Executive Summary: 1 Kings — English → Bengali

Why it matters: 1 Kings takes the Bengali Language Package into territory the Romans baseline never had to cross — a physical temple, named rival deities, consecrated images, and a prophet transliterating one god’s name to keep it from being confused with another’s. Bengal’s living Hindu devotional culture (Durga Puja, Kali Puja, mandir/murti theology) and its Muslim theological landscape (tanzih, shirk, prophetology) both sit unusually close to this book’s own subject matter, closer than either sits to Romans. Getting the core passage (8:22-53, Solomon’s dedication prayer) right is the single highest-leverage translation decision in this curriculum: it is where Name theology, transcendence/immanence, universal sinfulness, election, repentance, and God’s concern for the foreigner all converge in one prayer.

Key findings:

• 21 of 27 doctrines (78%) require mandatory human theologian review (5 Critical + 16 High), versus 4 requiring native-speaker review and only 2 automated-only — a theologian-review rate structurally higher than the Romans baseline, driven almost entirely by this book’s idolatry, temple, and Baal-contest content.
• 49 of 79 catalogued terms (62%) are Critical or High risk (12 Critical + 37 High), concentrated in five clusters: Name/Temple theology, idolatry vocabulary (প্রতিমা/মূর্তি/দেবতা/বাল), the Carmel confession, the YHWH/সদাপ্রভু-vs-প্রভু Testament-spanning distinction, and the divided-kingdom রাজ্য/ঈশ্বরের রাজ্য split.
• The single sharpest collision point in the entire curriculum: প্রতিমা and মূর্তি are ordinary, reverentially-connoted Bengali words for a consecrated Hindu devotional image; the biblical text uses the identical words to mean something uniformly forbidden — an outright inversion of everyday connotation, present in nearly every chapter from 11 onward.
• A genuine missing-vocabulary gap, not just a crowded one: ordinary Bengali নাম (“name”) carries zero built-in theological weight, yet 8:29’s “my Name shall be there” is the doctrinal hinge resolving the tension 8:27 itself raises about whether God can “dwell” anywhere at all.
• A new Testament-spanning discipline is required that Romans never needed: সদাপ্রভু (YHWH) must never be interchanged with প্রভু (New Testament κύριος/Christ), or the coherence of both the Carmel contest (which “lord” is Lord?) and cross-Testament citations (e.g., Romans 11 quoting 1 Kings 19:18) collapses.
• One doctrine (Solomon’s Wisdom and Its Limits) collides with Islamic prophetology directly: mainstream Islamic doctrine’s ismah (prophetic infallibility) cannot accommodate chapter 11’s account of Solomon’s fall, requiring careful framing in any outreach-adjacent material.

Risks:

• Rendering সদাপ্রভুর গৃহ (“house of the LORD”) with unqualified মন্দির risks readers importing Hindu murti-indwelling theology directly into the core passage’s own explicit denial of that idea (8:27).
• Dropping the মিথ্যা qualifier from মিথ্যা আত্মা (22:19-23) risks readers mistaking a judgment-deceiving spirit for the Holy Spirit (পবিত্র আত্মা) — a single missing adjective that would invert the passage’s meaning.
• Translating বাল (Baal) by its literal common-noun sense (“lord/master”) rather than transliterating it would neutralize the entire rhetorical premise of the Mount Carmel contest.
• Using ঈশ্বরের রাজ্য for the earthly, divided political kingdom of Israel/Judah (chs. 11-12) would collapse a New Testament theological category into an Old Testament political narrative, confusing learners moving between curricula.
• Reflexively reaching for শক্তি to describe the fire falling at Carmel (ch. 18) risks Bengal’s Shakta-Hindu goddess-power associations reframing a monotheistic power claim as a polytheistic contest of relative strength.

Opportunities:

• The Qur’anic Ilyas narrative (Surah As-Saffat 37:123-132) offers the strongest positive cross-tradition bridge in the entire curriculum for Bengali Muslim-background learners approaching the Elijah/Baal doctrine.
• Solomon’s prayer’s own universal petition — that even a foreigner’s prayer be heard “for your name’s sake” (8:41-43) — gives West Bengal and Bangladesh teaching materials an Old Testament anchor for the gospel’s later universal scope, without waiting for the New Testament to introduce the theme.
• The remnant theology of 19:9-18, directly cited in Romans 11:1-5, is a ready-made inner-canonical consistency check that reinforces the coherence of the whole Bible Language Package across both curricula.

Recommended actions:

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json (1 Kings) together with, never instead of, the baseline Romans file before any Phase 2 segment translation begins.
2. Build the mandatory translator-note/gloss apparatus for নাম, সদাপ্রভুর গৃহ vs মন্দির, and প্রতিমা/মূর্তি/দেবতা before translating any segment of the core passage (8:22-53) or the idolatry-dense chapters (11-16, 18, 22).
3. Route all Critical-tier terms and doctrines to human theologian review per doctrine_risk_registry.json (1 Kings v.1); do not permit automated or native-speaker-only sign-off on any occurrence of নাম, সদাপ্রভুই ঈশ্বর, প্রতিমা/মূর্তি/দেবতা, বাল, সোনার বাছুর, or মিথ্যা আত্মা.
4. Enforce the সদাপ্রভু/প্রভু and রাজ্য/ঈশ্বরের রাজ্য splits as hard, mechanically-checked rules in Phase 2 validation, not merely style guidance, given how easily fluency in the Romans baseline could bleed NT vocabulary into this OT text.
5. Cross-check the ch. 19 remnant rendering against however Romans 11:4-5 was rendered, to preserve inner-canonical consistency before either document is finalized.

Bottom line: 1 Kings is doctrinally denser and culturally higher-risk for Bengali than Romans was, concentrated overwhelmingly in one core passage and five recurring vocabulary clusters — but every risk identified has a specific, already-drafted mitigation ready for Phase 2.