Executive Summary — Acts, English→Bavarian Language Package

Why it matters

Acts is the first Bavarian-dialect curriculum to move Bible translation out of Paul’s abstract epistolary argument (Romans) and into concrete ritual narrative — baptisms, ordinations, communal meals, miracle-attestation, vow-taking. Bavarian Catholic Altbayern culture has a lived, daily-practiced sacramental default for nearly every one of these actions (infant baptism, confession, Confirmation, the Mass, patron-saint devotion, pilgrimage-shrine miracle culture). This curriculum’s core risk is not abstract theological vocabulary lacking a native word — that register gap was already mapped in the Romans baseline — it is that Acts’ narrative actions actively compete with a strong, specific, alternative cultural script the audience already knows by heart. Every Phase 2 segment must be translated with that competing script named and fenced off, not merely with a dictionary-correct word chosen.

Key findings

• Doctrine-level stakes are higher than Romans. Of 40 sub-doctrines identified across all 28 chapters, 7 are Critical and 18 are High — 25 of 40 (62.5%) require mandatory human theologian review, versus 15 of 47 (32%) in the Romans baseline. Only 11 need native-speaker review and just 4 are automated-only.
• Term-level stakes are similarly elevated. Of the 90 terms in the enforced glossary (47 inherited from Romans, 43 new to Acts — plus 8 additional supporting terms bringing the full inventory to 98), 13 are Critical and 26 are High — 39 of 90 core terms (43%) require mandatory theologian sign-off before Phase 2 approval.
• The core passage (Acts 2:1-41) carries the single highest doctrinal density in the book, and is flagged for mandatory theologian review in its entirety regardless of individual segment risk tier — it contains the curriculum’s three sharpest collisions at once: Pentecost/tongues (Holy Spirit as Person, known languages vs. modern glossolalia), the 2:38 ordo salutis (repentance→baptism→forgiveness→Spirit-gift vs. Bavarian infant-baptism and confession defaults), and the 2:36 Lordship confession (must match the Romans 10:9 “Da Jesus is da Herr” phrasing exactly).
• Two forbidden substitutions carry the same Critical severity as the baseline’s “verdiante Gerechtigkeit” rule: “Bischof” must never render overseer/ἐπίσκοπος, and “Priester” must never render elder/πρεσβύτερος — both would import the entire modern Bavarian diocesan-episcopal and sacerdotal-priesthood structure onto Acts 20:28’s plain statement that the two NT terms describe one interchangeable local office.
• No standardized Bavarian-dialect Bible translation exists for Acts. Merkle’s Bairisches Neues Testament is the sole dialect-register model and must itself be checked against standard-German references (Einheitsübersetzung, Luther 2017) at every Critical/High verse, since no dialect precedent alone is doctrinally reliable.

Risks

• Sacramental collapse (Critical): Acts 2:38’s repentance-then-believer’s-baptism-then-immediate-Spirit-reception pattern risks being silently absorbed into the Bavarian infant-baptism-plus-later-Confirmation-plus-ongoing-confession sequence the audience lives by default. This is the single highest-stakes risk in the curriculum.
• Miracle-tradition flattening (High): “Zeichen und Wunder” risks reading as one more entry in Bavaria’s own vivid living miracle-attestation culture (Altötting, Lourdes-style healing, canonized wonder-workers) rather than God’s unique, foundational authentication of the apostolic gospel.
• Ecclesial-hierarchy import (Critical): Without the forbidden-substitution rule, “elder/overseer” would default straight into the Archdiocese-of-Munich-and-Freising diocesan-episcopal model, directly contradicting Acts 20:28’s plain-sense interchangeability.
• Glossolalia misread (High): Modern German-language charismatic/Pentecostal practice has attached “Zungenreden” firmly to ecstatic utterance; Acts 2 depicts real, known human languages, and an unqualified rendering would import a foreign modern-movement association into the founding narrative.
• Historical-sensitivity amplifiers (High): Munich’s specific role as the Nazi movement’s historic headquarters sharpens (beyond even the Romans baseline’s own caution) every Jew-Gentile unity and impartiality passage (10:34-35; 15:9; 28:28).

Opportunities

• Bavaria’s own agricultural and pastoral heritage gives genuinely helpful, ready-made resonance for several images Acts relies on: the shepherd/flock metaphor (20:28-29) and “a Joch” (yoke of the law, 15:10) land naturally in a still-living rural Alpine farming culture.
• Bavaria’s own historic Catholic missionary-sending orders give “Mission” real regional grounding rather than pure abstraction, a mild protective factor unusual among this curriculum’s register-gap terms.
• The Simon Magus episode (8:9-24) offers an unusually concrete, narrative (not abstract) teaching opportunity to make the baseline’s grace-versus-devotional-transaction caution vivid and memorable for this audience.

Recommended actions

1. Route every occurrence of Acts 2:1-41, 2:38, 8:9-24, 13:38-39, and 20:17-28 to mandatory human theologian review before Phase 2 sign-off, regardless of computed segment-level risk.
2. Enforce the two new Critical forbidden substitutions (“Bischof,” “Priester”) with the same absolute-block validation logic already applied to “verdiante Gerechtigkeit” in the baseline.
3. Require accompanying theologian-authored teaching notes — not lexical fixes alone — at every occurrence of “s’Brotbrechn” (breaking of bread) and “Götzenbilder/Idole” (idolatry), where no single word choice can resolve the underlying collision.
4. Cross-check every Critical/High verse rendering against Einheitsübersetzung 2016, Luther 2017, and Merkle’s Bairisches Neues Testament before finalizing, per the Translation Landscape findings; do not treat any one source as doctrinally neutral.
5. Plan Phase 2 batch-review scheduling for a materially higher theologian-review load than the Romans baseline required (62.5% of doctrines vs. 32%), to avoid bottlenecking the pipeline at Step 17.

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See analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md for the full 40-doctrine risk matrix, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json and assets/bible_term_registry.json for machine-enforceable risk tiers, and analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md for the complete Phase 2 enforcement instruction set.