01 Executive Summary — 1 Corinthians — English → Bengali

Why it matters

1 Corinthians is the most doctrinally dense and culturally exposed book this Bengali translation pipeline has processed to date. Its core passage (15:1-11) puts Christ’s bodily resurrection — the single sharpest point of divergence from both Hindu (cyclical rebirth/moksha) and Islamic (denial of the crucifixion) frameworks dominant among Bengali speakers — at the center of the entire curriculum. Beyond the core passage, the letter names living devotional practice directly (idol meat, temple imagery, head covering) and introduces the single most linguistically deceptive term in either curriculum so far (প্রেম for “love”). Getting this right protects the gospel’s central claims from being heard as one more devotional path among many.

Key findings

• 27 doctrines identified across all 16 chapters (full-book coverage confirmed, no chapter silently skipped); 7 Critical + 14 High = 21 doctrines (78%) require human theologian review, versus 5 Medium (native speaker) and 1 Low (automated).
• 110 total terms now governed in assets/translation_memory.json: 32 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline (8 Critical, 13 High, 7 Medium, 4 Low) plus 78 new terms unique to this letter (11 Critical, 29 High, 30 Medium, 8 Low).
• Combined Critical + High terms requiring theologian sign-off: 61 of 110 (55%) — nearly double the proportion carried by the Romans baseline package.
• Three doctrine clusters carry the highest combined collision risk: (1) idol meat / idolatry (chs. 8, 10) naming literal Hindu devotional objects and practice; (2) the Lord’s Supper vs. prasad (11:17-34); (3) resurrection vs. reincarnation and possession-trance vs. Spirit-gifting (ch. 15; chs. 12, 14).
• One term — প্রেম (“love,” 13:1-13) — is simultaneously the correct established Bengali Christian rendering and the central vocabulary of Bengali Vaishnava bhakti/Tagore romantic-devotional literature; this is now the single highest-priority mandatory translator note in the whole package.
• One term — মন্দির (“temple”) — is required for ναός (3:16-17; 6:19) in deliberate, narrowly-scoped exception to the Romans baseline’s prohibition of the same word for ἐκκλησία (“church”); this dual-use rule is new and must not be misapplied.

Risks

• Highest risk: মন্দির (temple) misapplied to “church,” or the reverse — either error contradicts an explicit baseline rule or Paul’s own metaphor.
• Second highest risk: দেখা দিলেন (“appeared,” 15:5-8) drifting toward দর্শন/স্বপ্ন vision-language, recasting the resurrection’s evidentiary backbone as a subjective mystical experience.
• Third highest risk: প্রেম (love) read through a bhakti-romantic lens without its mandatory 13:1 translator note.
• Contemporary flashpoints requiring joint review, not resolution: head covering and headship (11:2-16), silence of women (14:34-35), “discerning the body” (11:29), and “baptized for the dead” (15:29) — all four are genuinely disputed and must be rendered descriptively, never resolved unilaterally in translation.
• Cult/sect contamination risk: Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Bengali New World Translation is the primary rendering to actively avoid, especially at 8:6, 12:3, and 15:24-58, where its subordinationist Christology and two-tier resurrection doctrine could otherwise leak into vocabulary choices.

Opportunities

• তূরী (“trumpet,” 15:52) and মারান আথা (“Maranatha,” 16:22) offer genuine, low-risk positive bridge points to Islamic Last-Trumpet (Sur) eschatology for Muslim-background readers.
• The receive/deliver tradition language (15:1,3) can draw a constructive, carefully-qualified parallel to গুরু-পরম্পরা (teaching lineage) to make the concept of a transmitted apostolic deposit intuitive to Bengali readers, provided the closed/fixed vs. evolving distinction is always stated.
• The idol-meat and idolatry material (chs. 8, 10), while high-friction, offers a pastorally honest, non-euphemistic vocabulary already stabilized in Bengali Bible tradition (প্রতিমা, প্রতিমাপূজা) that can be taught with care rather than avoided.

Recommended actions

1. Lock assets/translation_memory.json and assets/bible_term_registry.json (1 Corinthians extensions) as the Phase 2 enforcement baseline, loaded together with — never instead of — the Romans baseline files.
2. Route all 21 theologian-review doctrines and all 61 Critical/High terms through human theologian sign-off before any Phase 2 segment touching them is marked approved.
3. Confirm and pin the exact YouVersion version ID (working placeholder: 1449, Bengali O.V.) before Phase 2 lock, per analysis/05_translation_landscape.md.
4. Ensure the mandatory reader-facing translator notes (temple dual-use at 3:16/6:19; love at 13:1; natural man at 2:14/15:44 where relevant; resurrection appearances at 15:5-8; head covering at 11:2-16; disputed-passage acknowledgment at 11:29 and 14:34-35) are built into the Phase 2 output templates, not left to ad hoc translator discretion.
5. Brief all human theologian and native-speaker reviewers on the three highest-collision clusters (idol meat/idolatry, Lord’s Supper vs. prasad, resurrection vs. reincarnation/possession-trance) before review work begins, using analysis/04_comparative_theology.md as the shared briefing document.