Core Glossary
Core Glossary
translation_memory.json is the enforced glossary for every Phase 2 translation in this curriculum. This document summarizes its shape and the principles behind it; see the Glossary Risk Groups for the full per-term entries.
Composition
The glossary currently holds 47 terms spanning all four risk tiers, drawn from the doctrines identified in Doctrine Analysis and grounded in the cultural risks identified in Culture Analysis. Every term entry records:
- The approved Arabic translation and transliteration
- The doctrine risk tier (Critical/High/Medium/Low)
- Explicitly rejected alternatives, with reasons
- Notes explaining any non-obvious translation choice, including whichever specific Islamic theological content the term must be actively distinguished from
Governing principles
- Established Christian Arabic usage over contextualized alternatives — where the Van Dyck/NAV tradition already has a settled rendering (الله، يسوع، الرب، المسيح), this glossary follows it rather than adopting a Muslim-Idiom-Translation-style alternative designed to reduce offense.
- Explicit correction, not silent avoidance — because Arabic’s highest-risk terms are often the correct and only available word, this glossary cannot simply avoid a wrong word the way some other Language Packages can; instead every Critical entry documents the specific competing content the term already carries and how it must be corrected.
- Version-controlled and append-only in Phase 2 — if a new term is discovered during document translation, it is added to translation memory and the version number incremented, never silently improvised per-document (see the AI Translation Requirements’ Translation Memory Load and Enforcement Instructions).
Relationship to the Doctrine Risk Registry
Every glossary term’s doctrine field links back to an entry in doctrine_risk_registry.json, so a term’s risk tier is always traceable to the specific doctrine it protects — the glossary enforces vocabulary, the doctrine registry explains why that vocabulary, despite being correct, still requires deliberate theological handling.
Critical Risk Terms
Adoption
Approved rendering: التبني
Transliteration: al-tabannī
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
Rejected alternatives: الاستلحاق
CRITICAL: the Quran (33:4-5) explicitly restricts adoption - adopted sons are declared not to be true sons and must be called by their biological father’s name, denying full filial/inheritance status. الاستلحاق (a weaker fiqh affiliation without inheritance rights) is even more restrictive and explicitly rejected. Romans 8:15-17’s adoption must be taught as conferring full son-status and full inheritance, directly against the Islamic legal default.
Father
Approved rendering: الآب
Transliteration: al-Āb
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
CRITICAL: paired risk with ‘Son of God’ - Islamic tanzih theology treats any begetting language applied to Allah as a form of anthropomorphism verging on shirk. There is no safe substitute for the relationship category itself; the note applies to the Father/Son pairing as a whole, not to word choice.
God
Approved rendering: الله
Transliteration: Allāh
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
CRITICAL: Allah is simply the Arabic word for God, used by Arabic-speaking Christians (Copts, Maronites, Syriac Orthodox) for centuries before and after Islam - there is no viable alternative word and none should be sought. The risk is entirely in content, not vocabulary: Islamic tawhid’s strictly unitarian, non-incarnate conception of Allah must be actively distinguished from the Trinitarian conception the same word denotes here.
Holy Spirit
Approved rendering: الروح القدس
Transliteration: al-Rūḥ al-Qudus
Doctrine: Sanctification
CRITICAL: identical phrase appears in the Quran (2:87, 2:253) but mainstream tafsir identifies it there with the angel Jibril (Gabriel), a created being - not a co-equal, co-eternal divine Person. Same words, incompatible referents; every occurrence needs this distinction made explicit rather than assumed shared.
Imputed Righteousness
Approved rendering: البر المحسوب
Transliteration: al-birr al-mahsūb
Doctrine: Justification by Faith
Rejected alternatives: البر المكتسب
CRITICAL: al-birr alone does not convey forensic crediting. البر المكتسب (‘earned/acquired righteousness’) is the exact opposite of Paul’s argument and is explicitly rejected; the compound must retain ‘credited/reckoned,’ never ‘earned.‘
Incarnation
Approved rendering: التجسد
Transliteration: al-tajassud
Doctrine: Incarnation
Rejected alternatives: الحلول, الظهور
CRITICAL: established in pre-Islamic Arabic Christian literature. الحلول (hulul, ‘indwelling’) is the term used by Sufi mystics (e.g. al-Hallaj) for a pantheistic divine-infusion into a person, itself considered heretical even within Islam - do not borrow this framework. الظهور (‘mere appearance’) echoes the Quran’s own ‘shubbiha lahum’ (it was made to appear so) language used to deny the crucifixion, and would suggest Christ’s humanity was illusory rather than real.
Jesus
Approved rendering: يسوع
Transliteration: Yasū’
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: عيسى
CRITICAL: established Eastern Christian Arabic form (predates Islam). عيسى (‘Isa) is exclusively the Quranic name and is explicitly rejected as the primary rendering, because its established referent in the Muslim mind already carries the non-crucified, non-divine, prophet-only theology Romans directly contradicts - this is the same underlying controversy as Muslim-Idiom Translations that substitute ‘Isa for Yasu’ to sound less foreign. Retain Yasū’ consistently.
Justification
Approved rendering: التبرير
Transliteration: al-tabrīr
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: التزكية, الحكم بالبراءة
CRITICAL: التزكية (tazkiyah) is a Quranic term for self-purification through deeds - a process, not a forensic declaration. التبرير must be taught as God’s one-time legal verdict of righteous standing, credited not achieved.
Law
Approved rendering: الناموس
Transliteration: al-nāmūs
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: الشريعة, الشرع
CRITICAL: established Arabic Bible tradition (Van Dyck) deliberately uses the Greek loanword الناموس for the Mosaic Law rather than الشريعة, because ‘shari’a’ today overwhelmingly denotes the total Islamic religious-legal-political system. Using shari’a here would make Paul’s law-versus-grace argument sound like an attack on Islamic law specifically - a category error with serious real-world consequences. Never substitute.
Lord
Approved rendering: الرب
Transliteration: al-Rabb
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: السيد, المولى
CRITICAL: al-Rabb is a defining title of Allah (Rabb al-‘Alamin, opening of the Quran). Applying it to Jesus in Romans 10:9 is doctrinally exact - it is precisely the claim of full deity that must be made - but it is also maximally confrontational, since ascribing Allah’s own title to a human-born man is the paradigm case of shirk in Islamic theology. السيد/المولى (‘master/patron’) would soften the claim into mere human respect and are explicitly rejected.
Messiah
Approved rendering: المسيح
Transliteration: al-Masīh
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
CRITICAL - inverse risk pattern from other terms: al-Masih is not an available-but-wrong word, it is the unavoidable and correct word, and it is also ‘Isa al-Masih’s own Quranic title (4:171) - already loaded with a specific, well-defined, competing narrative (honored prophet, virgin-born, but explicitly not divine, not crucified, not resurrected, not an atoning sacrifice). Every occurrence must actively correct this pre-loaded content rather than assume the word itself is neutral.
Obedience Of Faith
Approved rendering: طاعة الإيمان
Transliteration: ṭā’at al-īmān
Doctrine: Obedience of Faith
Rejected alternatives: الطاعة الشرعية
CRITICAL: ‘Islam’ itself means submission/obedience - it is the defining category of the entire religion, not a downstream fruit of belief. Romans 1:5’s obedience that flows FROM faith risks being absorbed into the Islamic framework where submission-obedience IS the substance of right standing. This phrase must always be taught as fruit, never as the ground, of right standing before God.
Resurrection
Approved rendering: القيامة
Transliteration: al-qiyāmah
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ
CRITICAL: al-qiyamah itself is safe, shared vocabulary (Yawm al-Qiyamah = the general Day of Resurrection Islam affirms for all people). The real risk is upstream: mainstream Islamic doctrine (Quran 4:157) denies Jesus was crucified at all, holding a substitute appeared to die in his place. Without first establishing that the crucifixion actually happened, ‘resurrection of Christ’ has no historical event to refer to. Every occurrence needs this apologetic scaffolding, not just correct vocabulary.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: البر
Transliteration: al-birr
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: الصلاح, العدل
CRITICAL: al-birr appears in the Quran (2:177) as a checklist of pious deeds - charity, prayer, honesty - i.e. righteousness achieved through works. Romans 1:17’s ‘righteousness of God’ revealed apart from works must never collapse into this works-checklist sense.
Salvation
Approved rendering: الخلاص
Transliteration: al-khalāṣ
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: النجاة, الفوز بالجنة
CRITICAL: mainstream Islamic soteriology has no assured salvation - a soul’s fate rests on a deeds-weighing scale (mizan) judged at the end, and the Quran explicitly denies substitutionary bearing of sin (‘no bearer of burdens shall bear another’s burden,’ 6:164). الخلاص must be taught with its full weight: deliverance secured once for all through Christ’s substitutionary death, with present assurance, not a probabilistic outcome pending Judgment Day.
Son Of God
Approved rendering: ابن الله
Transliteration: Ibn Allāh
Doctrine: Sonship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: الحبيب من الله, الكلمة من الله (بدون ‘ابن’)
CRITICAL: the Quran twice states directly that Allah ‘does not beget nor is He begotten’ (112:3) and that it is not befitting for Allah to have a son (19:35). This is the single most contested phrase in Christian-Muslim relations. ‘الحبيب من الله’ (‘the Beloved of God’) is the actual rendering used by some Muslim-idiom Bible translations to avoid offense; it is explicitly rejected here as a dilution that erases the eternal ontological sonship Romans 1:3-4 argues for. Retain the full phrase; do not substitute a softened relational title.
High Risk Terms
Abba
Approved rendering: أبّا
Transliteration: Abbā
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
Aramaic intimacy-term preserved in Romans 8:15, as Paul himself preserved it. The informal ‘Papa/Dad’ register stands in sharp contrast to Islamic tanzih’s emphasis on Allah’s transcendent majesty (jalal) over intimate approachability; this contrast is worth surfacing pastorally, not softening.
Apostle
Approved rendering: الرسول
Transliteration: al-rasūl
Doctrine: Apostleship
Rejected alternatives: المبعوث, التلميذ المرسل
الرسول is Muhammad’s own defining title in the shahada (Rasul Allah) - the single most claimed prophetic office in Islam. Applying it to Paul is linguistically correct and predates Islam in Christian Arabic usage, but readers may reflexively measure Paul’s apostleship against Muhammad’s finality claim. Notes must distinguish the NT office (authorized eyewitness of the risen Christ, delegated to found and teach the church) from the Islamic prophetic office.
Called
Approved rendering: المدعوون
Transliteration: al-mad’uwwūn
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: المُنتخَبون
Context-sensitive: in 1:1 = called to apostleship; in 1:7 = called to be saints; in 8:28-30 = effectual calling to salvation. Distinguish from دعوة as human invitation (see ‘calling’).
Calling
Approved rendering: الدعوة
Transliteration: al-da’wah
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Da’wah is the standard Islamic term for human missionary invitation to Islam. Here it denotes the reverse direction entirely: God’s own sovereign summons of a person, not a person’s invitation of others to a religion. This distinction must be made explicit at first use in each document.
Election
Approved rendering: اختيار الله
Transliteration: ikhtiyār Allāh
Doctrine: Effectual Calling
Rejected alternatives: القدر
القدر (qadar, divine decree) is one of Islam’s six articles of faith but functions as exhaustive fatalistic determinism over all events (‘maktub,’ it is written), popularly detached from any particular redemptive purpose. Romans 9’s election is God’s specific soteriological choice unto salvation through Christ, not generic fatalism about life outcomes; do not let ikhtiyar collapse into folk qadar.
Faith
Approved rendering: الإيمان
Transliteration: al-īmān
Doctrine: Faith
Rejected alternatives: الاعتقاد, الثقة
Iman is one of Islam’s six articles of belief - primarily creedal assent paired with practice (islam) and excellence (ihsan). Pauline faith is personal trust/reliance in Christ’s finished work, not primarily intellectual assent to a list of propositions. Context must reinforce the relational-trust sense over creedal-assent sense.
Glory
Approved rendering: المجد
Transliteration: al-majd
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: النور الإلهي
God’s radiant honor and presence. Avoid light-based renderings that could evoke Sufi illumination (ishraq) mysticism about direct experiential absorption into divine light.
Gospel
Approved rendering: الإنجيل
Transliteration: al-Injīl
Doctrine: Gospel
Rejected alternatives: البشارة, الخبر السار
Established term shared with Quranic usage (Injil = the revelation given to ‘Isa). Risk is not word-choice but background assumption: mainstream Islamic doctrine holds the Injil in circulation today is corrupted (tahrif) from an original lost revelation. Segments must not concede this framing; al-Injil here means the NT record itself, not a lost predecessor text.
Grace
Approved rendering: النعمة
Transliteration: al-ni’mah
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: الفضل, الرحمة
الفضل (Allah’s bounty) and الرحمة (mercy, one of Allah’s 99 names) both function in Islamic theology as favor responsive to obedience, not favor totally apart from merit. النعمة must always be qualified in context as unearned, given apart from works (Romans 4:4-5, 11:5-6).
Intercession
Approved rendering: الشفاعة
Transliteration: al-shafā’ah
Doctrine: Prayer and Intercession
Shafa’ah is a live, contested category in Islamic theology - mainstream Sunni hadith affirms Muhammad’s ‘greater intercession’ for his ummah at Judgment, while some reform currents restrict all intercession to guard tawhid. Christ’s intercession (Romans 8:26-27, 34) can be a genuine bridge to the real question ‘who intercedes for me?’ but must be taught as exclusive and once-for-all, not one intercessor among several.
Israel
Approved rendering: إسرائيل
Transliteration: Isrā’īl
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
In contemporary spoken Arabic ‘Isra’il’ is overwhelmingly associated with the modern nation-state and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not primarily with Jacob’s given name or the biblical people. Romans 9-11’s discussion of ethnic Israel’s place in God’s plan needs deliberate pastoral framing to keep the text from being read through a present-day political lens.
Prophet
Approved rendering: نبي
Transliteration: nabī
Doctrine: Inspiration of Scripture
Correct and Quran-affirmed (Jesus is a nabi in Islam too), but risks readers stopping at ‘prophet’ the way Islam’s khatam an-nabiyyin (seal of the prophets) doctrine treats Muhammad as superseding and finalizing all prior prophetic revelation. Must be paired with fuller Christological titles so ‘prophet’ is not read as Jesus’s complete or final identity.
Sanctification
Approved rendering: التقديس
Transliteration: al-taqdīs
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: التطهير
The Spirit’s ongoing work of making believers holy, not ritual purification (wudu/ghusl) achieved through washing rites.
Seed Of David
Approved rendering: نسل داود
Transliteration: nasl Dāwūd
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Romans 1:3; conveys physical lineage and OT covenant fulfillment. See ‘david’ for the Quranic-figure caveat.
Sin
Approved rendering: الخطية
Transliteration: al-khaṭīyah
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: الذنب, الإثم
Islamic anthropology holds each person is born in a state of natural purity (fitrah) and denies inherited sin - each soul bears only its own deeds on the scale (mizan), not Adam’s. Romans 5’s federal-headship argument (‘in Adam all die’) and 1:18-3:20’s universal guilt run directly against fitrah doctrine and must be taught deliberately, not assumed as shared ground.
Medium Risk Terms
Church
Approved rendering: الكنيسة
Transliteration: al-kanīsah
Doctrine: Church as God’s People
Rejected alternatives: الجماعة, الأمة
الأمة (ummah) is the specific pan-Islamic term for the worldwide community of Muslims and must never be borrowed for ‘church.’ In everyday usage al-kanisah often denotes the physical building of a minority religious community rather than the living, gathered people of God; reinforce the latter sense explicitly.
Covenant
Approved rendering: العهد
Transliteration: al-‘ahd
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: الميثاق
‘Ahd also covers generic pledges and treaties in everyday Arabic; retain the relational, unilaterally-initiated biblical covenant sense rather than a mutual contractual one.
David
Approved rendering: داود
Transliteration: Dāwūd
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Shared Quranic figure (a prophet-king associated with the Zabur/Psalms), generally positively regarded, but the Quranic Dawud carries less of the covenant-king typology pointing forward to a messianic heir; supply that context explicitly.
Fellowship
Approved rendering: الشركة
Transliteration: al-sharikah
Doctrine: Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: الزمالة, الجماعة
الشركة shares its ش-ر-ك root with shirk (associating partners with God, Islam’s cardinal sin) - an uncomfortable resonance even though the senses are unrelated. Established NT term regardless; context disambiguates, but avoid pairing it with vocabulary that could accidentally suggest ‘partnership with God’ in the shirk sense.
Gentiles
Approved rendering: الأمم
Transliteration: al-umam
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Rejected alternatives: الكفار
الكفار (unbelievers) is a loaded Islamic religious-judgment term and must never be used for the ethnic-neutral sense of ‘Gentiles.’ الأمم (the nations, plural) shares a root with the loaded singular الأمة (Ummah) but the plural generic sense is safe and standard.
Holy
Approved rendering: مقدس
Transliteration: muqaddas
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: طاهر
Shares the ق-د-س root with al-Quds (Jerusalem) and al-Quddus (one of Allah’s names) - generally safe shared vocabulary. طاهر carries ritual-purity connotation (closer to wudu-style cleanliness) and is avoided in favor of the relational, set-apart-for-God sense.
Kingdom Of God
Approved rendering: ملكوت الله
Transliteration: malakūt Allāh
Doctrine: Kingdom Mission
Rejected alternatives: مملكة الله
Al-Malik (The Sovereign) is one of Allah’s 99 names, so malakut carries appropriately majestic connotations. Distinguish God’s present spiritual reign from a future political state.
Mission
Approved rendering: الإرسالية
Transliteration: al-irsāliyyah
Doctrine: Mission to the Nations
Rejected alternatives: الرسالة
الرسالة (risalah) is also the technical term for a prophet’s own prophetic commission (Muhammad’s risalah); prefer الإرسالية for the corporate sending/mission sense to avoid that comparison.
Peace
Approved rendering: السلام
Transliteration: al-salām
Doctrine: Peace with God
Rejected alternatives: الأمان, الطمأنينة
In Romans 5:1, relational and legal peace secured through justification, not the greeting-word sense of al-salam nor الطمأنينة’s Sufi/Quranic sense of subjective heart-tranquility attained through dhikr (remembrance).
Power Of God
Approved rendering: قوة الله
Transliteration: quwwat Allāh
Doctrine: Power of God for Salvation
Al-Qawiyy (The Strong) is one of Allah’s names; broadly compatible concept, low collision risk beyond standard care.
Providence
Approved rendering: العناية الإلهية
Transliteration: al-‘ināyah al-ilāhiyyah
Doctrine: Providence
Rejected alternatives: القدر
Leans toward benevolent divine care and attentiveness rather than impersonal decree, but still needs to avoid drifting into folk qadar fatalism (see ‘election’).
Saints
Approved rendering: القديسون
Transliteration: al-qiddīsūn
Doctrine: Sainthood
Rejected alternatives: الأولياء
الأولياء (awliya’, ‘friends of God/saints’) carries strong Sufi devotional-veneration connotations (intercessory shrine saints) foreign to Romans 1:7’s sense of all believers set apart as holy. القديسون keeps the corporate, non-hierarchical NT sense.
Spiritual Gifts
Approved rendering: المواهب الروحية
Transliteration: al-mawāhib al-rūḥiyyah
Doctrine: Spiritual Gifts
Rejected alternatives: المواهب
Always pair with الروحية; المواهب alone reads as natural talent or artistic ability, not Spirit-given supernatural enablement.
Low Risk Terms
Exhort
Approved rendering: يشجع / يعظ
Transliteration: yushajji’ / ya’iẓ
Doctrine: Mutual Edification
Context-sensitive: يعظ (to admonish/preach) for beseeching; يشجع (to encourage) for building up.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: نبوءة
Transliteration: nubū’ah
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Shares root with nabi; low independent risk.
Thanksgiving
Approved rendering: الشكر
Transliteration: al-shukr
Doctrine: Thanksgiving
Shukr is also a major Islamic virtue (paired with sabr, patience). Broadly compatible concept; low risk.
Referenced passages