly marks this distinction; عطية alone is ambiguous with “a present”	Retain full compound عطية الروح القدس; never abbreviate
”Chosen instrument” (σκεῦος ἐκλογῆς) — a vivid vessel-metaphor	No idiomatic Arabic equivalent carries the same vessel-imagery force	Literal compound إناء اختيار / وعاء مختار, explained rather than idiomatically re-metaphorized
”God-fearer” as a bounded first-century sociological category	Arabic has متقي الله as a general piety description, not a technical historical category	Explanatory gloss required at first use; do not let it function as free-standing vocabulary
”The Way” as an exclusive self-designation (rather than a generic path-word)	No unmarked Arabic noun conveys “exclusive path” without also evoking a crowded neighborhood (see §2.6)	Accept الطريق as unavoidable; compensate entirely through teaching-note fencing, not through a search for an alternative word
”Unhindered” (ἀκωλύτως) as a single triumphant adverb	Arabic has no single-word equivalent with the same rhetorical finality	Render as the phrase بلا عائق / بغير عائق, preserving the sense as a phrase rather than forcing a single-word coinage

No terms in this curriculum require an entirely novel coinage; every genuine gap is resolvable through an existing compound phrase plus a mandatory explanatory gloss, consistent with the baseline’s stated preference for established compounds over novel coinages.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Πεντηκοστή (Pentecost)	Calque/established term, not transliteration	العنصرة is the pre-existing Eastern Christian liturgical term; transliterating the Greek (بنتيكوستي) would be a novel, opaque coinage with no established tradition behind it
γλῶσσαι (tongues)	Paraphrase (بلغات أخرى), not a literal body-part transliteration/calque	ألسنة alone risks the ecstatic-speech misreading; the Van Dyck-style paraphrase “in other languages” keeps the intelligible-human-language sense forward
Ἀββά (Abba, Romans 8:15 precedent)	Transliteration retained (أبّا) — inherited ruling, applicable wherever Acts might echo this register	The baseline already rules to preserve the Aramaic intimacy-term rather than translate it away; no Acts passage overrides this
σκεῦος ἐκλογῆς (chosen instrument)	Paraphrase, not transliteration	A Greek vessel-metaphor with no transliteration tradition; render the sense as a compound noun phrase
Χριστιανοί (Christian)	Established Arabic derivational form (المسيحيون), not a fresh transliteration	Root already secured via المسيح; a transliterated “kristianiyyun” would break with all existing Arabic Bible tradition
ἡ ὁδός (the Way)	Direct translation (الطريق), not transliteration	No Greek transliteration tradition exists for this phrase; the term must be Arabic vocabulary to carry meaning, with all risk handled via fencing (§2.6)
ἀκωλύτως (unhindered)	Paraphrase (بلا عائق), not a single-word coinage	No natural single Arabic word carries the same finality; a phrase is more transparent to readers
πρεσβύτεροι / ἐπίσκοποι (elders/overseers)	Established Arabic ecclesial terms (الشيوخ / الأساقفة), not transliteration	Long-standing Arabic Christian ecclesiastical vocabulary predates any need for transliteration
Proper names (Barnabas, Cornelius, Lydia, Silas, Timothy, Felix, Festus, Agrippa, Ananias, Sapphira, Stephen, Philip, Gamaliel, etc.)	Transliteration, in established Arabic Bible (Van Dyck/NAV) forms	Follow the same rule as baseline proper names (David = داود, Isaiah = إشعياء): use the destination tradition’s existing form, never a fresh phonetic transliteration from English
آمين / هللويا (Amen/Hallelujah, if recurring in Acts prayer contexts)	Transliteration retained, per baseline	No change from Romans convention

General rule confirmed for Acts: transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names in their established Christian Arabic Bible form, and (b) the small closed set of intimacy/liturgical terms the baseline already transliterates (Abba, Amen, Hallelujah). Every new theological-concept term identified in this curriculum is resolved through an existing or compound Arabic phrase, never a fresh Greek-to-Arabic phonetic transliteration — consistent with the baseline’s explicit preference and with historic Arabic Bible translation practice.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision depth × frequency in the curriculum), with the core passage (Acts 2:1-41) noted wherever directly implicated.

1. التوبة (Repentance) — Critical. Not a word-choice risk but a competing soteriological system risk: Islam’s tawba is self-sufficient, sincerity-based, non-substitutionary pardon; Acts 2:38 (core passage) binds repentance grammatically to baptism “in the name of Jesus Christ” in the very sentence most likely to be quoted standalone. Highest risk of silent doctrinal drift if isolated from its clause.

2. الطريق (the Way) — High. Sits inside the most crowded neighborhood in the entire curriculum (شريعة’s root, طريقة’s Sufi-order sense, الصراط المستقيم’s daily-recited Qur’anic phrase). Risk of being read as “one path among several” runs directly against Acts 4:12’s exclusivity claim, which this curriculum must hold together.

3. آيات وعجائب (Signs and Wonders) — High. آية is arguably the single most religiously loaded common noun in the Arabic language for a Muslim-background reader (every Qur’anic verse). Recurs at high frequency (11+ occurrences) across the “Apostolic Authority and Miracles” doctrine, multiplying the exposure.

4. الاسم (the Name) as exclusive saving authority — Critical. Acts 4:12 is the sharpest single-verse exclusivity claim in the book; risk is not word-choice (الاسم is unambiguous) but of softening in paraphrase toward “through Jesus’s teaching” during Phase 2 idiom-handling, a documented failure mode for exclusivity claims per the baseline’s Romans 3:23/10:12-13 precedent.

5. الروح القدس / عطية الروح القدس (Holy Spirit / Gift of the Spirit) at Pentecost — Critical. The core passage’s central actor. Identical phrase to Qur’an 2:87/2:253’s Jibril-identification; every occurrence in Acts 2 needs the personhood/deity distinction actively re-argued, not assumed carried over from a single Romans-package footnote.

6. شاهد / شهود (Witness) — High. Root-shared with الشهادة and الشهيد; Acts’s own narrative arc (Peter’s Pentecost testimony → Stephen’s martyrdom in ch. 7) makes the collision textually invited rather than avoidable — this must be surfaced deliberately, not fenced by avoidance.

7. الختان (Circumcision) and نجس، دنس / مشترك عام (Common/Unclean) — High (paired). Both risk being heard as an attack on practices — circumcision, dietary law — that carry independent positive value and daily-life salience for Muslim-background and Jewish-background readers alike; the Jerusalem Council’s actual soteriological argument (not required for salvation) must not be flattened into a hygiene or cultural verdict.

8. الرسول (Apostle) at Acts-scale frequency — High. The baseline already rates this High for Romans’ handful of occurrences; Acts’s dramatically higher frequency (nearly every chapter) and its explicit succession-mechanics (1:21-26, replacing Judas) multiply exposure to the rasul-Allah/finality-of-prophecy comparison.

9. الجرأة (Boldness) and الاضطهاد (Persecution) — High, but risk-type differs from #1–8: this is a real-world safety risk, not primarily a semantic-collision risk. Ranked here because failure to flag it consistently has consequences beyond the text — for readers and translators operating under real apostasy-law exposure.

10. القدوس والبار (Holy and Righteous One, 3:14) — Critical but narrow in scope (single verse). Ranked lower only because of low frequency, not low severity; any occurrence must receive full theologian review per the baseline’s Lord/Son of God precedent.

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6. Summary and Handoff

• No term in the Acts curriculum requires a novel Arabic coinage. Every gap resolves to an existing compound phrase (§3) or an established transliteration in the closed proper-name/liturgical-term set (§4).
• The dominant risk pattern in Acts is deeper and more frequent exposure of collision patterns already flagged in the Romans baseline (رسول, رب, روح القدس), compounded by several new collision patterns unique to Acts’s narrative content (توبة, الطريق, آيات وعجائب, شاهد) that have no Romans precedent because Romans is epistolary argument while Acts is narrated event and public confrontation.
• All findings in this document must be carried forward unmodified into the Acts extension of translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json (already drafted in 08_core_glossary.md and the accompanying assets/bible_term_registry.json), and into the Acts-specific doctrine_risk_registry.json and AI translation requirements (Phase 1 Steps 9–12), which must inherit the Ranked Ambiguities list (§5) as their initial escalation priority order.
• Chapters generating no new terminology beyond what is already tabulated in the Romans TM or Section B of 08_core_glossary.md (Acts 12, 18, 22, 25, 27, per that document’s §C.5) are confirmed reviewed here as well; no additional linguistic gaps were found in those chapters beyond what full-book coverage in this analysis already captures.