Core Glossary
08 Core Glossary — 1 John — English → Burmese
This glossary registers every load-bearing theological term identified in analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, spanning 1 John chapters 1–5. Terms already present in the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json are marked [BASELINE REUSE] and their recorded Burmese rendering is reused exactly, per Hard Rule compliance. New terms introduced by 1 John are marked [NEW] and proposed here for incorporation into the Phase 2 translation memory. Risk tiers follow the baseline’s four-tier framework (Critical / High / Medium / Low) and its review-routing convention (Critical & High → human theologian; Medium → native speaker; Low → automated).
Category: God / Theology Proper
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| God | θεός / theos | ဘုရားသခင် | Critical | [BASELINE REUSE] | 1 John 1:5; 4:8; 4:16; 5:20 | Never ဘုရား alone (Buddha image/pagoda) or နတ်သခင် (nat-lord). Full compound required throughout. |
| Father | πατήρ / patēr | အဖ | Critical | [BASELINE REUSE] | 1 John 1:2-3; 2:1; 2:15-16; 3:1 | Never ဗြဟ္မာ (Brahma, impersonal deity-realm). |
| God is light | ὁ θεὸς φῶς ἐστίν | ဘုရားသခင်သည် အလင်းတော် ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏ | High | [NEW] | 1 John 1:5 | Companion thesis statement to “God is love” (4:8). See φῶς below; never conflated with a meditatively-attained “light of insight/wisdom.” |
| Light | φῶς / phōs | အလင်းတော် | High | [NEW] | 1 John 1:5, 1:7 | God’s own moral purity and self-revealing nature; not ပညာအလင်းရောင် (wisdom-light attained through meditation practice). |
| Darkness | σκοτία / skotia | မှောင်မိုက် | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 1:5-6; 2:9-11 | Moral corruption/alienation from God, not merely absence of physical light. |
| True (of God) | ἀληθινός / alēthinos | စစ်မှန်သော | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 5:20 | Reinforces exclusivity of ဘုရားသခင်; never suggests God is merely one genuine option among several ဘုရား-labeled objects of devotion. |
| Truth | ἀλήθεια / alētheia | သမ္မာတရား | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 1:6, 1:8; 2:4, 2:21; 3:18-19; 4:6; 5:6 | Must be taught as God’s own revealed, personal, absolute truth about his Son, not one dharma-teaching among others, nor insight attained through meditative practice. |
Category: Christology (Sonship, Incarnation, Lordship)
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jesus | Ἰησοῦς / Iēsous | ယေရှု | Critical | [BASELINE REUSE] | throughout | Standard Myanmar Bible form. |
| Christ | Χριστός / Christos | ခရစ်တော် | Critical | [BASELINE REUSE — extended] | 1 John 2:22; 4:2; 5:1, 5:6 | Reuses AI-instruction transliteration standard ခရစ်တော် for the proper-name/title use of Χριστός. Where the text argues the doctrinal point “Jesus IS the Christ” (2:22; 4:2; 5:1), the Critical messianic_promise doctrine risk profile applies even though the term rendered is ခရစ်တော် rather than မေရှိယ. |
| Son of God | υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ / huios tou theou | ဘုရားသခင်၏သားတော် | Critical | [BASELINE REUSE] | 1 John 3:8; 4:9, 4:15; 5:5, 5:9-13, 5:20 | Never နတ်သား or ဗြဟ္မာ့သား. Eternal, unique, co-equal Sonship. |
| Only-begotten / unique Son | μονογενής / monogenēs | တစ်ပါးတည်းသော (သားတော်) | Critical | [NEW] | 1 John 4:9 | Qualifier applied to baseline သားတော်; emphasizes Christ’s Sonship as unrepeatable and without peer, against any reading that places him among several divine sons (nats, Brahma-realm beings). |
| Incarnation (“come in the flesh”) | ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα / en sarki elēlythota | ဇာတိခန္ဓာဖြင့် ကြွလာတော်မူသည် | Critical | [BASELINE REUSE — extended] | 1 John 4:2-3; cf. 1:1 (eyewitness verbs) | Built on baseline လူ့ဇာတိခံယူခြင်း. Never rendered with ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း (Jataka-style Buddha-to-be birth) or နတ်ဆင်းသက်ခြင်း (nat-spirit descent). The doctrinal test of true vs. false spirits (4:2-3) hinges entirely on this term. |
| Antichrist | ἀντίχριστος / antichristos | အန္တီခရစ် | Critical | [NEW] | 1 John 2:18, 2:22; 4:3 | Transliteration. Defined strictly by denial of Jesus’s identity as the incarnate Christ/Son of God — never conflated with မိတ္တေယျ (Metteyya, the future Buddha, explicitly forbidden elsewhere in baseline for “messiah”) or any Burmese folk-eschatological figure. |
| Advocate | παράκλητος / paraklētos | ခုခံချေပပေးသူ | High | [NEW] | 1 John 2:1 | Christ’s legal-defense intercession before the Father for sinning believers; distinct from baseline’s general “intercession” (အသနားခံခြင်း); never framed as one intermediary among many (cf. nat-spirit intercessors in folk practice). |
| Savior of the world | σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου / sōtēr tou kosmou | လောကီသားများကို ကယ်တင်တော်မူသော အရှင် | Critical | [BASELINE REUSE — extended] | 1 John 4:14 | Built on baseline ကယ်တင်ခြင်း (salvation). Universal scope of Christ’s saving mission; never conflated with self-attained liberation from craving/rebirth. |
Category: Love (God is Love; Love for the Brethren)
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Love (noun/verb) | ἀγάπη, ἀγαπάω / agapē, agapaō | ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ | CRITICAL | [NEW — flagship term] | 1 John 2:5, 2:10, 2:15; 3:1, 3:10-18; 4:7-21 (core passage); 5:1-3 | The established Myanmar Bible compound retains မေတ္တာ (Pali mettā, the meditatively self-cultivated, impersonal loving-kindness of the brahmavihāra). Every occurrence requires teaching distinguishing God’s own eternal, relational, sacrificially-enacted nature/act (God’s initiating love culminating in the sending of the Son, 4:9-10) from a mental state self-generated through meditation practice and extended impersonally to all beings. Structurally parallel in severity to the baseline’s grace-versus-merit distinction. |
| ”God is love” | ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν | ဘုရားသခင်သည် ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏ | CRITICAL | [NEW] | 1 John 4:8, 4:16 | The letter’s central thesis. Ontological claim about the one personal God’s essential nature, not a description any impersonal principle could equally satisfy. Must render identically at both occurrences (theological consistency rule, cf. baseline’s Romans 1:16-17 / 8:28 consistency mandate). |
| Perfect / mature love | τελεία ἀγάπη / teleia agapē | ပြည့်စုံသော ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ | Critical | [NEW] | 1 John 4:18 | τέλειος = brought to intended completeness, not flawless performance. Compounds Critical ἀγάπη risk. |
| Love for the brethren | ἀγαπᾶν τὸν ἀδελφόν / agapan ton adelphon | ညီအစ်ကိုကို ချစ်ခြင်း | High | [NEW] | 1 John 2:9-11; 3:10-18; 4:20-21 | ညီအစ်ကို (brother/sibling in the faith) must be taught as the new spiritual family transcending blood/ethnic kinship — significant given the social and family cost of conversion from Buddhism in Myanmar’s family-honor culture; love for the brethren extends to fellow believers outside one’s biological family. |
| Brother (fellow believer) | ἀδελφός / adelphos | ညီအစ်ကို | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 2:9-11; 3:14-17; 4:20-21 | See above; risk of narrowing to biological/ethnic kin. |
| God’s love was first / prior | αὐτὸς πρῶτος ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς | ရှေးဦးစွာ ချစ်တော်မူ၏ | Critical | [NEW] | 1 John 4:19 | Carries the entire grace-priority argument: God’s love precedes and is not a response to human devotion or merit. Parallel to baseline’s grace entry. |
Category: Salvation / New Birth / Assurance
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born of God / new birth | γεννάω ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ / gennaō ek tou theou | ဘုရားသခင်ထံမှ ဖွားမြင်ခြင်း | CRITICAL | [NEW — flagship term] | 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 5:4, 5:18 | HIGHEST-PRIORITY forbidden-substitution extension: NEVER use ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း or ပြန်လည်မွေးဖွားခြင်း (rebirth within samsara), the same terms already forbidden in the baseline for “resurrection.” A once-for-all, permanent begetting by a personal God into his family, not a rebirth within an ongoing karmic cycle. This term must be added to the Phase 2 AI instruction set’s Critical Forbidden Substitutions list. |
| Children of God | τέκνα θεοῦ / tekna theou | ဘုရားသခင်၏ သားသမီးများ | High | [NEW] | 1 John 3:1-2, 3:10 | Distinct from Christ’s unique singular သားတော် (Son of God, baseline); results solely from God’s begetting act, not achievement. |
| Seed of God | σπέρμα θεοῦ / sperma theou | ဘုရားသခင်၏ မျိုးစေ့တော် | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 3:9 | Distinguish from kamma-bīja (karma-seeds ripening through the sower’s own past deeds); this seed is implanted by God’s grace. |
| Eternal life | ζωὴ αἰώνιος / zōē aiōnios | ထာဝရအသက် | CRITICAL | [NEW] | 1 John 1:2; 2:25; 3:15; 5:11, 5:13, 5:20 | Never conflated with နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း (attaining nirvana, forbidden in baseline for “salvation”) or with indefinitely extended existence within samsara. Present-possession relational life with a personal God, continuing forever. |
| Propitiation / atoning sacrifice | ἱλασμός / hilasmos | အပြစ်ဖြေရာယဇ် | CRITICAL | [NEW] | 1 John 2:2; 4:10 | God himself provides the sacrifice satisfying his own justice — reverse direction from folk-religious human-to-nat appeasement offerings. Triggers baseline’s mandatory theologian-review escalation rule for atonement/propitiation language. |
| Assurance / confidence | παρρησία / parrēsia | ရဲရင့်စွာချဉ်းကပ်နိုင်သော စိတ်ချမှု | High | [NEW] | 1 John 2:28; 3:21; 4:17; 5:14 | Ties to baseline doctrine assurance_of_salvation; rests on God’s unchanging character and Christ’s finished work, never an uncertain merit-tally. |
| Overcome / victory | νικάω, νῖκος / nikaō, nikos | အောင်နိုင်ခြင်း | High | [NEW] | 1 John 2:13-14; 4:4; 5:4-5 | Victory achieved by faith in Christ’s finished work and God’s gift of new birth, not by self-generated ascetic/meditative effort over defilements (kilesa). |
| Faith / believe | πίστις, πιστεύω / pistis, pisteuō | ယုံကြည်ခြင်း | Medium | [BASELINE REUSE] | 1 John 3:23; 4:16; 5:1, 5:4-5, 5:10, 5:13 | Object of faith always Jesus as the Christ/Son of God; distinguish from သဒ္ဓါ (experiential confidence in a teaching). |
Category: Sin, Confession, Forgiveness, Cleansing
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sin | ἁμαρτία / hamartia | အပြစ် | High | [BASELINE REUSE] | 1 John 1:7-10; 2:1-2; 3:4-9; 5:16-17 | Never အကုသိုလ် (demerit). |
| Lawlessness | ἀνομία / anomia | ပညတ်တော်ကို ဖီဆန်ခြင်း | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 3:4 | Sin defined relationally as rebellion against a personal God’s will, not violation of impersonal cosmic order. |
| Confess | ὁμολογέω / homologeō | ဝန်ခံခြင်း | High | [NEW] | 1 John 1:9; 4:2-3, 4:15 | Public, doctrinally-specific declaration; distinct from monastic peer-confession rituals for maintaining purity status among the sangha. |
| Forgive / forgiveness | ἀφίημι, ἄφεσις / aphiēmi, aphesis | ခွင့်လွှတ်ခြင်း | High | [NEW] | 1 John 1:9; 2:12 | Immediate, complete judicial pardon by a personal God on the basis of Christ’s blood; never gradual karmic demerit-depletion through compensating good works. |
| Cleanse | καθαρίζω / katharizō | သန့်ရှင်းစေခြင်း | High | [NEW] | 1 John 1:7, 1:9 | Built on baseline holy root; never ritual/ceremonial washing at pagodas or shrines. |
| Blood (of Jesus) | αἷμα / haima | အသွေးတော် | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 1:7; 5:6, 5:8 | Christ’s own voluntary sacrificial blood; never associated with folk animal-blood offerings to nats. |
| Devil / evil one | διάβολος, ὁ πονηρός / diabolos, ho ponēros | မာရ်နတ် / ဆိုးညစ်သူ | High | [NEW] | 1 John 3:8, 3:10, 3:12; 5:18-19 | Established Myanmar Christian term; distinct from morally ambiguous, appeasable nats — a wholly malevolent personal being never negotiated with. |
Category: Fellowship, Church, Community
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fellowship | κοινωνία / koinōnia | မိတ်သဟာယ | Low (Medium in this curriculum’s centrality) | [BASELINE REUSE] | 1 John 1:3, 1:6-7 | Participatory union with God himself and with fellow believers, not mere social camaraderie. Core doctrine of this curriculum: “Fellowship with God and One Another.” |
| Abide / remain | μένω / menō | တည်နေခြင်း | High | [NEW] | 1 John 2:6, 2:10, 2:14, 2:17, 2:24, 2:27-28; 3:6, 3:24; 4:12-13, 4:15-16 | Continuing relational union with a personal God, sustained by the indwelling Spirit; distinguish from self-attained meditative absorption (“abiding” in jhāna/samādhi states). Occurs ~24x; among the letter’s most theologically load-bearing verbs. |
| Word of Life | ὁ λόγος τῆς ζωῆς / ho logos tēs zōēs | အသက်တော်၏ နှုတ်ကပါဌ်တော် | High | [NEW] | 1 John 1:1 | The person of Christ himself and the apostolic message about him; not an abstract philosophical principle. |
| Anointing | χρίσμα / chrisma | ဘိသိက်တော် | Medium-High | [NEW] | 1 John 2:20, 2:27 | Universal Spirit-endowment for all believers, not a single ritual reserved for religious specialists (clergy/monks). |
| Commandment | ἐντολή / entolē | ပညတ်တော် | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 2:3-4, 2:7-8; 3:23-24; 4:21 | Distinct from baseline’s νόμος/ပညတ်တရား (the Mosaic Law as covenant system); a specific relational precept received from Christ, flowing from love, not merit-building precept-observance (သီလ). |
Category: The World, Testing the Spirits, Idols
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| World | κόσμος / kosmos | လောက | High | [NEW] | 1 John 2:15-17; 3:1, 3:13; 4:1, 4:3-5, 4:9, 4:14, 4:17; 5:4-5, 5:19 | လောက also denotes tiered cosmological realms (kāma-/rūpa-/arūpa-loka) structured by karma in Theravada cosmology. In 1 John κόσμος is a moral-spiritual order of values/desires opposed to God, not a cosmological tier — this distinction requires explicit teaching. |
| Lust of the flesh / eyes; pride of life | ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός / τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν; ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου | ဇာတိပကတိ၏တပ်မက်ခြင်း၊ မျက်စိ၏တပ်မက်ခြင်း၊ လောကီအသက်တာ၏ဝါကြွားခြင်း | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 2:16 | Resolution is reordering desire through new birth, not extinguishing desire via the Eightfold Path. |
| Test the spirits | δοκιμάζετε τὰ πνεύματα / dokimazete ta pneumata | ဝိညာဉ်များကို စစ်ဆေးခြင်း | High | [NEW] | 1 John 4:1 | Doctrinal, propositional test (confession of the incarnate Christ), never intuitive/trance-based discernment as with consulting a nat-medium (nat-kadaw). |
| False prophets | ψευδοπροφῆται / pseudoprophētai | မိစ္ဆာပရောဖက်များ | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 4:1 | Built on baseline ပရောဖက် (prophet) root. |
| Idols | εἴδωλα / eidōla | ရုပ်တု | High | [NEW] | 1 John 5:21 | Distinct from ဘုရားပုံ/ဘုရားရုပ် (Buddha images); requires sensitive framing given the visual/devotional centrality of Buddha images and nat shrines in Myanmar life — exclusive worship belongs to ဘုရားသခင် alone. |
Category: Hope, Testimony, Death/Life, Compassion (Supporting Terms)
| Term (EN) | Greek / Transliteration | Burmese Rendering | Risk | Status | Key Passages | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hope | ἐλπίς / elpis | မျှော်လင့်ခြင်း | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 3:2-3 | Confident expectation grounded in God’s certain promise, not wishful optimism or hope for favorable rebirth. |
| Testimony / witness | μαρτυρία, μαρτυρέω / martyria, martyreō | သက်သေခံချက် | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 1:2; 4:14; 5:6-11 | Formal, authoritative testimony, supremely God’s own testimony about the Son. |
| Water, blood, Spirit (triad) | ὕδωρ, αἷμα, πνεῦμα | ရေ၊ အသွေးတော်၊ ဝိညာဉ်တော် | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 5:6-8 | Primarily an interpretive challenge; component terms retain their individual risk profiles (blood: Medium; Spirit: Critical). |
| Death / Life (spiritual) | θάνατος / ζωή | သေခြင်း / အသက်ရှင်ခြင်း | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 3:14 | Decisive, once-for-all spiritual transition already accomplished, not gradual improvement across rebirths. |
| Compassion | σπλάγχνα / splagchna | သနားညှာတာသောစိတ် | Low | [NEW] | 1 John 3:17 | Practical compassion as necessary expression of genuine love. |
| Sin unto death / not unto death | ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον / μὴ πρὸς θάνατον | သေခြင်းသို့ ဆိုက်စေသောအပြစ် / မဆိုက်စေသောအပြစ် | Medium | [NEW] | 1 John 5:16-17 | ”Death” is spiritual/eternal separation from God, not literal death or an inferior rebirth destiny. |
| Cain / Abel | Κάϊν / Ἄβελ | ကာဣန် / အာဗေလ | Low | [NEW] | 1 John 3:12 | Established Myanmar Bible proper-name forms; requires OT narrative background teaching. |
Category: Baseline Terms Reused Without Modification
| Term (EN) | Burmese Rendering | Risk (per baseline) | Key Passages in 1 John |
|---|---|---|---|
| God | ဘုရားသခင် | Critical | 1:5; 4:8, 4:16; 5:20 |
| Jesus | ယေရှု | Critical | throughout |
| Son of God | ဘုရားသခင်၏သားတော် | Critical | 3:8; 4:9, 4:15; 5:5, 5:9-13, 5:20 |
| Holy Spirit / Spirit | သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော် | Critical | 3:24; 4:2, 4:13; 5:6-8 |
| Father | အဖ | Critical | 1:2-3; 2:1, 2:15-16; 3:1 |
| Faith / believe | ယုံကြည်ခြင်း | Medium | 3:23; 4:16; 5:1, 5:4-5, 5:10, 5:13 |
| Sin | အပြစ် | High | 1:7-10; 2:1-2; 3:4-9; 5:16-17 |
| Righteousness | ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်း | Critical | 2:29; 3:7, 3:10 |
| Holy | သန့်ရှင်းသော | High | 2:20 (of Christ, “the Holy One”) |
| Fellowship | မိတ်သဟာယ | Low | 1:3, 1:6-7 |
| Law (root, for ἐντολή/ἀνομία compounds) | ပညတ် (root) | High | 2:3-4, 2:7-8; 3:4, 3:23-24; 4:21 |
Risk Summary for 1 John Curriculum
| Risk Tier | Count (new terms) | Count (baseline reuse) | Total | Review Routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | 8 | 4 | 12 | Human theologian |
| High | 14 | 2 | 16 | Human theologian |
| Medium | 11 | 1 | 12 | Native speaker review |
| Low | 3 | 1 | 4 | Automated review |
Flagship risk requiring immediate escalation to the Phase 2 forbidden-substitutions list: ἀγάπη (love → ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ, Critical) and γεννάω ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ (born of God → ဘုရားသခင်ထံမှ ဖွားမြင်ခြင်း, Critical, sharing the resurrection doctrine’s forbidden rebirth vocabulary). Both should be carried into the curriculum’s doctrine risk registry and AI translation requirements documents in subsequent Phase 1 steps.
Critical Risk Terms
Antichrist
Approved rendering: အန္တီခရစ်
Transliteration: Antikhrit
Doctrine: The Incarnation and Antichrist
Rejected alternatives: မိတ္တေယျ, အရေးတော်ပုံ လူဆိုးကြီး (generic folk end-times villain)
Original: ἀντίχριστος
Category: Christology
NEW. Transliterated to avoid importing an unrelated Burmese eschatological figure. Used at 1 John 2:18, 2:22; 4:3. Defined strictly by denial of Jesus’s identity as the incarnate Christ/Son of God — never conflated with မိတ္တေယျ (Metteyya, the future Buddha) or the folk setkya-min (righteous world-ruling king) figure.
Born Of God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်ထံမှ ဖွားမြင်ခြင်း ခံရသော
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin htan-hma pwarmyin-chin khan-yathaw
Doctrine: New Birth (Born of God)
Rejected alternatives: ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း, ပြန်လည်မွေးဖွားခြင်း
Original: γεγέννηται ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ / γεννάω ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ
Category: Salvation
NEW — flagship term of this curriculum, second only to ‘love’ in severity. CRITICAL FORBIDDEN SUBSTITUTION: never use ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း or ပြန်လည်မွေးဖွားခြင်း (rebirth within samsara) — the identical terms already forbidden in the Romans baseline for ‘resurrection.’ Used at 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 5:4, 5:18. A single, permanent, once-for-all begetting by a personal God into his family, not a rebirth within an ongoing karmic cycle.
Christ
Approved rendering: ခရစ်တော်
Transliteration: Khayitto
Doctrine: The Incarnation and Antichrist
Original: Χριστός
Category: Christology
NEW (as a keyed TM entry; the transliteration itself is the AI instruction set’s established convention). Used wherever the letter argues ‘Jesus IS the Christ’ (2:22; 4:2; 5:1, 5:6) — carries the same Critical risk as the baseline’s messianic_promise doctrine even though the rendered word is ခရစ်တော် rather than မေရှိယ. Must never be read as one religious title among several possible teachers or avatars.
Eternal Life
Approved rendering: ထာဝရအသက်
Transliteration: htawara a-thet
Doctrine: Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Life
Rejected alternatives: နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း
Original: ζωὴ αἰώνιος
Category: Salvation
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:2; 2:25; 3:15; 5:11, 5:13, 5:20 — the letter’s climactic assurance doctrine. Never conflated with နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း (attaining nirvana) or with indefinitely extended but still-impermanent existence (long-lived deva/Brahma realms). Present-possession relational life with a personal God, continuing forever.
Father
Approved rendering: အဖ
Transliteration: a-pha
Doctrine: Divine Sonship: Children of God
Rejected alternatives: ဗြဟ္မာ
Original: πατήρ
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Used at 1 John 1:2-3; 2:1, 2:15-16; 3:1. Never substitute ဗြဟ္မာ (Brahma, an impersonal deity-realm).
God Is Love
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်သည် ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin-thi chit-chin-metta phyit-taw-mu-i
Doctrine: God is Love
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရားသခင်သည် မေတ္တာရှင်ဖြစ်သည် (implies God merely ‘possesses’ love as a quality among others)
Original: ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν
Category: Love
NEW. The letter’s central thesis (4:8, repeated identically at 4:16). An ontological claim about the one personal Creator, not a description compatible with an impersonal universal loving-kindness principle. Must render identically at both occurrences per theological-consistency requirements, exactly as the baseline mandates for Romans 1:16-17 and 8:28.
God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin
Doctrine: God is Light / God is Love
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရား, နတ်သခင်
Original: θεός
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package exactly. In 1 John this compound anchors both thesis statements ‘God is light’ (1:5) and ‘God is love’ (4:8, 4:16); never render ဘုရား alone (Buddha image/pagoda) or နတ်သခင် (nat-lord).
Gods Prior Love
Approved rendering: ရှေးဦးစွာ ချစ်တော်မူ၏
Transliteration: shay-u-swa chit-taw-mu-i
Doctrine: Love as God’s Prior Initiative
Original: αὐτὸς πρῶτος ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς
Category: Love
NEW. Used at 1 John 4:19. Carries the full weight of the grace-priority argument already Critical in the Romans baseline for grace (ကျေးဇူးတော်) against the daily lay practice of merit-making (ကုသိုလ်ပြုခြင်း); decisively excludes any works-first or merit-first framework.
Grace
Approved rendering: ကျေးဇူးတော်
Transliteration: kyayzu-taw
Doctrine: Love as God’s Prior Initiative
Rejected alternatives: ကုသိုလ်, ကံကောင်းခြင်း, ဝါသနာတော်
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Retained in this book specifically as the structural parallel to 1 John’s gods_prior_love (4:19, ‘we love because he first loved us’) and love (4:7-21) — the identical grace-versus-merit argument transposed into love vocabulary. Never ကုသိုလ် or ကံကောင်းခြင်း.
Holy Spirit
Approved rendering: သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော်
Transliteration: thangyinthaw weinnyin-taw
Doctrine: Anointing and the Holy Spirit’s Teaching Ministry
Rejected alternatives: နတ်ဝိညာဉ်, ဝိညာဉ်
Original: πνεῦμα ἅγιον / τὸ πνεῦμα
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Used at 1 John 3:24; 4:2, 4:13; 5:6-8. Never render ဝိညာဉ် alone or နတ်ဝိညာဉ် (spirit/nat); the referent of ‘his Spirit’ at 4:13 is unambiguously this Person even though the Greek lacks the adjective ἅγιος there.
Incarnation Come In Flesh
Approved rendering: ဇာတိခန္ဓာဖြင့် ကြွလာတော်မူသည်
Transliteration: zarti-khanda-hpyin kywar-lar-taw-mu-thi
Doctrine: The Incarnation and Antichrist
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း, နတ်ဆင်းသက်ခြင်း
NEW — built on the baseline’s incarnation root (လူ့ဇာတိခံယူခြင်း) but rendered as the specific perfect-tense verb-phrase used at 1 John 4:2-3 (‘has come in the flesh’), the letter’s own doctrinal fulcrum for testing the spirits. Never rendered with ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း (Jataka-style Buddha-to-be birth) or နတ်ဆင်းသက်ခြင်း (nat-spirit descent/possession). The entire test distinguishing the Spirit of God from the spirit of antichrist rests on this phrase.
Incarnation
Approved rendering: လူ့ဇာတိခံယူခြင်း
Transliteration: lu-zarti khan-yu-chin
Doctrine: The Incarnation and Antichrist
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း, နတ်ဆင်းသက်ခြင်း
Original: ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package exactly as the general doctrinal root. 1 John extends this root with a specific verb-phrase rendering for 4:2-3’s ‘come in the flesh’ test — see incarnation_come_in_flesh below. Never use ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း (Jataka-style Buddha-to-be birth) or နတ်ဆင်းသက်ခြင်း (nat-spirit descent).
Jesus
Approved rendering: ယေရှု
Transliteration: Yayshu
Doctrine: Deity and Sonship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ရှင်ယေရှု
Original: Ἰησοῦς
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Standard Myanmar Bible form throughout 1 John.
Love
Approved rendering: ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ
Transliteration: chit-chin metta
Doctrine: God is Love
Rejected alternatives: ချစ်ခြင်း (alone, without မေတ္တာ), မေတ္တာ (alone, without ချစ်ခြင်း)
Original: ἀγάπη / ἀγαπάω
Category: Love
NEW — flagship term of this curriculum. The established Myanmar Bible compound. Retains မေတ္တာ, the first of the four brahmavihāra — a meditatively self-cultivated, impersonally-extended loving-kindness generated by a practitioner’s own mental discipline, without reference to a personal source or historical sacrificial act. 1 John’s ἀγάπη is God’s own eternal, personal nature (4:8), historically enacted by sending and giving up the Son (4:9-10), and given to believers relationally — never a self-produced contemplative state any being could equally cultivate. Every occurrence (2:5, 2:10, 2:15; 3:1, 3:10-18; 4:7-21; 5:1-3) requires this distinction to be taught. Structurally parallel in severity to the baseline’s grace-vs-merit distinction.
Messiah
Approved rendering: မေရှိယ
Transliteration: Mei-shi-ya
Doctrine: The Incarnation and Antichrist
Rejected alternatives: အရေးတော်ပုံလာမည့်သူ, မိတ္တေယျ
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Retained to distinguish from this book’s ခရစ်တော် (Christ, a title Jesus bears) and အန္တီခရစ် (antichrist, one who denies Jesus is the Christ). Never use မိတ္တေယျ (Metteyya, the future Buddha) for any related concept in this book, including antichrist.
Only Begotten Son
Approved rendering: တစ်ပါးတည်းသော (သားတော်)
Transliteration: tabartetha (tharadaw)
Doctrine: Deity and Sonship of Christ
Original: μονογενής
Category: Christology
NEW. Qualifier applied to the baseline’s သားတော် at 1 John 4:9. Emphasizes Christ’s Sonship as unrepeatable and without peer, against readings placing him among several divine sons (nats, Brahma-realm beings).
Perfect Love
Approved rendering: ပြည့်စုံသော ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ
Transliteration: pyi-sone-thaw chit-chin-metta
Doctrine: God is Love
Original: τελεία ἀγάπη
Category: Love
NEW. Used at 1 John 4:18. τέλειος = brought to intended completeness, not flawless moral performance. Compounds the Critical risk of the love entry.
Propitiation
Approved rendering: အပြစ်ဖြေရာယဇ်
Transliteration: a-pyit-hpye-yar-yat
Doctrine: Propitiation and Atonement
Rejected alternatives: ပူဇော်ခြင်း (human-to-spirit offering), ပသခြင်း (human-to-spirit appeasement)
Original: ἱλασμός
Category: Salvation
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:2; 4:10. God himself provides the sacrifice satisfying his own justice — the reverse direction of Burmese folk-religious practice, in which a human offerer presents a sacrifice to a nat to appease its anger. Triggers the baseline’s mandatory theologian-review escalation rule for atonement/propitiation language.
Resurrection
Approved rendering: ထမြောက်ခြင်း
Transliteration: hta-myauk-chin
Doctrine: New Birth (Born of God)
Rejected alternatives: ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း, ပြန်လည်မွေးဖွားခြင်း
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Not a term 1 John itself uses directly, but its forbidden-substitution pair (ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း / ပြန်လည်မွေးဖွားခြင်း, rebirth within samsara) is the SAME pair that must never be used for this book’s flagship new term born_of_god. Carried forward here to make the shared forbidden-substitution linkage explicit for Phase 2 enforcement.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်း
Transliteration: pyaungmat-chin
Doctrine: New Birth (Born of God)
Rejected alternatives: ကုသိုလ်ကံ, သီလ
Original: δικαιοσύνη
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Used at 1 John 2:29; 3:7, 3:10, where practicing righteousness is evidence of new birth. Never ကုသိုလ်ကံ (merit-karma) or သီလ (precepts kept for merit).
Salvation
Approved rendering: ကယ်တင်ခြင်း
Transliteration: kaetin-chin
Doctrine: Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Life
Rejected alternatives: နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း, လွတ်မြောက်ခြင်း
Original: σωτηρία (root; cf. σωτήρ, 1 John 4:14)
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Underlies savior_of_the_world (4:14). Never နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း (attaining nirvana).
Savior Of The World
Approved rendering: လောကီသားများကို ကယ်တင်တော်မူသော အရှင်
Transliteration: lawki-thar-myar-go kaetin-taw-mu-thaw a-shin
Doctrine: Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Life
Original: σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου
Category: Salvation
NEW, built on the baseline’s ကယ်တင်ခြင်း (salvation). Used at 1 John 4:14. Universal scope of Christ’s saving mission; never conflated with self-attained liberation from craving/rebirth (နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း, forbidden).
Son Of God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်၏သားတော်
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin i tharadaw
Doctrine: Deity and Sonship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: နတ်သား, ဗြဟ္မာ့သား
Original: υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Used throughout 1 John (3:8; 4:9, 4:15; 5:5, 5:9-13, 5:20) as the confessional test-statement denied by the antichrist spirit (2:22-23; 4:15). Never pluralize; distinct from believers’ plural ‘children of God’ (see children_of_god).
High Risk Terms
Abide
Approved rendering: တည်နေခြင်း
Transliteration: ta-nei-chin
Doctrine: Fellowship with God and One Another
Original: μένω
Category: Church
NEW. High-frequency Johannine verb (~24 occurrences: 2:6, 2:10, 2:14, 2:17, 2:24, 2:27-28; 3:6, 3:24; 4:12-13, 4:15-16). Must be distinguished from meditative absorption (‘abiding’ in jhāna/samādhi states); this is continuing relational union with a personal God, sustained by the indwelling Spirit.
Advocate
Approved rendering: ခုခံချေပပေးသူ
Transliteration: khu-khan-chay-pay-thu
Doctrine: The Advocate and Intercession of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ကြားဝင်ပေးသူ (too generic), ရှေ့နေ (secular courtroom lawyer, no sense of standing before God)
Original: παράκλητος
Category: Christology
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:1. Christ’s ongoing legal-defense intercession before the Father for sinning believers, distinct from the baseline’s general intercession (အသနားခံခြင်း). Never rendered so as to suggest one intermediary among many, a risk given the cultural pattern of petitioning the 37 nats as intermediary spirits.
Assurance
Approved rendering: ရဲရင့်စွာချဉ်းကပ်နိုင်သော စိတ်ချမှု
Transliteration: yayin-swa-chin-kap-nain-thaw seik-cha-hmu
Doctrine: Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Life
Original: παρρησία
Category: Salvation
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:28; 3:21; 4:17; 5:14. Ties to baseline assurance_of_salvation doctrine; rests on God’s unchanging character and Christ’s finished work, never an uncertain merit-tally analogous to a karma ledger.
Children Of God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်၏ သားသမီးများ
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin i tharthami-myar
Doctrine: Divine Sonship: Children of God
Original: τέκνα θεοῦ
Category: Salvation
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:1-2, 3:10. Distinct from Christ’s own unique, singular သားတော် (Son of God — never pluralized). Results solely from God’s own begetting act, not religious achievement.
Cleanse
Approved rendering: သန့်ရှင်းစေခြင်း
Transliteration: thangyin-cae-chin
Doctrine: Cleansing from Sin
Original: καθαρίζω
Category: Sin
NEW, built on baseline’s သန့်ရှင်း (holy) root. Used at 1 John 1:7, 1:9. Never ritual/ceremonial washing at pagodas or shrines, or purification rites preceding merit-making acts.
Confess
Approved rendering: ဝန်ခံခြင်း
Transliteration: wan-khan-chin
Doctrine: Confession and Forgiveness of Sin
Original: ὁμολογέω
Category: Sin
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:9; 4:2-3, 4:15. Public, doctrinally-specific declaration; distinct from monastic/Vinaya-style peer confession of infractions among the sangha, a purity-maintenance ritual rather than a doctrinal declaration to a personal God.
Devil
Approved rendering: မာရ်နတ်
Transliteration: Mardnat
Doctrine: The Devil and the Origin of Sin
Original: διάβολος / ὁ πονηρός
Category: Sin
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:8, 3:10, 3:12; 5:18-19. Established Myanmar Christian term. Distinct from the generic, morally ambiguous nats of Burmese folk religion, who may be propitiated, negotiated with, or venerated for favor; the devil is permanently opposed to God and never an object of appeasement.
Forgive
Approved rendering: ခွင့်လွှတ်ခြင်း
Transliteration: khwin-hlwat-chin
Doctrine: Confession and Forgiveness of Sin
Original: ἀφίημι / ἄφεσις
Category: Sin
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:9; 2:12. Immediate, complete judicial pardon by a personal God on the basis of Christ’s blood; never gradual karmic demerit-depletion through compensating good works.
God Is Light
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်သည် အလင်းတော် ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin-thi a-lin-taw phyit-taw-mu-i
Doctrine: God is Light
Original: ὁ θεὸς φῶς ἐστίν
Category: God
NEW. Companion thesis statement to god_is_love (1 John 1:5). Must be taught as God’s own eternal moral nature and self-disclosure, never a description compatible with ပညာအလင်းရောင် (wisdom-light self-attained through meditation).
Holy
Approved rendering: သန့်ရှင်းသော
Transliteration: thangyin-thaw
Doctrine: God is Light
Rejected alternatives: စင်ကြယ်သော
Original: ἅγιος
Category: Sanctification
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Applied to Christ as ‘the Holy One’ at 1 John 2:20, the source of the anointing given to every believer.
Idols
Approved rendering: ရုပ်တု
Transliteration: yote-tu
Doctrine: Idolatry Warning
Original: εἴδωλα
Category: God
NEW. Used at 1 John 5:21, the letter’s closing command. Distinct from generic ဘုရားပုံ/ဘုရားရုပ် (Buddha images), but given the visual/devotional centrality of Buddha images and nat shrines in Myanmar life, requires sensitive pastoral framing distinguishing exclusive worship of ဘုရားသခင် alone from any competing object or practice.
Law
Approved rendering: ပညတ်တရား
Transliteration: pyinnat tayar
Doctrine: The Commandment of Love
Rejected alternatives: ဝိနည်း
Original: νόμος (root; cf. ἐντολή, ἀνομία)
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Serves as the root morpheme ပညတ် for this book’s new compounds commandment (ပညတ်တော်) and lawlessness (ပညတ်တော်ကို ဖီဆန်ခြင်း). Never ဝိနည်း (the Buddhist monastic Vinaya).
Light
Approved rendering: အလင်းတော်
Transliteration: a-lin-taw
Doctrine: God is Light
Rejected alternatives: ပညာအလင်းရောင်
Original: φῶς
Category: God
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:5, 1:7. Never ပညာအလင်းရောင် (the light of insight attained through vipassana practice); God’s light is his own eternal nature, not an attainment.
Love For The Brethren
Approved rendering: ညီအစ်ကိုကို ချစ်ခြင်း
Transliteration: nyi-a-hko-go chit-chin
Doctrine: Love for the Brethren as Evidence of New Birth
Original: ἀγαπᾶν τὸν ἀδελφόν
Category: Love
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:9-11; 3:10-18; 4:20-21. ညီအစ်ကို must be taught as the new spiritual family transcending blood/ethnic kinship, given the real social and family cost of conversion from Buddhism in Myanmar’s family-honor culture.
Overcome
Approved rendering: အောင်နိုင်ခြင်း
Transliteration: aung-nain-chin
Doctrine: Overcoming the World
Original: νικάω / νῖκος
Category: Salvation
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:13-14; 4:4; 5:4-5. Victory achieved by faith in Christ’s finished work and God’s gift of new birth, not by self-generated ascetic/meditative effort over defilements (kilesa).
Sin
Approved rendering: အပြစ်
Transliteration: a-pyit
Doctrine: Confession and Forgiveness of Sin
Rejected alternatives: အကုသိုလ်
Original: ἁμαρτία
Category: Sin
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Used pervasively (1:7-10; 2:1-2; 3:4-9; 5:16-17). Never အကုသိုလ် (demerit, the negative counterpart of accumulated karmic merit).
Test The Spirits
Approved rendering: ဝိညာဉ်များကို စစ်ဆေးခြင်း
Transliteration: weinnyin-myar-go sit-sei-chin
Doctrine: Testing the Spirits
Original: δοκιμάζετε τὰ πνεύματα
Category: Spiritual Discernment
NEW. Used at 1 John 4:1. Must be distinguished from consulting a nat-medium (nat-kadaw) in trance; the biblical test is doctrinal and propositional — does the teaching confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh? — not intuitive or experiential discernment.
Word Of Life
Approved rendering: အသက်တော်၏ နှုတ်ကပါဌ်တော်
Transliteration: a-thet-taw i nhoke-ka-pat-taw
Doctrine: The Incarnation and Antichrist
Original: ὁ λόγος τῆς ζωῆς
Category: Christology
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:1. Names the person of Christ himself and the apostolic message concerning him, presented as historically heard, seen, and touched; not an abstract philosophical ‘logos’ principle.
World
Approved rendering: လောက
Transliteration: lawka
Doctrine: The World and Worldliness
Original: κόσμος
Category: Ethics
NEW. Used pervasively (2:15-17; 3:1, 3:13; 4:1, 4:3-5, 4:9, 4:14, 4:17; 5:4-5, 5:19). လောက also denotes tiered cosmological realms (kāma-/rūpa-/arūpa-loka) in Theravada cosmology; in 1 John it is a moral-spiritual order of values opposed to God, not a cosmological tier — this distinction requires explicit teaching.
Medium Risk Terms
Anointing
Approved rendering: ဘိသိက်တော်
Transliteration: bhaitheik-taw
Doctrine: Anointing and the Holy Spirit’s Teaching Ministry
Original: χρίσμα
Category: Church
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:20, 2:27. ဘိသိက် carries positive Myanmar royal/priestly consecration resonance but risks being read as a rite reserved for religious specialists rather than the universal Spirit-endowment given to every believer; requires clarifying teaching at each occurrence.
Blood
Approved rendering: အသွေးတော်
Transliteration: a-thway-taw
Doctrine: Cleansing from Sin
Original: αἷμα
Category: Sin
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:7; 5:6, 5:8. Christ’s own voluntary sacrificial blood; never associated with folk animal-blood offerings to nats.
Brother
Approved rendering: ညီအစ်ကို
Transliteration: nyi-a-hko
Doctrine: Love for the Brethren as Evidence of New Birth
Original: ἀδελφός
Category: Love
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:9-11; 3:14-17; 4:20-21. Risk of narrowing to biological/ethnic kin; must be taught as inclusive of all believers regardless of family of origin.
Commandment
Approved rendering: ပညတ်တော်
Transliteration: pyinnat-taw
Doctrine: The Commandment of Love
Original: ἐντολή
Category: Covenant
NEW, shares the root ပညတ် with the baseline’s ပညတ်တရား (law) for consistency. Used at 1 John 2:3-4, 2:7-8; 3:23-24; 4:21. A specific relational precept flowing from love and received from Christ personally, not merit-building precept-observance (သီလ).
Darkness
Approved rendering: မှောင်မိုက်
Transliteration: hmaung-maik
Doctrine: God is Light
Original: σκοτία
Category: Sin
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:5-6; 2:9-11. Moral corruption/alienation from a personal God, not merely the physical absence of light.
Death Life
Approved rendering: သေခြင်း / အသက်ရှင်ခြင်း
Transliteration: thei-chin / a-thet-shin-chin
Doctrine: Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Life
Original: θάνατος / ζωή
Category: Salvation
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:14. Decisive, once-for-all spiritual transition already accomplished, not gradual improvement across successive rebirths.
Faith
Approved rendering: ယုံကြည်ခြင်း
Transliteration: yun-kyi-chin
Doctrine: Overcoming the World
Rejected alternatives: သဒ္ဓါတရား
Original: πίστις / πιστεύω
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Object of faith in 1 John is always Jesus as the Christ/Son of God (3:23; 4:16; 5:1, 5:4-5, 5:10, 5:13); distinguish from သဒ္ဓါ, verified experiential confidence in a teaching.
False Prophets
Approved rendering: မိစ္ဆာပရောဖက်များ
Transliteration: mikhsa-parawpeq-myar
Doctrine: Testing the Spirits
Original: ψευδοπροφῆται
Category: Spiritual Discernment
NEW, built on baseline’s ပရောဖက် (prophet) root plus မိစ္ဆာ (false/wrong). Used at 1 John 4:1.
Fellowship
Approved rendering: မိတ်သဟာယ
Transliteration: meikthahaya
Doctrine: Fellowship with God and One Another
Rejected alternatives: သူငယ်ချင်းဖွဲ့ခြင်း
Original: κοινωνία
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package with an ESCALATED review tier: baseline rated this Low, but this curriculum elevates it to Medium/native-speaker review because 1 John 1:3 makes it the letter’s explicit stated purpose. Must be taught as participatory union with God himself and fellow believers, not social camaraderie in a religious association.
Hope
Approved rendering: မျှော်လင့်ခြင်း
Transliteration: hnyaw-lin-chin
Doctrine: Hope of Christlikeness
Original: ἐλπίς
Category: Faith
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:2-3. Confident expectation grounded in God’s certain promise, not wishful optimism or hope for a favorable future rebirth.
Intercession
Approved rendering: အသနားခံခြင်း
Transliteration: a-thanar-khan-chin
Doctrine: The Advocate and Intercession of Christ
Rejected alternatives: နတ်ကိုးကွယ်ခြင်း
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Retained here specifically to be contrasted with this book’s new term advocate (ခုခံချေပပေးသူ, 1 John 2:1), which names Christ’s specific legal-defense function before the Father, distinct from general prayer/intercession language.
Lawlessness
Approved rendering: ပညတ်တော်ကို ဖီဆန်ခြင်း
Transliteration: pyinnat-taw-go phi-hsan-chin
Doctrine: The Devil and the Origin of Sin
Original: ἀνομία
Category: Sin
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:4. Sin defined relationally as rebellion against a personal God’s revealed will, not violation of an impersonal cosmic moral order.
Seed Of God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်၏ မျိုးစေ့တော်
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin i myothayzdaw
Doctrine: New Birth (Born of God)
Original: σπέρμα (αὐτοῦ)
Category: Salvation
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:9. Distinguish from kamma-bīja (karma-seeds ripening through the sower’s own past deeds); this seed is implanted by God’s grace, not self-sown.
Sin Unto Death
Approved rendering: သေခြင်းသို့ ဆိုက်စေသောအပြစ် / မဆိုက်စေသောအပြစ်
Transliteration: thei-chin-tho saik-say-thaw a-pyit / ma-saik-say-thaw a-pyit
Doctrine: Sin unto Death and Pastoral Intercession
Original: ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον / μὴ πρὸς θάνατον
Category: Sin
NEW. Used at 1 John 5:16-17. ‘Death’ is spiritual/eternal separation from a personal God, not literal death or an inferior future rebirth destiny; requires careful pastoral framing distinct from karmic retribution categories.
Testimony
Approved rendering: သက်သေခံချက်
Transliteration: thet-thei-khan-chet
Doctrine: The Testimony of God Concerning His Son
Original: μαρτυρία / μαρτυρέω
Category: Covenant
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:2; 4:14; 5:6-11. Formal, authoritative testimony, supremely God’s own testimony about the Son, of greater weight than any human testimony.
True God
Approved rendering: စစ်မှန်သော (ဘုရားသခင်)
Transliteration: sit-hman-thaw
Doctrine: Idolatry Warning
Original: ἀληθινός
Category: God
NEW. Used at 1 John 5:20. Reinforces exclusivity of ဘုရားသခင်; never softened to suggest God is one genuine option among several ဘုရား-labeled objects of devotion.
Truth
Approved rendering: သမ္မာတရား
Transliteration: thamma tayar
Doctrine: God is Light
Original: ἀλήθεια
Category: God
NEW. Used at 1 John 1:6, 1:8; 2:4, 2:21; 3:18-19; 4:6; 5:6. God’s own revealed, personal, absolute truth about his Son, not one dharma-teaching among several, and not meditative insight.
Water Blood Spirit Triad
Approved rendering: ရေ၊ အသွေးတော်၊ ဝိညာဉ်တော်
Transliteration: yay, a-thway-taw, weinnyin-taw
Doctrine: The Testimony of God Concerning His Son
Original: ὕδωρ, αἷμα, πνεῦμα
Category: Christology
NEW. Used at 1 John 5:6-8. Primarily an interpretive/exegetical challenge; component terms retain individual risk (blood: Medium; Spirit: Critical per holy_spirit).
Worldly Desires
Approved rendering: ဇာတိပကတိ၏ တပ်မက်ခြင်း၊ မျက်စိ၏ တပ်မက်ခြင်း၊ လောကီအသက်တာ၏ ဝါကြွားခြင်း
Transliteration: zarti-pakati i tat-met-chin, myet-si i tat-met-chin, lawki a-thet-tar i wagyar-chin
Doctrine: The World and Worldliness
Original: ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός / τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν; ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου
Category: Ethics
NEW. Used at 1 John 2:16. Superficially parallels Buddhist taṇhā (craving) as the root of suffering, but 1 John’s remedy is reordering desire through new birth, not extinguishing desire through the Eightfold Path.
Low Risk Terms
Cain Abel
Approved rendering: ကာဣန် / အာဗေလ
Transliteration: Kain / Abel
Doctrine: Love for the Brethren as Evidence of New Birth
Original: Κάϊν / Ἄβελ
Category: Covenant
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:12. Established Myanmar Bible proper-name forms; requires Old Testament narrative background teaching for readers with low OT literacy.
Compassion
Approved rendering: သနားညှာတာသောစိတ်
Transliteration: thanar-nyartar-thaw seik
Doctrine: Love for the Brethren as Evidence of New Birth
Original: σπλάγχνα
Category: Love
NEW. Used at 1 John 3:17. Practical compassion as the necessary expression of genuine love; minimal doctrinal risk.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: ပရောဖက်ပြုချက်
Transliteration: parawpeq-pyu-chet
Doctrine: Testing the Spirits
Rejected alternatives: ဗေဒင်စာတမ်း
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Not directly used in 1 John’s text but retained for consistency with the prophet/false_prophets word family.
Prophet
Approved rendering: ပရောဖက်
Transliteration: parawpeq
Doctrine: Testing the Spirits
Rejected alternatives: ဗေဒင်ဆရာ
Inherited from Romans package exactly. Root for this book’s new compound false_prophets (မိစ္ဆာပရောဖက်များ, 1 John 4:1). Do not confuse with ဗေဒင်ဆရာ (astrologer/fortune-teller).
Referenced passages