Core Glossary
Core Glossary — English → Bavarian
3 John 1:1–14 | Full-Book Term Registry
This glossary consolidates every load-bearing term identified in analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, spanning the entirety of 3 John (a single chapter, coextensive with the core passage). Terms marked BASELINE must be reused exactly as recorded in the Romans Language Package’s translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json; their risk tier and rendering are not re-negotiated here. Terms marked NEW are proposed additions for this curriculum, pending Phase 1 Step 2 formal translation-memory entry and native-speaker dialect review (mandatory for all Bavarian terms regardless of risk tier, per the baseline’s orthography-variability rule).
| # | Term | Original (Greek) | Transliteration | Bavarian rendering | Bavarian phonetic/transliteration | Status | Doctrine risk | Doctrine(s) | Primary verse(s) | Risk rationale (brief) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elder | πρεσβύτερος | presbyteros | Ölteste (da Ölteste) | Öidaste | NEW | High | Church Leadership | 1:1 | Register gap — no native dialect tradition of a “presbyter” office distinct from Catholic clergy hierarchy; risk of collapsing into either bare “old person” or the wrong clerical category |
| 2 | Beloved (address) | ἀγαπητός | agapētos | Liaba | Liawa | NEW | Medium | Truth and Fellowship | 1:1, 2, 5, 11 | Must convey covenantal affection, not mere endearment |
| 3 | Love (noun/verb) | ἀγάπη / ἀγαπάω | agapē / agapaō | Liab / liab ham | Liab / liab ham | NEW | High | Truth and Fellowship; Hospitality | 1:1, 6 | Strong colloquial romantic/family-affection default in Bavarian (“i hab di liab”) risks eclipsing the covenantal-gospel sense; must be distinguished from φίλος/Freind (v.14) |
| 4 | Truth | ἀλήθεια | alētheia | Woahrheit | Wahrheit | NEW | High | Truth and Fellowship (title doctrine) | 1:1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 | Colloquial “telling the truth” (factual honesty) risks eclipsing the doctrinal sense of gospel-truth as the shared ground of Christian fellowship |
| 5 | Soul | ψυχή | psychē | Seel | Seel | NEW | Medium | Truth and Fellowship (pastoral care) | 1:2 | Must not collapse into vague “feelings”; verse’s prosperity-vs-soul contrast (prosperity-gospel misuse risk) depends on retaining whole-person/spiritual weight |
| 6 | Joy / rejoice | χαρά / χαίρω | chara / chairō | Freid / si freu’n | Freid / si freu’n | NEW | Low | Truth and Fellowship | 1:3, 4 | Stable dialect idiom; minimal risk |
| 7 | Brothers | ἀδελφός (pl.) | adelphoi | Brüada | Brüada | NEW | Medium | Hospitality; Fellowship | 1:3, 5, 10 | Must convey spiritual family, not merely village/biological kinship (Bavarian’s strong extended-kinship culture) |
| 8 | Walk (conduct of life) | περιπατέω | peripateō | wandln (in da Woahrheit wandln) | wandln | NEW | Medium | Truth and Fellowship | 1:3, 4 | Idiom for habitual conduct; literal “gehn” (walk on foot) risks nonsensical literalism |
| 9 | My children (spiritual) | τὰ ἐμὰ τέκνα | ta ema tekna | meine Kinda | meine Kinda | NEW | Medium | Truth and Fellowship | 1:4 | Must be read as spiritual, not biological, offspring |
| 10 | Faithful (act) | πιστός | pistos | (Glaam-family root; render as treu) | treu | NEW | Medium | Hospitality | 1:5 | Hospitality is an expression of the same trust/faithfulness vocabulary as saving faith; must not be reduced to plain “kindness” |
| 11 | Strangers | ξένος | xenos | Fremde | Fremde | NEW | High | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers (title doctrine) | 1:5 | Modern Bavarian/German usage heavily colored by migration discourse (xenophobia/tourism); requires explicit context gloss to retain the itinerant-gospel-worker sense |
| 12 | Church | ἐκκλησία | ekklēsia | Kirch (gathered-people sense: Kirchengmoaschaft) | Kircha / Kirchengmoaschoft | BASELINE | High | Church Leadership; Hospitality | 1:6, 9, 10 | Per baseline: defaults overwhelmingly to parish building/institution; per baseline AI instructions, the gathered-people/body sense must use “Kirchengmoaschaft” or explicit context, never bare “Gmoa” |
| 13 | Send forward (equip for journey) | προπέμπω | propempō | weiterhelfa (af d’Reis mit ausstatten und weiterhelfa) | weiterhelfen | NEW | High | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers (title doctrine) | 1:6 | Central hospitality verb; modern thin sense of “seeing someone off” is far weaker than the ancient practice of provisioning/escorting missionaries |
| 14 | Worthy of God | ἀξίως τοῦ Θεοῦ | axiōs tou Theou | so wia’s Gott wert is | so wia’s Gott wert is | NEW | Medium | Hospitality | 1:6 | Must not flatten into generic politeness/social propriety |
| 15 | The Name (= Christ) | ὄνομα | onoma | Nam (wegn seim Nam) | Nam | NEW | Medium | Hospitality | 1:7 | Referent (Christ) must be recoverable from context or footnoted; risk of misreading as personal reputation |
| 16 | Gentiles / pagans | ἐθνικός | ethnikos | Heiden | Hoaden | BASELINE | Medium | Hospitality | 1:7 | Reuse baseline term exactly; note narrower contextual sense here (unbelieving outsiders as a support source to avoid) vs. Romans’ Jew-Gentile unity theme — do not import that framing here |
| 17 | We ought (moral debt) | ὀφείλω | opheilō | mia miass’n | mia miass’n | NEW | Medium | Hospitality | 1:8 | Frames hospitality as binding moral obligation, not optional kindness |
| 18 | Receive / welcome (hospitality) | ἀπολαμβάνω | apolambanō | aufnehma | aufnehma | NEW | Medium | Hospitality | 1:8 | Positive counterpart to Diotrephes’ refusal (v.9-10); practical/material welcome |
| 19 | Fellow-worker | συνεργός | synergos | Mitorwaida | Mitarbeiter | NEW | Medium | Hospitality; Truth and Fellowship | 1:8 | Register-gap term; risk of defaulting to secular workplace “colleague” sense without explicit gospel-partnership anchoring |
| 20 | Loving preeminence / pride | φιλοπρωτεύω | philoprōteuō | Herrschsuacht (wer geern dea Erste sei mog) | Herrschsucht | NEW | Critical | Church Leadership and Pride (title doctrine) | 1:9 | Hapax legomenon; no native dialect word. Must be reserved for ambition over church authority/status specifically, or it reads as unremarkable personality trait rather than the letter’s central pride-warning. Human theologian review required every occurrence |
| 21 | Does not receive (authority-rejection) | ἐπιδέχομαι | epidechomai | nimmt net auf / erkennt net an | nimmt net auf | NEW | High | Church Leadership and Pride | 1:9, 10 | More authority-laden “receive” than ἀπολαμβάνω; must preserve authority-rejection dimension, not read as mere personal unfriendliness |
| 22 | Deeds / works (ethical) | ἔργον | ergon | Werka | Werka | NEW | Medium | Church Leadership and Pride | 1:10 | Plain ethical-accountability term; do not import Romans’ law/grace “works” freight here |
| 23 | Prating / malicious slander | φλυαρέω | phlyareō | leastern | lästern | NEW | Medium | Church Leadership and Pride | 1:10 | Deliberate slander, not mere gossip |
| 24 | Hinder / forbid | κωλύω | kōlyō | hindan | hindern | NEW | Medium | Church Leadership and Pride | 1:10 | Active obstruction of others’ good intentions — escalation of Diotrephes’ abuse |
| 25 | Cast out (expel) | ἐκβάλλω | ekballō | aussawerfa | hinauswerfen | NEW | High | Church Leadership and Pride | 1:10 | Forcible expulsion from the congregation; pair with “Kirchengmoaschaft” per church-term guidance above |
| 26 | Imitate | μιμέομαι | mimeomai | nochmacha | nachmachen | NEW | Medium | Imitating Good rather than Evil (title doctrine) | 1:11 | Colloquial risk of a childish “copying” connotation; doctrinal weight (modeling one’s whole life pattern) must be carried by context |
| 27 | Evil (moral) | κακός | kakos | bös (s’Bös) | bös | NEW | Medium | Imitating Good rather than Evil | 1:11 | Deliberately prefer “bös” (morally wicked) over “schlecht” (mere poor quality) to avoid trivializing κακός |
| 28 | Good (moral) | ἀγαθός | agathos | guat (s’Guade) | guat | NEW | Low | Imitating Good rather than Evil | 1:11 | Stable, low-risk term |
| 29 | Doing good / doing evil | ἀγαθοποιέω / κακοποιέω | agathopoieō / kakopoieō | wer’s Guade tuat / wer’s Böse tuat | wer’s Guade tuat | NEW | High | Imitating Good rather than Evil | 1:11 | Must retain the strong “is of God”/“has not seen God” binary — a statement about spiritual origin, not etiquette |
| 30 | Witness / testify (verb+noun) | μαρτυρέω / μαρτυρία | martyreō / martyria | bezeugn (verb; avoid bare noun “Zeugnis”) | bezeugen | NEW | High | Commendation of Faithful Witness (title doctrine) | 1:3, 6, 12 | Bare noun “Zeugnis” defaults in everyday Bavarian to a school report card — a collision risk fully analogous to the baseline’s “Gmoa” case; prefer verb form or circumlocution |
| 31 | True | ἀληθής | alēthēs | woahr | wahr | NEW | Medium | Commendation of Faithful Witness | 1:12 | Ties back to letter’s dominant truth theme; must retain doctrinal weight, not read as mere factual accuracy |
| 32 | Mouth to mouth (idiom) | στόμα πρὸς στόμα | stoma pros stoma | vo Gsicht zu Gsicht redn | vo Gsicht zu Gsicht redn | NEW | Low | Truth and Fellowship (closing) | 1:14 | Avoid literal calque (risks a kiss/resuscitation image); render as natural face-to-face idiom |
| 33 | Peace (closing blessing) | εἰρήνη | eirēnē | Friad | Friade | BASELINE | Low | Truth and Fellowship (closing) | 1:14 | Reuse baseline term exactly; identical low-risk profile |
| 34 | Friends (φιλία-register) | φίλος | philos | Freind | Freind | NEW | Low | Truth and Fellowship (closing) | 1:14 | Distinct lexical register from ἀγάπη/Liab used throughout the letter; teaching note, not a high doctrinal risk |
| 35 | Ink | μέλαν | melan | Tint | Tint | NEW | Low | (epistolary convention; no doctrine) | 1:13 | Material-culture term, minimal risk |
| 36 | Pen / reed | κάλαμος | kalamos | Rohrfeda | Rohrfeder | NEW | Low | (epistolary convention; no doctrine) | 1:13 | Material-culture term, minimal risk |
Proper Names (Low Risk — Established Bible-Tradition Transliteration)
| Term | Original (Greek) | Transliteration | Bavarian form | Doctrine | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gaius | Γάϊος | Gaïos | Gaius | Hospitality; Truth and Fellowship | Retained unchanged, per baseline convention for proper names (cf. David, Israel); pronounced with regional vowel quality, not respelled |
| Diotrephes | Διοτρεφής | Diotrephēs | Diotrephes | Church Leadership and Pride | Retained unchanged; theophoric pagan-name etymology (“nourished by Zeus”) is background information only, not a translation concern |
| Demetrius | Δημήτριος | Dēmētrios | Demetrius | Commendation of Faithful Witness | Retained unchanged; theophoric pagan-name etymology (“belonging to Demeter”) is background information only, not a translation concern |
Risk Tier Summary (3 John, this curriculum)
| Tier | Count | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 1 | Loving preeminence / pride (Herrschsuacht) |
| High | 10 | Elder; Love; Truth; Strangers; Church (baseline); Send forward on journey; Loving preeminence (also Critical); Does not receive (authority-rejection); Cast out; Doing good/evil (binary); Witness/testify |
| Medium | 19 | Beloved; Soul; Brothers; Walk; My children; Faithful; Gentiles (baseline); We ought; Receive/welcome; Fellow-worker; Deeds/works; Prating/slander; Hinder; Imitate; Evil; True; Worthy of God; The Name; (plus Church counted once above) |
| Low | 6 | Joy/rejoice; Good; Mouth to mouth idiom; Peace (baseline); Friends; Ink; Pen/reed; proper names |
Review routing guidance (consistent with the baseline doctrine_risk_registry.json conventions): Critical and High tier terms above require human theologian review on every occurrence; Medium tier requires native speaker review; Low tier requires automated review with a mandatory native-speaker orthography spot-check per the baseline’s standing rule that Bavarian’s lack of a standardized spelling requires dialect review regardless of doctrinal risk tier.
This glossary must be loaded alongside the baseline translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json before Phase 1 Step 2 (translation memory update) and before any Phase 2 segment translation of 3 John content.
Critical Risk Terms
Loving Preeminence
Approved rendering: Herrschsuacht
Transliteration: Herrschsucht
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: generic bossiness vocabulary (e.g. ‘Dickschädl’, ‘sich aufspielen’) — too weak; reads as an unremarkable personality trait rather than the letter’s named theological warning
Original: φιλοπρωτεύω (ὁ φιλοπρωτεύων)
Category: Church Leadership
CRITICAL. Coined from standard German ‘Herrschsucht’ via regular u > ua diphthongization. Translates φιλοπρωτεύω, a NT hapax legomenon occurring only at 1:9, denoting entrenched personal ambition for rank, precedence, and control in the church. No native Bavarian dialect word exists (Catholic clerical culture names this vice, if at all, in Latin/moral-theology vocabulary — ‘ambitio’ — never in dialect). Must be reserved strictly for ambition over church authority/status, never for ordinary bossiness in family or village life, or it will read as an unremarkable personality flaw rather than the letter’s central corrective. Must never soften into ‘he’s just a difficult personality.’ Human theologian review required on every occurrence.
High Risk Terms
Church
Approved rendering: Kirch
Transliteration: Kircha
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: Gmoa (secular-administrative default, rejected)
Original: ἐκκλησία
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package, verbatim. Baseline notes: in Bavarian village life the parish church (Pfarrkirch) is the literal, physical center of communal identity, marked by the Kirchweih/Kirwa festival; ‘Kirch’ therefore defaults overwhelmingly to the building and parish institution rather than the gathered-people sense. This risk is sharpened, not merely inherited, in 3 John 1:9-10, where Diotrephes literally ‘casts out … from the church’ a specific, nameable local congregation; the gathered-people sense here must be rendered as ‘Kirchengmoaschaft’ or ‘Kirch’ with explicit gathered-people context, never bare ‘Gmoa’. Also present at 3 John 1:6 (testimony given ‘before the church’).
Elder
Approved rendering: Ölteste
Transliteration: Öidaste
Doctrine: Apostolic Eldership and Authority
Rejected alternatives: Priester (misidentifies the office as modern Catholic ordained clergy), Pfarrer (same collision risk), bare ‘alter Mann’ (strips the term of any delegated authority)
Original: πρεσβύτερος
Category: Church Leadership
NEW. Coined from ‘der Älteste’ rather than transliterated or borrowed from Catholic clerical vocabulary. No native Bavarian Catholic dialect tradition of a ‘presbyter’ office distinct from the priest/bishop hierarchy exists — a register gap comparable to the baseline’s ‘election’ entry. Self-designation of the letter’s author at 1:1; Diotrephes’ rejection of this authority (1:9) must read as rejection of delegated apostolic office, not mere personal unfriendliness. Human theologian review required every occurrence.
Love
Approved rendering: Liab
Transliteration: Liab
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀγάπη / ἀγαπάω
Category: Fellowship
NEW. From ‘Liebe’ via regular final -e apocope and Bavarian ie > ia diphthong shift. Bavarian’s strong colloquial romantic/family-affection default (‘i hab di liab’) risks eclipsing the covenantal-gospel sense; the surrounding sentence must keep the doctrinal sense in view, exactly as the baseline requires for ‘Gnad’ and ‘Glaam’. Must be kept lexically distinct from the closing greeting’s philia-register ‘Freind’ (1:14) — the letter deliberately shifts vocabulary registers in its final verse and this distinction must be preserved. Occurs at 1:1 (the Elder’s love for Gaius, ‘in truth’) and 1:6 (Gaius’s love testified before the church).
Truth
Approved rendering: Woahrheit
Transliteration: Wahrheit
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀλήθεια
Category: Truth
NEW. From standard German ‘Wahrheit’ via regular Bavarian a > oa diphthongization. This is the letter’s title-doctrine keyword, recurring five times in fourteen verses (1:1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12). Colloquial Bavarian ‘d’Woahrheit song’ (to tell the truth) risks reducing this to mere factual honesty; must retain the doctrinal sense of gospel-truth as the shared ground of Christian love and fellowship throughout. No liturgical scaffolding exists for 3 John (unlike Romans terms), so this term carries more, not less, explanatory burden than comparable Romans register-gap terms.
Strangers
Approved rendering: Fremde
Transliteration: Fremde
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: Gäste (undersells the itinerant, financially-dependent status of traveling gospel workers)
Original: ξένος (pl. ξένοι)
Category: Hospitality
NEW. Borrowed largely unchanged from standard German. Occurs at 1:5. Modern Bavarian/German usage is heavily colored by contemporary migration discourse (Fremdenfeindlichkeit = xenophobia; Fremdenverkehr = tourism industry); both poles risk flattening the biblical sense into a politicized ‘migrant’ reading or a trivial ‘tourist’ reading. NEVER leave bare; must be accompanied by an explicit gloss such as ‘Fremde, de wegn’m Evangelium auf Reisn sind’ (strangers traveling for the gospel’s sake) at first occurrence per passage.
Send Forward
Approved rendering: weiterhelfa
Transliteration: weiterhelfen
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: bloß verabschieden / a thin polite farewell wave (loses the ancient provisioning/escorting sense)
Original: προπέμπω
Category: Hospitality
NEW. The single most doctrinally load-bearing verb of the hospitality doctrine (προπέμπω). Occurs at 1:6. Must be glossed at first occurrence with the fuller phrase ‘af d’Reis mit ausstatten und weiterhelfa’ (equip and help onward on the journey); the thin modern sense of politely seeing someone off is far weaker than the ancient practice of provisioning and escorting missionaries and must never be allowed to shrink to a mere farewell greeting.
Does Not Receive
Approved rendering: nimmt net auf
Transliteration: nimmt net auf
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Original: ἐπιδέχομαι (οὐκ ἐπιδέχεται)
Category: Church Leadership
NEW. Alternate form ‘erkennt net an’ (does not acknowledge) available. Translates ἐπιδέχομαι, a more formal, authority-laden ‘receive’ than ἀπολαμβάνω (see ‘receive_welcome’). Occurs at 1:9 and implicitly 1:10. Must preserve the authority-rejection dimension: Diotrephes’ refusal is a direct rejection of the Elder’s (apostolic) authority and of the brothers he commended, not merely personal unfriendliness or a personality clash. Also relevant to the ‘Apostolic Eldership and Authority’ doctrine.
Cast Out
Approved rendering: aussawerfa
Transliteration: hinauswerfen
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Original: ἐκβάλλω (ἐκβάλλει)
Category: Church Leadership
NEW. From ‘hinauswerfen’, regular contraction. Occurs at 1:10, translating ἐκβάλλω (forcible removal/expulsion, the same verb family used elsewhere in the NT for exorcism and synagogue expulsion). Must be paired with the church term’s gathered-people sense (‘Kirchengmoaschaft’ or explicit context, never bare building-only ‘Kirch’) so the climax of Diotrephes’ abuse — formal expulsion of faithful believers from the local congregation for showing hospitality — is not visualized as merely being barred from a physical structure.
Doing Good Evil
Approved rendering: wer’s Guade tuat / wer’s Böse tuat
Transliteration: wer’s Guade tuat / wer’s Böse tuat
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Rejected alternatives: softened behavioral-improvement paraphrases (e.g. ‘ist ein besserer Mensch’ — loses the origin-of-relationship-with-God claim)
Original: ἀγαθοποιέω / κακοποιέω
Category: Ethics
NEW. Occurs at 1:11, translating ἀγαθοποιῶν/κακοποιῶν as a fixed binary phrase. Must retain the strength of the binary (‘is of God’ / ‘has not seen God’) without softening it into a mere behavioral-improvement exhortation; this is a statement about spiritual origin and relationship with God, not etiquette. Bavarian’s warm oral-folk register could tempt a paraphrase-heavy teacher toward gentler framing than the text supports — reviewers must guard against this specifically in oral teaching contexts.
Witness Testify
Approved rendering: bezeugn
Transliteration: bezeugen
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Rejected alternatives: bare noun ‘Zeugnis’ — defaults overwhelmingly in everyday Bavarian speech to a school report card, a collision fully analogous to the baseline’s documented ‘Gmoa’/municipality risk for ‘church’
Original: μαρτυρέω / μαρτυρία
Category: Witness
HIGH RISK, verb form mandatory. From ‘bezeugen’, regular -en > -n reduction. Occurs at 1:3, 6, 12 (μαρτυρέω/μαρτυρία). The bare noun ‘Zeugnis’ is forbidden for this doctrine (see forbidden substitutions in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md); use the verb ‘bezeugn’ or a circumlocution such as ‘hom guats über eahm gsogt’ / ‘wos mir song, is woahr’ wherever the courtroom/character-testimony sense is intended. This risk is Bavarian-specific and not shared by standard-German comparison texts, where the bare noun ‘Zeugnis’ is stable in formal written register.
Medium Risk Terms
Gentiles
Approved rendering: Heiden
Transliteration: Hoaden
Doctrine: Gospel Partnership through Material Support
Original: ἐθνικός (τῶν ἐθνικῶν)
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package, verbatim. Contextual note specific to 3 John 1:7: unlike Romans’ Jew-Gentile ethnic-inclusion pairing, here ἐθνικός/‘Heiden’ simply marks non-Christian outsiders as an improper source of material support for traveling gospel workers to avoid. The doctrinal weight in 3 John concerns the propriety of Christian-to-Christian material support, not ethnic unity; the baseline’s unity-of-Jews-and-Gentiles framing must NOT be imported into this verse.
Fellowship
Approved rendering: Gmoaschaft
Transliteration: Gemoaschoft
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Inherited from Romans package, verbatim. Built on the dialect root ‘Gmoa’ (civil municipality/parish); used compositionally in this curriculum’s doctrine name (‘d’kristliche Gmoaschaft’) and in the mandated compound ‘Kirchengmoaschaft’ for the church-as-gathered-people sense (see ‘church’ entry and ‘cast_out’ entry below). Risk of defaulting to the secular civic-association sense persists exactly as documented in the baseline.
God
Approved rendering: Gott
Transliteration: Herrgott
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Inherited from Romans package, verbatim. Present in 3 John at 1:6 (‘worthy of God’), 1:11 (‘is of God’ / ‘has not seen God’). Baseline reserves ‘Herrgott’ for warm folk-devotional contexts only and uses plain ‘Gott’ as the primary term; this curriculum follows the same rule. The 1:11 binary (‘is of God’ / ‘has not seen God’) is doctrinally load-bearing and must not be softened — see ‘doing_good_evil’ entry.
Beloved
Approved rendering: Liaba
Transliteration: Liawa
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀγαπητός
Category: Fellowship
NEW. Vocative address form built on the ‘Liab’ root (see ‘love’ entry). Must convey gospel-grounded, covenantal affection between believers, not mere social courtesy or romantic/familial endearment alone. Occurs at 1:1, 2, 5, 11.
Soul
Approved rendering: Seel
Transliteration: Seel
Doctrine: Spiritual Well-being over Material Prosperity
Original: ψυχή
Category: Pastoral Care
NEW. Apocope of ‘Seele’, regular final -e drop as in baseline’s ‘Gnad’, ‘Sünd’. Occurs at 1:2. Must not collapse into a vague ‘feelings’ sense; this verse is a frequently misapplied prosperity-gospel proof-text, and the prosperity-vs-soul comparison (‘even as your soul prospers’) depends on ‘Seel’ retaining its whole-person/spiritual weight, with physical well-being kept subordinate to, not equated with, spiritual well-being.
Brothers
Approved rendering: Brüada
Transliteration: Brüada
Doctrine: Christian Family as Spiritual Kinship
Original: ἀδελφός (pl. ἀδελφοί)
Category: Fellowship
NEW. Per the baseline’s own attested lenition pattern (Bruder > Bruada, cited in the baseline’s ‘father’ entry notes). Bavarian rural culture’s dense extended-family and neighbor-network norms risk pulling this toward purely biological/village kinship; context must anchor it to spiritual family created through the gospel. Occurs at 1:3 (traveling missionaries), 1:5 (hospitality recipients), 1:10 (those Diotrephes casts out).
Walk
Approved rendering: wandln
Transliteration: wandln
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: gehn (literal ‘walk on foot’ — risks nonsensical literalism)
Original: περιπατέω
Category: Truth
NEW. Literary-register idiom for habitual conduct of life (cf. Luther’s ‘wandeln’), preferred over literal ‘gehn’. Plainer ‘lebn’ available for oral/folk register per the baseline’s register-flexibility instructions. Occurs at 1:3, 4, both times paired with ‘in da Woahrheit’ (in truth).
Spiritual Children
Approved rendering: meine Kinda
Transliteration: meine Kinda
Doctrine: Christian Family as Spiritual Kinship
Original: τὰ ἐμὰ τέκνα
Category: Fellowship
NEW. Regular dialect form of ‘meine Kinder’. Occurs at 1:4. Must be understood as spiritual parentage through discipleship, not biological family — a context-flag comparable to the baseline’s ‘adoption’ entry, though lower stakes since 3 John does not develop a legal-inheritance dimension.
Faithful
Approved rendering: treu
Transliteration: treu
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: plain ‘freundlich/nett’ (reduces to generic kindness, losing the trust/faith link)
Original: πιστός
Category: Faith
NEW. Shares the same Greek root (πιστός) as the baseline’s ‘faith’/Glaam family, though rendered here with the plain adjective ‘treu’ rather than a Glaam-derived coinage, to keep the sentence idiomatic. Occurs at 1:5. Must not be reduced to plain ‘kindness’; Gaius’s hospitality is itself an act of faith/faithfulness, not a separate social virtue from saving faith.
Worthy Of God
Approved rendering: so wia’s Gott wert is
Transliteration: so wia’s Gott wert is
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἀξίως τοῦ Θεοῦ
Category: Hospitality
NEW. Occurs at 1:6. Must not flatten into generic politeness or local social propriety; the phrase elevates ordinary practical support of traveling ministers into an act of worship measured against God’s own standard.
The Name
Approved rendering: Nam
Transliteration: Nam
Doctrine: Gospel Partnership through Material Support
Rejected alternatives: bare ‘Nam’ without referent gloss (risks a personal-reputation misreading)
Original: ὄνομα (τὸ ὄνομα)
Category: Christology
NEW. Apocope of ‘Name’. Occurs at 1:7 in the phrase ‘wegn seim Nam’ (for his name’s sake = Christ’s name), a fixed early-Christian shorthand (cf. Acts 5:41). The referent (Christ) must always be recoverable from the surrounding sentence or footnoted. Distinct handling from the baseline’s ‘Abba’, which is retained as an established transliteration precisely because it already carries devotional recognition; ‘the Name’ has no comparable independent life in Bavarian devotional speech and must be paraphrased with explicit referent rather than left bare. Guard against Jehovah’s Witness divine-name theology (Watchtower literature places heavy distinctive weight on the divine name wherever ‘the Name’ appears in Scripture) — the referent here is unambiguously Christ, not the Father’s name.
We Ought
Approved rendering: mia miass’n
Transliteration: mia miass’n
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: a soft ‘es waar schee, wenn…’ (optional-kindness framing, loses binding-obligation force)
Original: ὀφείλω (ὀφείλομεν)
Category: Hospitality
NEW. Occurs at 1:8. Frames hospitality to gospel workers as a binding moral debt on believers (cf. financial-debt imagery repurposed ethically, Romans 13:8), not an optional kindness. Must retain this obligatory force; dynamic-equivalence German comparison texts (Gute Nachricht Bibel) risk domesticating this into optional niceness.
Receive Welcome
Approved rendering: aufnehma
Transliteration: aufnehma
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἀπολαμβάνω
Category: Hospitality
NEW. Standard dialect verb, regular -en > -a infinitive reduction. Occurs at 1:8. The concrete positive counterpart to Diotrephes’ refusal (1:9-10); distinguished from the more authority-laden ‘nimmt net auf’ (does_not_receive) used of Diotrephes’ rejection — this term conveys practical, material welcome and support, not merely polite acknowledgment.
Fellow Worker
Approved rendering: Mitorwaida
Transliteration: Mitarbeiter
Doctrine: Gospel Partnership through Material Support
Rejected alternatives: bare secular workplace ‘Kollege/Mitarbeiter’ sense
Original: συνεργός (συνεργοί)
Category: Hospitality
NEW. From ‘Mitarbeiter’, regular a > o vowel shift as documented for ‘Vater > Voda’ in the baseline. Occurs at 1:8. Register-gap term with no dialect tradition applying it to gospel-support partnership; risks defaulting to a purely secular workplace-colleague sense unless explicitly anchored to ‘da Woahrheit’/gospel partnership in the surrounding sentence, since supporting missionaries makes the host an active partner in the gospel work, not a passive bystander.
Deeds Works
Approved rendering: Werka
Transliteration: Werka
Doctrine: Moral Accountability of Deeds
Original: ἔργον (τὰ ἔργα)
Category: Church Leadership
NEW. Apocope + vowel shift of ‘Werke’. Occurs at 1:10. Concrete, nameable, repeated behavior — Diotrephes’ pattern of abusive conduct the Elder intends to confront in person. Unlike the baseline’s Romans ‘works’ vocabulary (law-versus-grace contrast), this is a plain ethical-accountability term; reviewers must NOT import Romans’ works-vs-grace theological freight into this verse.
Prating Slander
Approved rendering: leastern
Transliteration: lästern
Doctrine: Verbal Slander and Malicious Speech
Original: φλυαρέω (φλυαρῶν)
Category: Church Leadership
NEW. From ‘lästern’, retained largely as borrowed standard German with dialectal vowel color. Occurs at 1:10. Translates φλυαρέω (empty, malicious, slanderous talk — stronger than mere gossip). Village culture has a well-developed casual vocabulary for gossip and banter where colloquial ‘lästern’ can mean harmless teasing; must retain the deliberate, damaging, slanderous quality Diotrephes exhibits, not harmless village banter.
Hinder
Approved rendering: hindan
Transliteration: hindern
Doctrine: Verbal Slander and Malicious Speech
Original: κωλύω (κωλύει)
Category: Church Leadership
NEW. Regular dialect form of ‘hindern’. Occurs at 1:10. Active obstruction of others’ good intentions/actions — Diotrephes actively blocks other believers who want to show the hospitality Gaius models, marking the escalation of his abuse from personal refusal to controlling others.
Imitate
Approved rendering: nochmacha
Transliteration: nachmachen
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: μιμέομαι (μὴ μιμοῦ)
Category: Ethics
NEW. From ‘nachmachen’, regular a > o shift. Occurs at 1:11 (μὴ μιμοῦ, ‘do not imitate’). In everyday colloquial Bavarian, ‘nochmacha’ can carry a mild childish ‘copying homework’ connotation; the doctrinal weight here — modeling one’s whole pattern of life on someone else, for good (Demetrius, Gaius) or ill (Diotrephes, by contrast) — must be preserved by context, not left to the bare verb alone.
Evil
Approved rendering: bös
Transliteration: bös
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Rejected alternatives: schlecht (trivializes κακός into a quality judgment — ‘a bad job’ — rather than a moral judgment — ‘a wicked act’)
Original: κακός (τὸ κακόν)
Category: Ethics
NEW. Occurs at 1:11 (τὸ κακόν). Deliberately prefer ‘bös’ (morally wicked) over the far more frequent everyday word ‘schlecht’ (merely poor quality/deficient) throughout this doctrine, consistently, to avoid trivializing the moral force of the term.
True
Approved rendering: woahr
Transliteration: wahr
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Original: ἀληθής
Category: Witness
NEW. Adjective form of ‘Woahrheit’. Occurs at 1:12 (ἀληθής), closing the Demetrius commendation on the same key term that opened the letter (1:1). Must retain doctrinal weight tied to ‘Woahrheit’ rather than reading as mere factual accuracy in isolation.
Low Risk Terms
Peace
Approved rendering: Friad
Transliteration: Friade
Doctrine: Personal Presence and Closing Peace
Original: εἰρήνη
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package, verbatim. In 3 John 1:14 this functions as the conventional epistolary closing blessing, distinct from the baseline’s Romans-context doctrinal weight of ‘peace with God’ through justification; risk profile here is Low, identical to the baseline’s own closing-greeting usage.
Joy
Approved rendering: Freid
Transliteration: Freid
Doctrine: Joy in Others’ Faithfulness
Original: χαρά / χαίρω
Category: Fellowship
NEW. Apocope of ‘Freude’; verb form ‘si freu’n’. Occurs at 1:3, 4. Stable, low-risk idiomatic dialect vocabulary; pastoral joy tied to another’s faithful conduct is easily and naturally expressed in Bavarian.
Good
Approved rendering: guat
Transliteration: guat
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: ἀγαθός (τὸ ἀγαθόν)
Category: Ethics
NEW. Occurs at 1:11 (τὸ ἀγαθόν). Stable, standard dialect term, exemplified by Gaius’s hospitality and Demetrius’s character. Low risk.
Mouth To Mouth
Approved rendering: vo Gsicht zu Gsicht redn
Transliteration: vo Gsicht zu Gsicht redn
Doctrine: Personal Presence and Closing Peace
Rejected alternatives: literal calque of ‘mouth to mouth’ (risks reading as a kiss or resuscitation image in Bavarian)
Original: στόμα πρὸς στόμα
Category: Fellowship
NEW. Occurs at 1:14 (στόμα πρὸς στόμα), a Hebraic idiom for direct, unmediated speech (cf. Numbers 12:8 LXX), contrasted with the ink-and-pen correspondence of 1:13. Render as the natural Bavarian idiom for direct/face-to-face speech; never calque literally.
Friends
Approved rendering: Freind
Transliteration: Freind
Doctrine: Personal Presence and Closing Peace
Original: φίλος (οἱ φίλοι)
Category: Fellowship
NEW. Attested Bavarian dialectal form of ‘Freund’ (eu > ei shift). Occurs at 1:14 (φίλος), a deliberate register shift from the letter’s dominant ἀγάπη-vocabulary (‘Liab’) to ordinary φιλία-friendship terms for the wider local community. Teaching note: distinct from ‘Liab’; do not merge the two into a single love/friendship word in exposition, though the doctrinal risk of this closing greeting is itself Low.
Ink
Approved rendering: Tint
Transliteration: Tint
Doctrine: None (epistolary convention; no doctrine)
Original: μέλαν (μέλανος)
Category: Epistolary
NEW. Borrowed, minimal change from standard German. Occurs at 1:13 (μέλαν). Material-culture term with no doctrinal weight.
Pen Reed
Approved rendering: Rohrfeda
Transliteration: Rohrfeder
Doctrine: None (epistolary convention; no doctrine)
Original: κάλαμος (καλάμου)
Category: Epistolary
NEW. Dialect form of ‘Rohrfeder’. Occurs at 1:13 (κάλαμος). Material-culture term with no doctrinal weight.
Gaius
Approved rendering: Gaius
Transliteration: Gaius
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: Γάϊος
Category: Proper Names
NEW (proper name). Retained unchanged per the established Bible-translation-tradition convention for proper names (cf. baseline’s David, Israel); pronounced with regional Bavarian vowel quality but not respelled. The letter’s addressee and positive model of right response to truth.
Diotrephes
Approved rendering: Diotrephes
Transliteration: Diotrephes
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Original: Διοτρεφής
Category: Proper Names
NEW (proper name). Retained unchanged; the name’s pagan theophoric etymology (‘nourished by Zeus’) is background information only, not a translation concern. The doctrinal risk lies entirely in the surrounding character-vocabulary (‘loving_preeminence’, ‘cast_out’, ‘does_not_receive’), not in the name itself.
Demetrius
Approved rendering: Demetrius
Transliteration: Demetrius
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Original: Δημήτριος
Category: Proper Names
NEW (proper name). Retained unchanged; the name’s pagan theophoric etymology (‘belonging to Demeter’) is background information only, not a translation concern.
Referenced passages