Executive Summary — Acts | English → Azerbaijani

Why it matters

The Acts curriculum extends the Romans Language Package into narrative territory where the destination culture’s dominant Twelver Shia tradition collides with Christian doctrine more often, and more sharply, than in the epistolary text of Romans. Acts repeats its highest-stakes claims — Christ’s deity, real death and bodily resurrection, the Spirit’s personhood, salvation apart from law-keeping — in sermon after sermon across 28 chapters, and introduces one entirely new collision class (şahid/şəhid, witness vs. martyr) with no equivalent in Romans. Getting Phase 2 translation right here is not incremental; it is the difference between a text that confronts Azerbaijani religious assumptions honestly and one that is silently absorbed into them.

Key findings

• Full-book coverage confirmed. All 28 chapters of Acts were surveyed; four (12, 18, 22, 25 per the semantic analysis, with 23 and 25 also flagged as reviewed-no-new-load in the doctrine analysis) introduce no new theological vocabulary and are explicitly marked reviewed, not omitted.
• 99 translation memory terms now govern Phase 2 Acts translation: 42 terms inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 57 newly derived for Acts.
• 40 doctrines tracked in the Acts doctrine risk registry (matching doctrine_risk_registry.json and 11_doctrine_analysis.md exactly): 11 Critical, 18 High, 9 Medium, 2 Low.
• 29 doctrines require mandatory human theologian review, 9 require native-speaker review, and only 2 (Thanksgiving; Christian Fellowship and Mutual Encouragement) clear at automated review alone.
• At the term level, 51 of 99 glossary terms (15 Critical + 36 High) carry theologian-oversight-level risk — roughly half the entire Acts glossary.
• The core passage, Acts 2:1–41, is the single densest concentration of Critical-risk material in the book: nine co-occurring doctrines including Pentecost, tongues, universal outpouring, repentance/baptism, the Spirit-as-gift, Lordship, Messianic promise, resurrection, and Gentile inclusion all converge in 41 verses.
• One genuinely new, highest-priority risk not present in the Romans baseline: şahid (witness/testify) vs. şəhid (martyr, Karbala-associated). Because these Arabic-loan terms are phonetically adjacent, this requires a dedicated automated pre-flight lexical check on every Phase 2 segment, in addition to normal glossary enforcement.
• Cult-rendering risk identified for the first time in this curriculum: the Jehovah’s Witnesses Azerbaijani New World Translation inserts “[of his own Son]” at Acts 20:28 to blunt its deity-of-Christ force; this insertion must never be echoed.

Risks

• Şahid/şəhid confusion could reframe apostolic eyewitness testimony as Karbala-style martyrdom veneration, distorting both the doctrine of apostleship and the meaning of Christian suffering.
• Adi/murdar drifting toward haram (Acts 10–11) would reframe Gentile inclusion as an Islamic dietary-law question rather than the abolition of OT ceremonial boundary markers.
• Görüntü drifting toward vəhy would claim Qur’an-equivalent revelatory status for Peter’s, Paul’s, and Cornelius’s visions.
• Tövbə’s repeatable-piety sense (common in everyday Islamic usage) could quietly detach repentance from explicit faith in Christ’s death and resurrection at every major sermon climax (2:38; 3:19; 17:30).
• Sünnət’s ritual-practice familiarity risks flattening the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) and 13:38–39 into a debate about one rite rather than the full justification-apart-from-the-law stakes.
• Conversion-of-Paul material carries real, non-hypothetical social and family stigma for Azerbaijani readers considering a Muslim-heritage-to-Christ narrative; softening the term to reduce discomfort is forbidden, but ignoring the pastoral reality in surrounding material would be equally irresponsible.
• “All things in common” (2:44–45; 4:32–35) risks being read through the lens of Soviet-era forced collectivization rather than voluntary, Spirit-motivated generosity.

Opportunities

• General resurrection (Acts 17, 23, 24, 26) is a genuine, explicitly flagged bridge point with Islamic Qiyamah doctrine — a rare passage where common ground can be named without diluting the separate, non-negotiable claim of Christ’s own unique resurrection.
• Household salvation patterns (Acts 16:31) resonate positively with Azerbaijani collectivist family structures and can be used pastorally, provided individual faith is kept explicit.
• The Areopagus speech (Acts 17) and the “unknown god” altar offer a model of respectful, non-syncretistic engagement with religious plurality that can be taught as a positive apologetic pattern.
• Şükran (thanksgiving) and general monotheistic pushback against polytheism (Acts 14) remain genuine, low-risk points of cultural resonance.

Recommended actions

1. Elevate Acts 2:1–41 as the mandatory first-pass Phase 2 processing unit and reviewer-calibration passage before scaling to the remaining 27 chapters.
2. Implement an automated pre-flight lexical check specifically for the şahid/şəhid root, in addition to the inherited forbidden-substitution scan (şəriət, qismət/alın yazısı, şəfaət/təvəssül, Cəbrail), now extended with adi/murdar-vs-haram and görüntü-vs-vəhy checks.
3. Route all 29 theologian-required doctrines and 51 Critical/High terms through mandatory human theologian review per doctrine_risk_registry.json and bible_term_registry.json; do not permit automated-only clearance for any of these.
4. Confirm the numeric YouVersion {VERSION_ID} for the Azerbaijani Müqəddəs Kitab before Phase 2 scale hyperlink generation (inherited gap from the Romans baseline, still unresolved).
5. Brief all Phase 2 reviewers on the Acts 20:28 NWT “[Son]” insertion as the single highest-priority cult-rendering divergence to actively exclude in this book.
6. Cross-check Acts 2:21/2:38 against the existing Romans 10:9–13 baseline rendering before finalizing any Acts 2 translation, per the cross-book consistency rule now written into 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.