Linguistic Gap Analysis: Acts 1–28 (English → Assamese)
Purpose
This document executes Phase 1 Step 8 of the TRI pipeline: a linguistic gap analysis for the Assamese destination language across the full book of Acts, anchored theologically in the core passage (Acts 2:1–41, Pentecost) but scoped to the entire curriculum (Bible_Doctrines: The Holy Spirit and Pentecost; The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles; Repentance and Baptism; The Church as Community; Apostolic Authority and Miracles; Persecution and Bold Witness; Conversion of Paul; Justification apart from the Law; The Great Commission Fulfilled).
It builds directly on the baseline Romans Language Package (locked terms, forbidden substitutions, risk-tier conventions) and the Acts Core Glossary (08_core_glossary.md) and the updated bible_term_registry.json. Nothing here contradicts those artifacts; it explains why the choices recorded there were necessary — where Assamese vocabulary is missing entirely, where it is dangerously crowded by competing religious traditions (Ekasarana Dharma / Sattra Vaishnavism, wider Assamese Hindu Shakta practice, and Assamese Muslim vocabulary), and where transliteration is safer than paraphrase or vice versa.
Acts differs from Romans in one structurally important way for this analysis: Romans is doctrinal argument; Acts is narrative history in which institutions, rituals, and supernatural phenomena are depicted happening (tongues, healings, exorcisms, baptisms, communal property-sharing, council debates, sea voyages). Narrative depiction multiplies the surface area for syncretistic misreading beyond what a propositional argument creates, because a reader watching an event occur is more likely to map it onto a familiar real-world ritual pattern than a reader following an abstract argument. This document treats that narrative risk as its central organizing concern.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each Bible_Doctrine in this curriculum: available Assamese terms (native lexicon, existing religious vocabulary, and prior Christian-tradition terms), their weaknesses, and the recommended strategy already reflected in the glossary/registry.
1.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| পবিত্ৰ আত্মা (established Christian term) | None on its own; risk is downstream in verb phrases describing the Spirit’s action | Lock as-is (baseline); never substitute |
| আত্মা (bare “spirit”) | Ambiguous — covers ghosts (ভূত), ancestral spirits, and the impersonal Vedantic পৰমাত্মা/ব্ৰহ্ম in ordinary usage | Never use bare আত্মা for the Holy Spirit; always the full পবিত্ৰ আত্মা |
| পূৰ্ণ হ’ল (“was filled”) | Neutral verb, but “filled with spirit” as an event category strongly overlaps with deodhani trance-possession at Kamakhya and other Shakta shrines, where a medium’s self-control is suspended | Retain পবিত্ৰ আত্মাৰে পূৰ্ণ হ’ল but require a first-occurrence note (Acts 2:4) that Spirit-filling produces intelligible, self-possessed, Christ-centered proclamation — the opposite of trance loss-of-self |
| বতাহ (wind/breath) | Assamese has no single word carrying the Greek πνεῦμα/Hebrew ruach double sense of “wind” and “spirit”; the wordplay of Acts 2:2 (sound like wind) pointing toward πνεῦμα is invisible in Assamese | Translate plainly as বতাহ with a translator note explaining the lost wordplay; do not attempt a forced coinage |
| পেন্তিকোষ্ট (transliteration) | No native Assamese festal concept maps onto a fixed-calendar pilgrim feast fifty days after another feast; nearest structural analogues are Bihu (agricultural/seasonal, not covenant-historical) | Transliterate and gloss as a historic Jewish pilgrim feast (Feast of Weeks/Shavuot); explicitly disclaim any structural equivalence to Bihu at first occurrence |
| বৰ / আত্মিক বৰ (“gift”) | বৰ alone carries the Puranic boon-for-austerity/devotion transaction | Always compound with আত্মিক or use the fuller পবিত্ৰ আত্মাৰ দান; never bare বৰ for the Spirit’s gift |
1.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| অনযাতি (Gentiles) | Established, low ambiguity on its own | Retain (baseline) |
| জাতি (“nation,” but colloquially also “caste/ethnic group”) | The Jew–Gentile distinction, if rendered through জাতি vocabulary, risks being read through Assam’s own caste/ethnic hierarchy (Assamese-Hindu caste structure, tribal/non-tribal distinctions) rather than the text’s redemptive-historical Jew–Gentile category | Prefer অনযাতি/ইস্ৰায়েল-অনযাতি framing over generic জাতি language when the theological point is inclusion, not ethnography |
| সমাজ-গৃহ (synagogue) | No lexical weakness itself, but sits in a three-way institutional field with নামঘৰ and মণ্ডলী (see §2.2) | Retain সমাজ-গৃহ exclusively for συναγωγή; never নামঘৰ or মন্দিৰ |
| ঈশ্বৰ পক্ষপাতিত্ব নকৰে (“God shows no partiality”) | Direct, unambiguous phrase — no native lexical gap, but social risk: this claim directly confronts caste-based spiritual hierarchy still operative in Assamese Hindu social structure, so translators may be tempted to soften it | Retain full unqualified force; flag for theologian review per escalation rules |
| যিহুদী ধৰ্মলৈ ধৰ্মান্তৰিত লোক (proselyte, descriptive) | No single Assamese word for a formal Gentile convert to Judaism; দীক্ষা (“initiation”) is available but is the specific Ekasarana naam-initiation rite term | Use the descriptive phrase, not দীক্ষা |
1.3 Repentance and Baptism
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| মন-পালটন (coined compound: “mind-turning”) | Not a pre-existing lexical item in general Assamese usage — had to be constructed, since the two available native candidates both misdirect | Adopt as the fixed rendering for μετάνοια; gloss at first occurrence |
| প্ৰায়শ্চিত্ত | Hindu ritual expiation for accumulated karmic sin, performed to pay off a debt | Forbidden substitution |
| তপস্যা | Ascetic austerity performed to earn merit or a boon | Forbidden substitution |
| বাপ্তিস্ম / বাপ্তাইজ কৰা (transliterated root) | No native weakness, but sits in the single most crowded semantic neighborhood in the whole curriculum (see §2.3) | Retain the transliterated form; never native “bathing” vocabulary |
| স্নান / পূত হৈ যাওক (“bathe” / “become pure”) | Directly names the repeatable Brahmaputra ritual dip, Bihu ceremonial bathing, and Kamakhya purification bathing — practices that are cyclical and repeatable, unlike Christian baptism | Forbidden for baptism; may appear only in narrative description of an unrelated physical washing if the source text itself describes one |
| পাপ ক্ষমা (forgiveness of sins) | No lexical weakness; conceptual risk is that hearers import a karma-erasure framework (accumulated bad karma reduced through merit, pilgrimage, or ritual) onto a legal-pardon concept | Retain; pair consistently with a personal-God framing (ঈশ্বৰৰ পক্ষৰ পৰা) where the passage allows |
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| মণ্ডলী | Established Christian term; no native weakness | Retain (baseline); never নামঘৰ |
| সাধাৰণ সম্পত্তি হিচাপে ৰখা (“held as common property,” Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–35) | Two competing misreadings available in Assamese public discourse: (a) political “communism,” a loaded term in Assam’s 20th-century regional political history; (b) the Sattra institution’s compulsory communal-property vow taken by resident bhakats | Use the descriptive phrase; explicitly frame as voluntary, Spirit-motivated generosity, not compulsory vow or political ideology |
| পিঠা ভাঙা (breaking of bread) | Risk of conflation with Hindu prasad-sharing (blessed food distributed after temple worship, understood to transfer a deity’s favor to the recipient) | Retain the phrase but anchor explicitly to Christ’s broken body, not merit-transfer through blessed food |
| প্ৰাচীন (elder) / পৰিচাৰক (deacon) / অধ্যক্ষ-ৰখীয়া (overseer/shepherd) | No native weakness individually, but all three sit adjacent to the Sattra institution’s Satradhikar guru-succession hierarchy and to the village পঞ্চায়ত elder system | Retain established terms; each requires a clarifying note on first occurrence in a given document that this is a distinct, non-hereditary, non-guru pastoral office |
1.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| প্ৰেৰিত (apostle) | Established; no weakness itself, but adjacent to গুৰু (see §2.2) | Retain; never গুৰু |
| চিন আৰু আচৰিত কাৰ্য (signs and wonders) | Risk of being read through a siddhi framework (yogic/ascetic supernatural attainment earned through spiritual discipline) or tantra-mantra occult technique | Retain compound phrase; always anchor to ঈশ্বৰৰ শক্তি (God’s own power), never presented as a transferable technique |
| হাত দি প্ৰাৰ্থনা কৰা (laying on of hands) | Risk of conflation with a guru’s blessing-touch (আশীৰ্বাদ) which confers spiritual merit by the guru’s own accumulated status | Retain descriptive phrase; frame as prayer accompanying an act of God, not a status-transfer gesture |
| মায়াবী / যাদুকৰ (sorcerer/magician) | Risk of collapsing onto Assam’s rural ওজা (folk healer-exorcist) and legitimate tantra-mantra practitioner categories broadly, rather than the text’s specific illegitimate occult figures (Simon of Samaria, Bar-Jesus) | Retain but require narrative framing that names the specific person and specific illegitimate claim, not a blanket condemnation of a whole folk-practice category |
1.6 Persecution and Bold Witness
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| সাক্ষী / সাক্ষ্য (witness) | No weakness; this is a well-established secular legal-register term in Assamese (court testimony) that transfers cleanly to theological use | Retain (baseline) |
| শহীদ (martyr, Perso-Arabic loanword) | Strong, specific association with Islamic martyrdom theology (jihad-shahada) in Assam’s religiously plural context, and secondarily with 20th-century nationalist “martyr” political usage | Forbidden; use the descriptive phrase প্ৰাণ দি সাক্ষ্য দিয়া লোক instead |
| সাহস / নিৰ্ভীকভাৱে (boldness) | No weakness | Retain |
| নিৰ্যাতন (persecution) | No weakness | Retain |
1.7 Conversion of Paul
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| চকুৰ পৰা খোলা খহি পৰিল (scales fell from his eyes) | No weakness; vivid, low-risk narrative image | Retain |
| আন্ধাৰৰ পৰা পোহৰলৈ ঘুৰি অহা (turn from darkness to light) | Risk of assimilation to a generalized “enlightenment” narrative pattern (gyana/illumination attained through insight) common to Vedantic and bhakti testimony-literature | Retain but anchor explicitly to moral rescue from sin’s dominion, not psychological or gnostic-style illumination |
| শয়তান (Satan) | Risk of being read as one more instance of an asura already permanently defeated within a cyclical cosmic drama (e.g., Durga/Kamakhya Mahishasura-mardini narrative pattern, where the adversary is ritually re-defeated each year) | Retain the transliterated term but require the first-occurrence note that this is a real, personal, currently active adversary in ongoing linear conflict, not a mythic figure whose defeat is periodically re-enacted |
1.8 Justification apart from the Law
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| ধাৰ্মিক বুলি গণ্য কৰা (justified) | Established baseline term; Acts 13:38–39 is its clearest OT-law-contrast statement in either book | Retain exactly |
| ত্বকচ্ছেদ (circumcision) | No native weakness, but adjacent to সুন্নত (see §2.2) | Retain; never সুন্নত |
| বিধান (law) | Established; adjacent to ধৰ্ম (see baseline) | Retain; never ধৰ্ম |
| ব্যভিচাৰ (sexual immorality) / টেঙাই মৰা প্ৰাণী-তেজ (strangled/blood) | No weakness; Jerusalem decree accommodation items | Retain |
1.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled
| Available Assamese terms | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|
| সুসমাচাৰ প্ৰচাৰ (mission, established baseline) | No weakness | Retain |
| মিছন (transliteration) | Loaded with 19th–20th-century American Baptist Mission institutional history among Assam’s tribal populations; reads as foreign/colonial to a Hindu-Assamese audience | Forbidden; use সুসমাচাৰ প্ৰচাৰ |
| স্বৰ্গলৈ তুলি লৈ যোৱা হ’ল (taken up/ascension) | Risk of being read as a periodic mythic celestial return (a deity’s temporary avatar-episode concluding with return to a celestial abode, to be repeated in a future age) | Retain phrase; require a note establishing this as a unique, historical, bodily, permanent departure with a promised (not cyclical) return |
| সকলো বস্তুৰ পুনৰুদ্ধাৰ (restoration of all things) | Risk of assimilation to a cyclical yuga-restoration pattern (dharma periodically restored, then decaying again, requiring the next descent) | Retain phrase with a note anchoring it to a single future Christ-centered renewal, not a repeating cosmic cycle |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (no native Assamese lexical item exists; compound/coinage/transliteration required)
These concepts have no pre-existing single Assamese word; a translated equivalent had to be constructed as a compound phrase or a transliteration-plus-gloss. This is a different problem from §2.2 below — the risk here is not competing meanings but absence of any ready term at all, which if left unaddressed produces improvised, inconsistent renderings across translators.
| Concept | Gap | Resolution |
|---|
| Pentecost (fixed Jewish pilgrim feast, 50 days post-Passover) | No equivalent calendar-feast concept in Assamese religious life | Transliterate + gloss: পেন্তিকোষ্ট (পঞ্চাশৎ পৰ্ব) |
| Justification (forensic “declared righteous”) | No single word conveys a legal declaration distinct from forgiveness or from moral improvement | Locked compound: ধাৰ্মিক বুলি গণ্য কৰা |
| Repentance (Spirit-enabled reorientation, not merit-earning penance) | The two closest native words both import a merit/expiation frame | Coined compound: মন-পালটন |
| Gift of the Holy Spirit (freely given, unpurchasable) | বৰ implies exactly the boon-transaction being excluded | Compound: পবিত্ৰ আত্মাৰ দান |
| Baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5; 11:16) | No native phrase distinguishes a onetime Spirit-baptism from John’s water rite | Compound: পবিত্ৰ আত্মাৰে বাপ্তিস্ম, always paired with an explicit contrast to যোহনৰ বাপ্তিস্ম |
| Chosen instrument (Acts 9:15, σκεῦος ἐκλογῆς) | No idiom for “vessel of someone’s sovereign choice” | Compound: মনোনীত পাত্ৰ |
| Author/Prince of life (Acts 3:15) | No title-word for “originating source of life” distinct from “creator” | Compound: জীৱনৰ কৰ্তা |
| Living oracles (Acts 7:38) | No phrase for “living, active divine speech” as opposed to a static legal text | Compound: জীৱন্ত বাক্য |
| Adoption (baseline, extended into Acts’ sonship-language) | No native single word avoids implying reduced/fostered status | Locked baseline compound: পোহাপুত্ৰ স্বৰূপে গ্ৰহণ |
| ”Cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37, idiomatic conviction) | No direct Assamese idiom | Literal figurative rendering: হৃদয়ত বিদ্ধ হ’ল, tied explicitly to Spirit-produced conviction rather than self-generated guilt |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (native terms exist, but are shared with, or claimed by, other religious traditions)
These are the higher-risk category: an Assamese word does exist and is fluent, but it already carries a full theological payload from Ekasarana Dharma (Sankardev’s Vaishnavite Sattra tradition), broader Assamese Hindu/Shakta practice, or Assamese Muslim usage. Using the word without fencing imports that payload silently.
| Assamese term | Competing tradition claim | Fencing required |
|---|
| আত্মা | Shared with ভূত/প্ৰেতাত্মা (ghost/departed spirit) folk belief and পৰমাত্মা/ব্ৰহ্ম (impersonal Universal Self) Vedantic philosophy | Never bare; always পবিত্ৰ আত্মা for the Holy Spirit |
| দৰ্শন (vision) | The central Hindu devotional term for seeing/being seen by a deity’s temple image (darshan) | Mandatory gloss at first occurrence: Spirit-given revelatory sight for guidance, not devotional image-viewing |
| পথ (the Way) | Overlaps with the Hindu marga concept (one valid spiritual path among several) and with Ekasarana’s own naam-dharma “path” self-description | Render as পথ (সেই পথ) with definite-article emphasis and a note that this names the singular way inaugurated in Christ, not one path among many |
| সম্প্ৰদায় (sect) | Ekasarana Dharma is itself formally a sampradaya; using this word for αἵρεσις (the outsiders’ hostile label for “the Way”) risks readers concluding the Way is one sampradaya among several, exactly the claim Acts 24:14 resists | Mandatory translator note every occurrence (24:5,14; 28:22) distinguishing the outsider label from the Way’s own self-understanding |
| মূৰ্তি (idol) | Identical word used for sacred Hindu temple images (murti), objects of genuine reverence for most Assamese Hindus | Precision required: the polemic in Acts 15, 17, 19 must target the source text’s actual referents (Greco-Roman cult images) and never read as a blanket slur against Hindu devotional practice generally |
| শক্তি (power) | Associated, though less dominantly than in Hindi, with Shakti-goddess devotional theology (Kamakhya is Assam’s most prominent Shakti pilgrimage site) | Always pair with ঈশ্বৰৰ (of God); avoid standalone শক্তি in miracle-narrative segments, which are unusually dense in Acts compared to Romans |
| বৰ (boon/gift) | Puranic boon-for-austerity/devotion transaction (a deity grants a wish in exchange for tapasya or bhakti) | Never standalone for spiritual gifts or the Spirit’s gift; always আত্মিক বৰ or পবিত্ৰ আত্মাৰ দান |
| প্ৰায়শ্চিত্ত / তপস্যা | Karmic ritual expiation / merit-earning ascetic austerity | Forbidden for repentance; use মন-পালটন |
| স্নান / শুচি হওক (ritual bathing/purification) | Repeatable purification bathing at the Brahmaputra, during Bihu, and at Kamakhya | Forbidden for baptism; retain বাপ্তিস্ম |
| গুৰু | Sattra tradition’s guru-lineage (Satradhikar succession) at the head of each Sattra institution | Forbidden for apostle, elder, overseer; use প্ৰেৰিত, প্ৰাচীন, অধ্যক্ষ |
| নামঘৰ | The specific Ekasarana Dharma congregational prayer-house institution founded by Sankardev | Forbidden for church or synagogue; use মণ্ডলী / সমাজ-গৃহ respectively |
| সুন্নত | Islamic-specific term for circumcision, prominent given Assam’s substantial Muslim population | Forbidden; use ত্বকচ্ছেদ |
| শহীদ | Islamic martyrdom theology and 20th-century nationalist political usage | Forbidden; use descriptive phrase |
| অৱতাৰ | Krishna’s periodic avatar-descent, the organizing category of Ekasarana Dharma’s own theology | Forbidden for incarnation/ascension/restoration language; use দেহধাৰণ and require notes at every re-occurrence in Acts’ Christology titles |
| দূত vs প্ৰেৰিত | Both can gloss as “sent one/messenger” in ordinary Assamese, but the text needs them kept structurally distinct (created angelic messenger vs. human apostolic office) | দূত (with প্ৰভুৰ দূত for “angel of the Lord”) reserved for angelic beings; প্ৰেৰিত reserved for human apostles; never interchange |
| জ্যোতিষী / গণক | Astrology and folk divination/fortune-telling, both live cultural practices in rural and urban Assam | Kept distinct from ভাববাদী (prophet) and ভাববাণী (prophecy); the গণক আত্মা (spirit of divination, Acts 16:16) entry deliberately keeps গণক to name the phenomenon accurately while framing it in-text as an illegitimate power subordinated to Christ, not a legitimate divinatory office |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|
| Pentecost | Transliterate + gloss | No native festal concept; transliteration preserves the proper-noun/historical character while the gloss supplies content |
| Christianoi | Transliterate (খ্ৰীষ্টিয়ান) | Already an established loanword across Assamese Christian usage; a paraphrase (“follower of the Anointed One”) would be unnatural and inconsistent with existing Bible translation tradition |
| Satan | Transliterate (শয়তান) | Already a live loanword across Assamese religious registers (including Islamic শয়তান/shaitan usage), so it carries no additional foreignness; paraphrasing would be more disruptive than the existing shared loanword, provided the doctrinal note distinguishing it from a mythic asura is attached |
| Messiah/Christ | Transliterate (মচীহ / খ্ৰীষ্ট) | Established Bible Society usage; a paraphrase like “anointed one” (অভিষিক্ত ব্যক্তি) loses the proper-noun weight and was already rejected in the baseline |
| Abba | Retain transliteration (আব্বা) | Preserves Aramaic filial-intimacy register the baseline already protects; a full paraphrase into পিতা alone would erase the intimacy Acts inherits from this Pauline/Gospel usage |
| Amen / Hallelujah | Transliterate (আমেন / হাল্লিলূয়া) | Established liturgical loanwords |
| Baptism / baptize | Transliterate root + native verb (বাপ্তিস্ম / বাপ্তাইজ কৰা) | Paraphrasing into any native “bathe/wash” vocabulary (স্নান, পূত হওক) would trigger the ritual-bathing collision documented in §2.2; the transliterated root is already established Assamese Christian usage and carries no competing religious payload |
| Synagogue | Paraphrase, not transliterate (সমাজ-গৃহ) | A transliteration (সিনাগগ) is available but unnecessary; the compound সমাজ-গৃহ is transparent, readable at a Class 8–10 level, and cleanly avoids নামঘৰ/মন্দিৰ without importing a foreign-sounding loanword into a book already dense with proper names |
| Sanhedrin | Paraphrase (মহাসভা) | “Council/great assembly” translates naturally and is more accessible than a transliteration for a low-OT-literacy audience; no competing religious claim on this word |
| Martyr | Paraphrase, not transliterate | The available transliteration option (শহীদ) is a live Islamic-specific loanword; a descriptive phrase (প্ৰাণ দি সাক্ষ্য দিয়া লোক) avoids that collision entirely |
| Proselyte | Paraphrase (যিহুদী ধৰ্মলৈ ধৰ্মান্তৰিত লোক) | No suitable single native word; দীক্ষা would misdirect toward Ekasarana initiation ritual |
| Vision (ὅραμα) | Retain existing native word (দৰ্শন) with mandatory disambiguating note, rather than coin a new phrase | দৰ্শন is simply the correct, natural Assamese word for “vision/sight”; avoiding it entirely would produce unnatural, stilted prose across a book that uses this word roughly a dozen times. The safer strategy is retention with a first-occurrence gloss, not avoidance |
| The Way / Sect | Retain existing native words (পথ / সম্প্ৰদায়) with mandatory notes, rather than coin new phrases | Same logic as দৰ্শন: both words are the only natural Assamese equivalents and coining artificial alternatives would reduce readability without reducing risk, since the risk is conceptual (what the word implies about religious pluralism), not lexical |
| Idols (εἴδωλα) | Retain existing native word (মূৰ্তি) with contextual precision required, rather than coin an alternative | No viable alternative word exists; Assamese has no separate vocabulary for “false-god image” distinct from “sacred image.” The fencing must happen at the level of textual framing (naming the specific referent) rather than at the level of word choice |
General principle: transliterate proper nouns, liturgical exclamations, and terms whose foreignness is doctrinally appropriate (Pentecost, Messiah, Satan, Abba); paraphrase with a natural compound where a transparent descriptive phrase exists and a transliteration would either be unavailable in prior Bible-translation tradition or would collide with a live loanword from another religious tradition (martyr, synagogue); retain existing native words, unavoidably, where no alternative exists at all, and manage the risk through mandatory first-occurrence translator notes rather than through word avoidance (vision, the Way, sect, idols).
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities (Acts 1–28)
Ranked by combined doctrinal severity and probability of syncretistic misreading, given Acts’ narrative (event-depicting) genre and its concentration in the core passage, Acts 2:1–41.
- দেহধাৰণ / অৱতাৰ collision, extended into ascension, Son of Man, and Living God passages (Acts 1:9–11; 7:56; 14:15) — Critical. The single highest-stakes fence in the whole Language Package, now triggered by narrative events (a bodily departure into heaven) rather than only doctrinal statement, increasing the chance a reader maps it onto a periodic avatar-return pattern.
- “Filled with the Holy Spirit” vs. deodhani/Shakta trance-possession, at the core passage itself (Acts 2:4) — Critical. This is the single event most likely to be read through an existing Assamese ritual template, because Pentecost is a phenomenologically dramatic, public, group spiritual event — precisely the shape of a possession-trance in local religious experience. This is the highest-priority note requirement in the entire curriculum.
- মূৰ্তি (idols) precision in the Areopagus and Ephesus narratives (Acts 17; 19) — Critical. Same word as venerated Hindu temple images; a mistargeted polemic risks reading as a blanket attack on Assamese Hindu devotional life rather than the text’s actual referents.
- পুনৰুত্থান vs. পুনৰ্জন্ম, repeated across nearly every apostolic sermon (1:22; 2:24–32; 4:2,33; 13:30–37; 17:31–32; 23:6–8; 24:15,21; 26:23) — Critical. Higher occurrence-density than in Romans; every instance is a fresh opportunity for the forbidden substitution to slip in.
- শয়তান as a real, currently active adversary vs. a mythic, already-defeated asura (5:3; 26:18) — Critical. Assam’s most prominent regional deity narrative (Durga/Kamakhya’s Mahishasura-mardini) supplies a ready-made “adversary already defeated” template that directly undercuts Acts’ claim of Satan’s ongoing activity.
- পথ (“the Way”) vs. marga/naam-dharma path-pluralism (9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22) — High. Recurs as the movement’s own self-designation across many chapters; a softened reading collapses exclusivity into “one path among several,” directly undermining the book’s exclusivist claims.
- সম্প্ৰদায় (“sect”) applied to the Way, given Ekasarana Dharma’s own self-identification as a sampradaya (24:5,14; 28:22) — High. Distinct from #6 because this is the outsiders’ hostile label being reported, not the movement’s own word; conflating the two risks readers concluding Christianity accepts the “one sampradaya among many” framing it is, in context, actually resisting.
- বাপ্তিস্ম vs. Brahmaputra/Bihu/Kamakhya ritual bathing culture, occurring at unusually high frequency in Acts (2:38,41; 8:12,36–38; 9:18; 10:47–48; 16:15,33; 18:8; 19:5; 22:16) — High. The sheer number of baptism narratives in Acts (compared to Romans’ more theoretical treatment) multiplies exposure to this collision.
- মন-পালটন vs. প্ৰায়শ্চিত্ত/তপস্যা (2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 8:22; 11:18; 17:30; 20:21; 26:20) — High. As with #8, Acts narrates repeated repentance-calls at a much higher density than Romans discusses the concept abstractly.
- দৰ্শন (“vision”) vs. Hindu devotional darshan (9:10,12; 10:3,17,19; 16:9–10; 18:9) — High. A structurally unavoidable native word carrying a live devotional meaning in nearly every Assamese reader’s existing vocabulary.
- গণক আত্মা / যাদুকৰ vs. legitimate ওজা folk-healing and tantra-mantra practice (8:9–11; 13:6–11; 16:16–18) — High. Risk of the polemic being received as condemning an entire living rural profession rather than the text’s specific illegitimate occult figures.
- জাতি/caste-adjacent readings of the Jew–Gentile distinction, especially around Acts 10’s “God shows no partiality” (10:34; 15:1–29) — High. Assam’s own caste dynamics supply an available (mis)reading frame for a category the text does not intend.
- শক্তি density across the miracle narratives (2:22; 8:13; 19:11, and throughout) — Medium-High. Individually low-risk per the baseline note, but the sheer repetition of power-vocabulary in Acts’ miracle-heavy narrative increases cumulative exposure to a Shakti-adjacent reading if the ঈশ্বৰৰ pairing is ever dropped.
- Three-way institutional fencing: নামঘৰ / মন্দিৰ / সমাজ-গৃহ / মণ্ডলী, all potentially in view within a few chapters of each other (5:11; 6:9; 9:2,20; 13:5,14) — Medium-High. Unlike Romans, Acts narrates both synagogue and church as distinct, ongoing institutions in the same storyline, requiring translators to keep four labels consistently distinct across rapid narrative transitions.
- শহীদ avoidance under translator drift (7:54–60; 12:2; 22:20) — Medium. Lower doctrinal severity than the above, but a common failure mode: a translator unfamiliar with the fencing rationale may default to the more familiar loanword under time pressure.
- দূত vs. প্ৰেৰিত interchange (5:19; 8:26; 12:7–11,23) — Medium. Both glossable as “messenger” in casual Assamese; narrative confusion between an angel and an apostle would materially distort several miracle/deliverance accounts (e.g., Acts 12’s angelic prison escape).
5. Handoff Notes for Doctrine Risk Registry Construction
- Every Critical/High item in §4 above must receive a corresponding entry (or reinforced note) in the updated
doctrine_risk_registry.json for Acts, following the same assamese_risk_notes pattern established in the Romans baseline.
- Items in §2.2 (crowded semantic neighborhoods) that lack a mandatory-note mechanism in the current
bible_term_registry.json entries should have that mechanism added explicitly (the entries for the_way, sect, vision, idols, and filled_with_holy_spirit already carry this; confirm no other §2.2 term is missing it).
- Because Acts narrates events rather than only asserting doctrine, Phase 2 segment-level review should treat narrative description of an event (e.g., “they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak”) as carrying equal escalation weight to a direct doctrinal assertion — the escalation rules in
12_ai_translation_requirements.md should be understood to apply to narrated instances of Critical/High doctrines, not only propositional statements about them.
- §3’s transliteration/paraphrase table should be treated as binding precedent for any further new terms discovered during Phase 2 translation of Acts; new terms should be classified against the same three categories (transliterate / paraphrase / retain-with-note) before being added to translation memory.