Doctrine Analysis
Doctrine Analysis — Acts 1–28
Purpose and Method
This document is the full doctrine matrix for the Acts curriculum, required by PRD Phase 1 Step 4/5. It is generated to be strictly consistent with assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json (Acts, v1): the same 36 doctrines, the same risk tiers (14 Critical / 18 High / 3 Medium / 1 Low), and the same review routing. This document adds the supporting-passage detail, the specific translation risk reasoning, and — per the FULL-BOOK COVERAGE mandate — a chapter-by-chapter coverage index confirming that all 28 chapters of Acts have been reviewed, with every doctrine’s presence traced to the chapter(s) in which it occurs. The core passage, Acts 2:1-41 (Pentecost), is the theological anchor of the curriculum and the single highest comparative-religion risk cluster (see doctrines 1-7 below), but it is not the boundary of this analysis.
Risk tier definitions (unchanged from the Romans baseline and the Acts registry):
| Tier | Definition | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Mistranslation alters or destroys essential doctrine. | Human theologian — mandatory, every occurrence |
| High | Mistranslation creates significant theological confusion or syncretism risk. | Human theologian — mandatory |
| Medium | Mistranslation reduces clarity but preserves essential meaning. | Native speaker review |
| Low | Mistranslation causes minor misunderstanding or imprecision. | Automated review sufficient |
Comparative-religion axis (per Romans baseline and Acts registry): Bathouism (aniconic nature-religion centered on Bathoubwrai, worshipped through the five-branched sijou plant — ha/earth, dwi/water, bar/air, or/fire, okhrang/sky — expressed communally in Kherai puja through doudini trance-possession) and Brahma Dharma (the 1912 Sanskritized reform movement founded by Gurudev Kalicharan Brahma, reworking Bodo identity toward Hindu monotheism, karma-ethics, and codified conduct rules).
Section 1 — The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Holy Spirit and Pentecost | 1:5; 1:8; 2:1-4; 2:16-18; 2:33 | Critical | Central doctrine of the curriculum. The Spirit’s outpouring is narrated through wind and fire and received through “filling” — vocabulary that collides directly with Bathou’s sijou-plant elements (bar/air, or/fire) and with the doudini’s Kherai-trance “filling”/possession experience. Requires the most extensive explicit teaching contrast in the whole curriculum. | Human theologian |
| Wind and Fire Theophany at Pentecost | 2:2-3 | Critical | Highest-priority single finding in the curriculum: बार (wind) and or (fire) are simultaneously ordinary Bodo words and the proper names of two of the five sacred elemental branches of the sijou plant central to Bathoubwrai worship. No alternate lexeme exists to substitute; risk must be resolved by mandatory repeated teaching framing, not word-choice. | Human theologian |
| Spirit-Filling and Speaking in Tongues | 2:4-13; 4:8; 4:31; 10:44-46; 19:1-7 | Critical | Public, repeated, visible Spirit-filling with speech phenomena is the Acts event most likely to be assimilated to a doudini’s oracular trance-speech. Must teach that Spirit-filled speakers retain full self-possession and proclaim intelligible, doctrinally coherent, real-language content, unlike a medium whose identity recedes under possession. | Human theologian |
| Dreams, Visions, and Divine Guidance | 2:17; 9:10; 10:3-16; 16:9-10; 18:9; 22:17-18; 26:19 | Critical | Visions drive nearly every major turning point in Acts. Each occurrence must be distinguished from a doudini’s trance-vision under possession: biblical visions come by the sovereign initiative of the one true God to a fully conscious recipient for a specific redemptive purpose, not summoned by ritual technique. | Human theologian |
| The Spirit’s Free Gift versus Purchasable Power | 2:38; 8:9-24; 10:45 | Critical | Simon Magus’s attempt to buy the Spirit’s power (8:18-20) is Scripture’s own rebuke of treating spiritual power as commodity; reinforces the baseline’s grace-vs-merit-vs-ritual-exchange distinction and must be kept distinct from doudini सक्ति and ओझा diviner practice. | Human theologian |
| Deliverance from a Spirit of Divination | 16:16-18 | Critical | The single most direct narrative parallel in all of Acts to the doudini’s oracular trance/possession role: a spirit takes over a human medium for profit-generating divinatory speech. Must be taught as Christ’s authoritative deliverance over a real, subordinate, deceptive spirit — never as validating the doudini role as a legitimate lesser parallel. | Human theologian |
| The Personal Holy Spirit Can Be Lied To and Resisted | 5:3-9; 7:51 | Critical | Establishes the Spirit as a personal, knowing divine Person who can be sinned against directly — not an impersonal force or nature-spirit merely offended through taboo violation, as in Bathou ritual-infraction logic. | Human theologian |
Section 2 — The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles | 1:8; 10:1-48; 11:1-18; 13:46-48; 15:1-29 | High | Acts narrates the gospel’s unrestricted ethnic expansion “to the ends of the earth”; must be taught with theological clarity, not folded into contemporary Assam-region ethnic-unity or Bodoland territorial-identity rhetoric, which addresses a different (political) kind of division. | Human theologian |
| Reversal of Clean and Unclean Boundaries | 10:9-16; 10:28; 11:1-18 | High | Peter’s vision reinterprets dietary purity as removal of the Jew-Gentile boundary — a direct point of contact with Brahma Dharma’s own reformed purity ethic (including vegetarianism). Teach as decisive NT reversal of ritual boundary-marking extended typologically to social inclusion, not as commentary on any specific Bodo dietary custom. | Human theologian |
| Universal Human Response to the Gospel | 17:30; 10:34-35 | High | Paul’s call to repentance addressed to “all people everywhere” and Peter’s “God shows no partiality” must retain unqualified universal force even where ethnic/territorial identity is a genuinely live, sometimes contested category in the Bodoland region. | Human theologian |
| The Jerusalem Council: Grace, Not Law (cross-listed, see Section 8) | 15:1-29 | Critical | See Section 8. | Human theologian |
Section 3 — Repentance and Baptism
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Repentance | 2:38; 3:19; 11:18; 17:30; 20:21; 26:20 | High | A decisive, whole-person reorientation toward God; distinguish from Brahma Dharma’s reform ethic of accumulated merit through self-improvement, and from ritual purification addressing only external impurity. | Human theologian |
| Baptism | 2:38; 2:41; 8:12-38; 9:18; 10:47-48; 16:15; 16:33; 19:1-7 | High | A public, once-for-all identification with Christ’s death/resurrection and with his specific name; must be distinguished from the repeatable household/courtyard cleansing rites preceding Bathou and Kherai ceremonies. | Human theologian |
| Forgiveness of Sins | 2:38; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18 | High | Must always be taught alongside, never as a substitute for, the fuller positive declared-righteous dimension of justification (धार्मिक होनाय राव) already fixed in the Romans baseline. | Human theologian |
Section 4 — The Church as Community
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Church as Community | 2:42-47; 4:32-35 | Medium | Shared meals, shared possessions, and mutual care must be distinguished from ordinary village/clan communal patterns and from Bathou/Kherai communal ritual feasting following a puja offering; membership arises from personal response, cutting across existing afad (clan) lineage lines. | Native speaker review |
| Church Leadership: Elders and Overseers | 6:1-6; 11:30; 14:23; 15:2-6; 20:17-28; 21:18 | Critical | The natural honorific Bodo word for a respected elder, बुरहा (and बर’ऐ), is reserved by the Romans baseline exclusively for Bathoubwrai and the Kherai-pantheon elder-deities. Using either for church elders/overseers would place them within the same honorific elder-deity category — a forbidden substitution requiring an Acts-specific system-prompt rule. | Human theologian |
| Synagogue and Jewish Institutional Background | 6:9; 9:2; 13:5; 13:14; 17:1; 17:10; 18:4; 18:19; 21:23-26; 23:1-10 | Medium | Jewish institutions (synagogue, Sanhedrin, vow practices) must be kept distinct from indigenous ritual sites — synagogue must never be rendered with नमासोलि, the Bathou/Kherai worship site — while background legal/cultural detail carries otherwise low doctrinal risk. | Native speaker review |
Section 5 — Apostolic Authority and Miracles
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apostolic Authority | 1:2-26; 3:1-16; 4:33; 5:12 | High | Apostolic authority is delegated and Christ-commissioned, explicitly not the apostle’s own personal power or holiness (3:12); must be distinguished from a generic religious-specialist role paralleling the doudini or ओझा. | Human theologian |
| Signs, Wonders, and Miracles | 2:22; 2:43; 4:30; 5:12; 6:8; 8:6-13; 14:3; 15:12; 28:3-9 | High | The authenticating mark of apostolic ministry throughout Acts; must be kept categorically distinct from Simon Magus-type purchasable sorcery and from the mediumistic सक्ति attributed to a doudini’s Kherai-trance state. | Human theologian |
| Exclusivity of Salvation in Christ’s Name | 2:21; 4:12; 16:30-31 | Critical | The most exclusivist statement in Acts; must retain full exclusivity without softening, directly relevant given the populated, non-exclusive Bathou pantheon in which many deities/spirit-mediators coexist, and given the practice of “calling on” a deity’s presence through a doudini or ओझा. | Human theologian |
| Sorcery and the Gospel | 8:9-24; 13:6-11; 19:13-19 | Critical | Simon Magus, Elymas, and the sons of Sceva each treat spiritual power as purchasable/manipulable commodity; the Ephesian book-burning (19:19) is a strong practical renunciation model directly relevant for converts from Bathouist or folk-ritual (ओझा) backgrounds. | Human theologian |
Section 6 — Persecution and Bold Witness
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Persecution and Bold Witness | 4:1-31; 5:17-42; 8:1-3; 11:19; 13:50; 14:5; 14:19 | High | Boldness under persecution flows from Spirit-filling, not personal temperament or social defiance; obedience to God over human authority must be taught as allegiance to the one true God, not mere resistance to authority for its own sake. | Human theologian |
| Martyrdom as Completed Witness | 7:54-60; 12:1-2 | High | Stephen’s (and James’s) death establishes witness (साक्षी) unto death as the root sense of “martyr”; teach as the completion, not the defeat, of gospel witness. | Human theologian |
Section 7 — Conversion of Paul
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion of Paul | 9:1-31; 22:3-21; 26:9-23 | High | Saul’s sudden, sovereignly initiated turning through direct encounter with the risen, exalted Lord must be distinguished from a gradual ethical self-improvement narrative of the kind Brahma Dharma’s reform ethic proposes. | Human theologian |
| ”The Way” as Christian Self-Designation | 9:2; 19:9; 19:23; 22:4; 24:14; 24:22 | High | Bare “the Path/Way” without a Christ-anchor risks conflation with Sanskritized “marga” (path) soteriology familiar from Hindu/Buddhist categories that shaped Brahma Dharma’s own 1912 reform vocabulary; the Christ-specific anchor must always be retained. | Human theologian |
Section 8 — Justification apart from the Law
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Justification apart from the Law | 13:38-39; 15:1-11; 24:25 | Critical | Acts’ own explicit narrative statement of Romans’ central doctrine; must never be abbreviated to “forgiveness” alone, and grace must resist both a Brahma Dharma merit-reading and a traditional Bathou/Kherai reciprocal-offering reading. | Human theologian |
| The Jerusalem Council: Grace, Not Law | 15:1-29 | Critical | The formal narrative resolution of the justification-apart-from-law controversy; must make explicit that salvation is by grace through faith, not a ritual-conduct code — worth stressing given Brahma Dharma’s codified religious-conduct rules; the decree’s ban on food offered to idols has an unusually direct, concrete parallel in Bathou/Kherai puja offerings requiring explicit teaching. | Human theologian |
Section 9 — The Great Commission Fulfilled
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Great Commission Fulfilled | 1:8; 13:1-4; 28:23-31 | Medium | Traces the gospel’s advance from Jerusalem to Rome, “to the ends of the earth”; should be framed as the church’s own ongoing calling, not a foreign historical project, given the entanglement of American Baptist mission memory with colonial-era administration among the Bodo. | Native speaker review |
| Ascension of Christ | 1:9-11 | High | Must be taught as a unique, historical, bodily event witnessed by many, promising a like bodily return — not a deity’s temporary heavenly journey or a shamanic soul-flight motif sometimes associated with folk ritual specialists. | Human theologian |
| Providence and Divine Deliverance | 5:17-20; 12:1-23; 16:25-26; 27:13-44 | High | God’s personal, purposive deliverance of his servants must never be reheard as impersonal-fate (भागी) assurance; angels involved (ch.12) must be taught as created, personal servants of the one true God, not ancestral/nature spirits from the Bathou spirit-world. | Human theologian |
Section 10 — Cross-Cutting Supporting Doctrines
These doctrines are not named among the curriculum’s nine headline doctrines but recur across the book and carry independent translation risk; they are retained here for full-book coverage consistency with the doctrine risk registry.
| Doctrine | Supporting Passages (Acts) | Risk | Translation Risk | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deity and Lordship of Christ | 2:33-36; 7:56; 9:5; 10:36 | Critical | Christ’s exaltation to supreme heavenly authority and the double confession “Lord and Christ” (2:36) must never be rendered with the honorific elder-titles बर’ऐ/बुरहा, which would place Christ inside the Bathou pantheon as one great elder-spirit among several rather than exclusive, supreme Lord. | Human theologian |
| Resurrection of Christ and the Dead | 2:24-32; 4:2; 17:18; 17:31-32; 23:6-8; 24:15; 24:21; 26:23 | Critical | Bodily, historical, once-for-all resurrection — a recurring subject of controversy in Acts (Sadducees, Athenian philosophers) — must never be rendered with फिन जोनोम, the rebirth/reincarnation vocabulary absorbed into Bodo religious discourse through Brahma Dharma’s Hindu-influenced reform teaching. | Human theologian |
| Idolatry and the Living God | 7:39-43; 14:11-18; 17:16-31; 19:23-41 | High | Bathou worship is itself aniconic (sijou plant, not a crafted image), so Acts’ critiques of manufactured-image worship do not indict Bathou practice on its own terms and must be taught with that distinction noted; Paul’s Athens address (17:22-31) models using but decisively moving beyond an audience’s religious vocabulary. | Human theologian |
| Election and Divine Appointment | 9:15; 13:48; 22:14 | High | God’s sovereign, personal choice of individuals for salvation and mission must not be reheard as impersonal भागी (fate), a framing familiar from both folk belief and Brahma Dharma’s ethic. | Human theologian |
| Fulfillment of Prophecy in Acts | 2:16-21; 3:18-24; 13:27; 15:15-18 | High | Linear, historical fulfillment of Old Testament promise in Christ has no ready parallel in Bathou oral tradition (no fixed written scripture) and should not be assimilated into Brahma Dharma’s progressive-reform narrative of Bodo religious history. | Human theologian |
| Angelic Ministry | 5:19; 8:26; 10:3-7; 12:7-11; 12:23; 27:23 | High | Biblical angels are created, personal messenger-servants of the one true God; must be sharply distinguished from ancestral household spirits (बुरहा-बुरही आत्था) and nature-spirits (देउ) recognized in Bathou tradition. | Human theologian |
| Roman Legal Context | 16:37-39; 22:25-29; 25:10-12 | Low | Background legal-historical detail with no comparative-religion collision; included so translators do not over-theologize ordinary Roman civil procedure. | Automated review |
Chapter Coverage Index (Confirms Full-Book Analysis)
Every chapter of Acts 1–28 is represented below by the doctrine(s) it activates from the matrix above. No chapter is silently omitted; where a chapter’s content is fully covered by doctrines already logged in earlier chapters, that reuse is stated explicitly.
| Ch. | Doctrines Activated | Coverage Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Holy Spirit and Pentecost; Apostolic Authority; Ascension of Christ; Great Commission Fulfilled; Gospel to Jews and Gentiles (1:8) | Analyzed — foundational commissioning chapter |
| 2 | Holy Spirit and Pentecost; Wind and Fire Theophany; Spirit-Filling and Tongues; Dreams and Visions; Gift of the Spirit vs. Purchasable Power; Repentance; Baptism; Forgiveness of Sins; Church as Community; Signs and Wonders; Exclusivity of Salvation; Deity and Lordship of Christ; Resurrection of Christ; Fulfillment of Prophecy | Analyzed — core passage (2:1-41); highest doctrinal density in the book |
| 3 | Apostolic Authority; Repentance; Fulfillment of Prophecy | Analyzed |
| 4 | Spirit-Filling; Church as Community; Apostolic Authority; Signs and Wonders; Exclusivity of Salvation; Persecution and Bold Witness; Resurrection of Christ | Analyzed |
| 5 | The Personal Holy Spirit Lied To/Resisted; Forgiveness of Sins; Apostolic Authority; Signs and Wonders; Persecution and Bold Witness; Providence and Divine Deliverance; Angelic Ministry | Analyzed |
| 6 | Church Leadership (deacons); Signs and Wonders; Synagogue/Jewish Institutional Background | Analyzed |
| 7 | The Personal Holy Spirit Resisted; Martyrdom as Completed Witness; Idolatry and the Living God | Analyzed |
| 8 | Gift of the Spirit vs. Purchasable Power; Baptism; Signs and Wonders; Sorcery and the Gospel; Persecution and Bold Witness; Angelic Ministry | Analyzed |
| 9 | Dreams and Visions; Baptism; Conversion of Paul; The Way; Deity and Lordship of Christ; Election and Divine Appointment; Synagogue/Jewish Institutional Background | Analyzed |
| 10 | Spirit-Filling; Dreams and Visions; Gift of the Spirit; Gospel to Jews and Gentiles; Reversal of Clean/Unclean; Baptism; Forgiveness of Sins; Deity and Lordship of Christ; Universal Human Response; Angelic Ministry | Analyzed |
| 11 | Dreams and Visions (reuse); Gospel to Jews and Gentiles; Reversal of Clean/Unclean; Repentance; Church Leadership; Persecution and Bold Witness | Analyzed |
| 12 | Martyrdom as Completed Witness; Providence and Divine Deliverance; Angelic Ministry | Analyzed |
| 13 | Gospel to Jews and Gentiles; Forgiveness of Sins; Sorcery and the Gospel; Persecution and Bold Witness; Justification apart from the Law; Election and Divine Appointment; Fulfillment of Prophecy; Great Commission Fulfilled; Church Leadership; Synagogue/Jewish Institutional Background; Signs and Wonders | Analyzed |
| 14 | Church Leadership (elder appointment); Signs and Wonders; Persecution and Bold Witness; Idolatry and the Living God | Analyzed — no new theological vocabulary beyond reuse of ch.7-8 idol/gospel terms, noted explicitly per Core Glossary |
| 15 | Gospel to Jews and Gentiles; Jerusalem Council: Grace, Not Law; Church Leadership; Signs and Wonders; Justification apart from the Law; Fulfillment of Prophecy | Analyzed — doctrinal hinge chapter of the whole book alongside ch.2 |
| 16 | Dreams and Visions; Baptism (household); Deliverance from a Spirit of Divination; Exclusivity of Salvation (“what must I do to be saved”); Providence and Divine Deliverance; Roman Legal Context | Analyzed |
| 17 | Dreams and Visions; Repentance; Resurrection of Christ (Athenian debate); Idolatry and the Living God (Unknown God); Universal Human Response; Synagogue/Jewish Institutional Background | Analyzed |
| 18 | Dreams and Visions; Synagogue/Jewish Institutional Background | Analyzed — otherwise reuse-only, per Core Glossary |
| 19 | Spirit-Filling (Holy Spirit baptism vs. John’s baptism); Baptism; Sorcery and the Gospel (magic books burned); Idolatry and the Living God (Ephesian shrine) | Analyzed |
| 20 | Church Leadership (elders, overseers, shepherd/flock) | Analyzed |
| 21 | Church Leadership; Synagogue/Jewish Institutional Background (Nazirite vow) | Analyzed |
| 22 | Dreams and Visions; Conversion of Paul; The Way; Election and Divine Appointment; Roman Legal Context | Analyzed |
| 23 | Resurrection of Christ (Sadducee/Pharisee dispute); Synagogue/Jewish Institutional Background (Sanhedrin) | Analyzed |
| 24 | The Way (reuse); Justification apart from the Law (self-control/righteousness/judgment); Resurrection of Christ | Analyzed |
| 25 | Roman Legal Context (appeal to Caesar) | Analyzed |
| 26 | Dreams and Visions (heavenly vision); Repentance; Conversion of Paul; Resurrection of Christ; Forgiveness of Sins (inheritance among the sanctified) | Analyzed |
| 27 | Providence and Divine Deliverance; Angelic Ministry | Analyzed — reuse cluster only, per Core Glossary |
| 28 | Signs and Wonders (reuse); Great Commission Fulfilled (kingdom preached unhindered) | Analyzed — fitting closing image of the whole book |
All 28 chapters of Acts are represented. Chapters 14, 18, and 27 are explicitly noted as contributing primarily reused theological vocabulary rather than new doctrine, consistent with 08_core_glossary.md’s Chapter Coverage Index.
Summary Statistics (Consistency Check against doctrine_risk_registry.json)
| Tier | Count | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 14 | Human theologian (mandatory, every occurrence) |
| High | 18 | Human theologian (mandatory) |
| Medium | 3 | Native speaker review |
| Low | 1 | Automated review |
| Total | 36 | 32 require theologian review; 3 require native-speaker review; 1 automated-only |
This matches assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json risk_summary exactly: Critical 14, High 18, Medium 3, Low 1; total_requiring_theologian_review 32; total_requiring_native_speaker_review 3; total_automated_only 1.
This document must be loaded alongside assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, and the Romans baseline artifacts before any Phase 2 translation of Acts material begins.
Critical Risk Doctrines
The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
Bodo name: पबित्र आत्था आरो पेन्तिकुस्त
Key terms: holy_spirit, filled_with_the_holy_spirit, pentecost_feast, pour_out_the_spirit
Review routing: Human theologian
The book’s central and most theologically loaded doctrine for a Bodo audience: the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost occurs through wind and fire, both names shared with two of the sijou plant’s five sacred Bathou elements (bar/air, or/fire), and is received through ‘filling,’ the same register in which a doudini enters Kherai-trance possession. This doctrine requires the most extensive explicit teaching contrast in the whole curriculum.
Wind and Fire Theophany at Pentecost
Bodo name: बार आरो ओरनि चिनांथि
Key terms: wind_pentecost_sign, fire_tongues_sign
Review routing: Human theologian
The single highest-priority comparative-religion finding in the whole Acts curriculum: unlike ‘God’ (which can avoid बाथौबुरै) or ‘resurrection’ (which can avoid फिन जोनोम), ‘wind’ and ‘fire’ have no alternate common Bodo lexemes to substitute — बार and or/उ are simultaneously the ordinary words for these phenomena and the names of two of the five elemental branches of the sijou plant central to Bathou worship of Bathoubwrai. Must be resolved by mandatory, repeated, explicit teaching framing rather than lexical substitution.
Spirit-Filling and Speaking in Tongues
Bodo name: पबित्र आत्थाजों भारायनाय आरो गुबुन रांनि खामानि
Key terms: filled_with_the_holy_spirit, other_tongues_glossolalia, native_language_dialektos
Review routing: Human theologian
Public, repeated, visible Spirit-filling with speech phenomena is the Acts event most likely to be assimilated to a doudini’s oracular trance-speech during Kherai possession. Must be taught that Spirit-filled speakers retain full self-possession and proclaim intelligible, doctrinally coherent content, unlike a medium whose own identity recedes during possession.
Dreams, Visions, and Divine Guidance
Bodo name: सुबुं, दर्शन आरो ईश्वरनि लर्नाय
Key terms: dreams_and_visions, heavenly_vision
Review routing: Human theologian
Visions drive nearly every major turning point in Acts (Cornelius, Peter, Ananias, Paul at multiple points); each occurrence must be taught as distinct from a doudini’s trance-vision under spirit-possession — biblical visions are given by the sovereign initiative of the one true God to a fully conscious recipient for a specific redemptive purpose, not summoned through ritual technique.
The Spirit’s Free Gift versus Purchasable Power
Bodo name: पबित्र आत्थानि दान आरो जायखलाबनाय सक्ति
Key terms: gift_of_the_holy_spirit, gift_of_god_vs_purchasable_power, sorcery_magic
Review routing: Human theologian
Simon Magus’s attempt to buy the Spirit’s power with money (8:18-20) is the Bible’s own explicit narrative rebuke of treating spiritual power as a commodity, directly reinforcing the baseline’s grace-versus-merit-versus-ritual-exchange distinction; must also be kept distinct from the doudini’s trance-derived सक्ति and the ओझा’s folk-ritual diviner role.
Deliverance from a Spirit of Divination
Bodo name: मिथ्या भाबिष्यत आत्थाखौ महरनाय
Key terms: spirit_of_divination
Review routing: Human theologian
The single most direct narrative parallel in all of Acts to the doudini’s oracular trance/possession role in Kherai puja: a spirit takes over a human medium and produces apparently accurate divinatory speech for profit. Must be taught as an authoritative act of deliverance by the superior power of Christ’s name over a real but subordinate, deceptive spirit — never in a way that inadvertently validates the doudini’s trance role as a legitimate lesser parallel.
The Personal Holy Spirit Can Be Lied To and Resisted
Bodo name: पबित्र आत्थाखौ मिथ्या रायनाय आरो राग होनाय
Key terms: lying_to_the_holy_spirit, testing_the_spirit, resisting_the_holy_spirit
Review routing: Human theologian
Ananias’s and Sapphira’s sin against a Person (the Spirit), and Stephen’s charge that Israel has always resisted the Spirit, decisively establish the Holy Spirit as a personal, knowing divine Person who can be sinned against directly — not an impersonal force or nature-spirit that is merely offended through ritual infraction, as in Bathou taboo-violation logic.
The Jerusalem Council: Grace, Not Law
Bodo name: जिरुसालेमनि सभा: बिथान नङा, मोफादांनाय दानजों फोरायनाय
Key terms: circumcision, law, grace, food_offered_to_idols, sexual_immorality_decree
Review routing: Human theologian
Acts’ own record of the formal resolution of the justification-apart-from-the-law controversy; must make explicit that salvation is by grace through faith, not submission to a ritual-conduct code, a distinction worth stressing given Brahma Dharma’s early-20th-century introduction of codified religious-conduct rules into Bodo religious life; the decree’s ban on food offered to idols has an unusually direct and concrete parallel in Bathou/Kherai puja offerings and deserves careful, explicit teaching.
Church Leadership: Elders and Overseers
Bodo name: मण्डलीनि मुख्य मानुष आरो सायगिरि
Key terms: elder, overseer, shepherd_and_flock, laying_on_of_hands, deacon
Review routing: Human theologian
The natural honorific Bodo word for a respected elder, बुरहा, is explicitly reserved by the Romans baseline for Bathoubwrai and Kherai-pantheon elder-deities; using it (or बर’ऐ) for church elders/overseers would place them within the same honorific elder-deity category, which must never happen. This doctrine requires the Acts-specific forbidden-substitution rule added to the Phase 2 system prompt.
Exclusivity of Salvation in Christ’s Name
Bodo name: जिसुनि मुंआव सानसे फोरायनाय
Key terms: no_other_name_by_which_we_must_be_saved, calling_on_the_name_of_the_lord, salvation
Review routing: Human theologian
The single most exclusivist statement in Acts; must retain full exclusivity without softening, directly relevant given the populated, non-exclusive Bathou pantheon in which many deities and spirit-mediators are recognized alongside one another, and given the practice of ‘calling on’ a deity’s presence through a doudini or ओझा.
Sorcery and the Gospel
Bodo name: जादू आरो मंगल खबर
Key terms: sorcery_magic, gift_of_god_vs_purchasable_power
Review routing: Human theologian
Simon Magus, Elymas, and the sons of Sceva each attempt to treat spiritual power as a purchasable or manipulable commodity; the Ephesian believers’ public burning of their magic books (19:19) is a strong practical model for renunciation of prior involvement in divinatory/occult practice, directly relevant for converts from Bathouist or folk-ritual backgrounds.
Justification apart from the Law
Bodo name: बिथाननि नङा, बिश्वासजों धार्मिक होनाय
Key terms: justification, righteousness, grace, law, faith, circumcision
Review routing: Human theologian
Acts’ own explicit narrative statement of Romans’ central doctrine; must never be abbreviated to ‘forgiveness’ alone, and grace must resist both a Brahma Dharma merit-reading and a traditional Bathou/Kherai reciprocal-offering reading.
Deity and Lordship of Christ
Bodo name: मसीहनि ईश्वरत्व आरो प्रभुत्व
Key terms: lord, messiah, exaltation_of_christ, calling_on_the_name_of_the_lord
Review routing: Human theologian
Christ’s exaltation to supreme heavenly authority and the double confession ‘Lord and Christ’ (2:36) must never be rendered with the honorific elder-titles बर’ऐ/बुरहा, which would place Christ inside the existing Bathou pantheon as one great elder-spirit among several rather than the exclusive, supreme Lord.
Resurrection of Christ and the Dead
Bodo name: मसीहनि आरो गुबुन मानुषनि जिउनाय सोलायनाय
Key terms: resurrection
Review routing: Human theologian
Bodily, historical, once-for-all resurrection — the recurring subject of controversy across Acts (Sadducees, Athenian philosophers) — must never be rendered with फिन जोनोम, the rebirth/reincarnation vocabulary absorbed into Bodo religious discourse through Brahma Dharma’s Hindu-influenced reform teaching.
High Risk Doctrines
The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
Bodo name: जिहूदी आरो गैर-जुथुदखौ मंगल खबर सोंगोनाय
Key terms: gospel, gentiles, god_shows_no_partiality, unity_of_jews_and_gentiles
Review routing: Human theologian
Acts supplies the New Testament’s own narrative of the gospel’s expansion from Jerusalem to ‘the ends of the earth’ without ethnic restriction; must be taught with theological clarity rather than folded into contemporary Assam-region ethnic-unity or Bodoland territorial-identity rhetoric, which addresses a different (political) kind of division.
Reversal of Clean and Unclean Boundaries
Bodo name: साफ आरो अशुद्धनि सीमा गोमोनाय
Key terms: clean_and_unclean
Review routing: Human theologian
Peter’s vision reinterprets dietary purity law as a sign of the removal of the Jew-Gentile boundary; this is a direct point of contact with Brahma Dharma’s own reformed purity ethic (including its vegetarianism) and must be taught as a decisive New Testament reversal of ritual boundary-marking, extended typologically to social/ethnic inclusion, not as an endorsement or critique of any specific Bodo dietary practice.
Repentance
Bodo name: गोसो सोलायनाय
Key terms: repentance
Review routing: Human theologian
A decisive, whole-person reorientation toward God, distinguished from Brahma Dharma’s reform-oriented ethic of self-improvement toward accumulated merit and from ritual purification addressing only external impurity.
Baptism
Bodo name: बाप्तिस्मा
Key terms: baptism, household_baptism, holy_spirit_baptism
Review routing: Human theologian
A public, once-for-all identification with Christ’s death and resurrection and with his name specifically; must be distinguished from the repeatable household and courtyard cleansing rites performed before Bathou and Kherai ceremonies.
Forgiveness of Sins
Bodo name: गुनाहनि माफ
Key terms: forgiveness_of_sins
Review routing: Human theologian
Must always be taught alongside, never as a substitute for, the fuller positive declared-righteous dimension of justification (धार्मिक होनाय राव) already fixed in the Romans baseline.
Apostolic Authority
Bodo name: गोदान जायगारिनि अधिकार
Key terms: apostle, witness, in_the_name_of_jesus
Review routing: Human theologian
Apostolic authority is delegated, Christ-commissioned, and explicitly denied to be the apostle’s own personal power or holiness (3:12); must be distinguished from a generic religious-specialist role paralleling the doudini or ओझा.
Signs, Wonders, and Miracles
Bodo name: चिनांथि, आचम्बा आरो सक्ति
Key terms: signs_and_wonders, power_of_god
Review routing: Human theologian
The authenticating mark of apostolic ministry throughout Acts; must be kept categorically distinct from Simon Magus-type purchasable sorcery and from the ritual/mediumistic सक्ति attributed to a doudini’s Kherai-trance state.
Persecution and Bold Witness
Bodo name: जुझार आरो साहसजों साक्ष्य होनाय
Key terms: boldness, persecution, great_fear_upon_the_church, obeying_god_rather_than_man
Review routing: Human theologian
Boldness under persecution flows from Spirit-filling, not personal temperament or social defiance; obedience to God over human authority must be taught as allegiance to the one true God, distinct from mere resistance to external authority for its own sake.
Martyrdom as Completed Witness
Bodo name: साक्षी जायगायाव सायथि होनाय
Key terms: stoning_and_martyrdom, witness
Review routing: Human theologian
Stephen’s death (and James’s, 12:2) establishes witness (साक्षी) unto death as the semantic root of ‘martyr’; should be taught as the completion, not the defeat, of gospel witness.
Conversion of Paul
Bodo name: साऊलनि सोलायनाय
Key terms: conversion_of_paul, the_way, chosen_instrument, heavenly_vision
Review routing: Human theologian
Saul’s sudden, sovereignly initiated turning through a direct encounter with the risen, exalted Lord must be distinguished from a gradual ethical self-improvement narrative of the kind Brahma Dharma’s reform ethic proposes.
”The Way” as Christian Self-Designation
Bodo name: मसीहनि बिबार
Key terms: the_way
Review routing: Human theologian
Bare ‘the Path/Way’ without a Christ-anchor risks conflation with Sanskritized ‘marga’ (path) soteriological language familiar from Hindu and Buddhist categories that shaped Brahma Dharma’s own 1912 reform vocabulary; the Christ-specific anchor must always be retained.
Ascension of Christ
Bodo name: मसीहनि स्वर्गाव लांनाय
Key terms: ascension
Review routing: Human theologian
Must be taught as a unique, historical, bodily event witnessed by many, promising a like bodily return, not a deity’s temporary heavenly journey or a shamanic soul-flight motif sometimes associated with folk ritual specialists.
Providence and Divine Deliverance
Bodo name: ईश्वरनि सामलानाय आरो थाबदेलानाय
Key terms: providence, angel
Review routing: Human theologian
God’s personal, purposive deliverance of his servants (Peter from prison, Paul through storm and shipwreck) must never be reheard as an impersonal-fate (भागी) assurance; angels involved in these deliverances (ch.12) must be taught as created, personal servants of the one true God, not ancestral or nature spirits from the Bathou spirit-world.
Idolatry and the Living God
Bodo name: मूर्ति पूजा आरो जिबि ईश्वर
Key terms: idol_worship, unknown_god
Review routing: Human theologian
Bathou worship is itself aniconic (centered on the sijou plant, not a crafted image), so Acts’ specific critiques of manufactured-image worship do not indict Bathou practice on its own terms and should be taught with that distinction carefully noted, while Paul’s Athens address (17:22-31) models using but then decisively moving beyond an audience’s own religious vocabulary (‘unknown god’) to proclaim the true God by name.
Election and Divine Appointment
Bodo name: ईश्वरनि सायखनाय
Key terms: election, chosen_instrument
Review routing: Human theologian
God’s sovereign, personal choice of individuals for salvation and mission must not be reheard as impersonal भागी (fate), a framing familiar from both folk belief and Brahma Dharma’s ethic.
Fulfillment of Prophecy in Acts
Bodo name: भाबिष्यत रांनि सिद्ध जानाय
Key terms: prophecy, prophet_like_moses, day_of_the_lord
Review routing: Human theologian
Linear, historical fulfillment of Old Testament promise in Christ has no ready parallel in Bathou oral tradition (which has no fixed written scripture) and should not be assimilated into Brahma Dharma’s own progressive-reform narrative of Bodo religious history.
Universal Human Response to the Gospel
Bodo name: सर्बजुथुद मानसिनि फोरायनायनि थाखाय गोसो सोलायनाय
Key terms: repentance, god_shows_no_partiality
Review routing: Human theologian
Paul’s call to repentance addressed to ‘all people everywhere’ and Peter’s declaration that God shows no partiality must retain unqualified universal force, even where ethnic/territorial identity is a genuinely live and sometimes contested category in the contemporary Bodoland region.
Angelic Ministry
Bodo name: स्वर्गदूतनि सेवा
Key terms: angel
Review routing: Human theologian
Biblical angels are created, personal messenger-servants of the one true God; must be sharply distinguished from the ancestral household spirits (बुरहा-बुरही आत्था) and nature-spirits (देउ) recognized in Bathou tradition.
Medium Risk Doctrines
The Church as Community
Bodo name: मण्डली महरै समाज
Key terms: church, fellowship, breaking_of_bread, common_possession_sharing, added_to_the_church
Review routing: Native speaker review
The newborn church’s shared life (common meals, shared possessions, mutual care) must be distinguished from ordinary village/clan communal patterns and from Bathou/Kherai communal ritual feasting following a puja offering; membership comes through personal response, cutting across existing afad (clan) lineage lines.
The Great Commission Fulfilled
Bodo name: राज्यनि खबर होजायनि गुबां जायगायाव सोंगोनाय
Key terms: mission, kingdom_of_god, sent_out_by_the_holy_spirit, kingdom_preached_unhindered, to_the_ends_of_the_earth
Review routing: Native speaker review
Traces the gospel’s advance from Jerusalem to Rome ‘to the ends of the earth’; should be framed as the church’s own ongoing calling, not a foreign historical project, given the entanglement of American Baptist mission memory with colonial-era administration among the Bodo, and distinguished from any territorial-political framing of ‘kingdom’ given the Bodoland Territorial Region’s contemporary politics.
Synagogue and Jewish Institutional Background
Bodo name: सिनागग आरो जिहूदी संस्था
Key terms: synagogue, sanhedrin, circumcision, nazirite_vow
Review routing: Native speaker review
Jewish religious institutions (synagogue, Sanhedrin, vow practices) must be kept distinct from indigenous ritual sites and practices — synagogue must never be rendered with नमासोलि, the Bathou/Kherai worship site — while background cultural/legal details carry low doctrinal risk in themselves.
Low Risk Doctrines
Roman Legal Context
Bodo name: रोमीय कानूनी परिस्थिति
Key terms: roman_citizenship, appeal_to_caesar
Review routing: Automated review
Background legal-historical detail with no comparative-religion collision; included for completeness so translators do not over-theologize ordinary Roman civil procedure.
Referenced passages