Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Hebrews
Purpose and Scope
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the destination language Burmese on the curriculum Hebrews. It identifies, for every major doctrine in scope, which Burmese vocabulary is already available (largely inherited from the Romans baseline translation_memory.json), where that vocabulary is weak, absent, or dangerously adjacent to Theravada Buddhist and Burmese folk-religious concepts, and what strategy Phase 2 translators must follow. It covers the full book (Hebrews 1–13), with the core passage Hebrews 9:11–28 analyzed at the highest resolution because it is the single densest concentration of atonement, priesthood, and covenant vocabulary in the letter.
This analysis does not re-derive terms already fixed by the baseline Romans package; it extends that package. Where a term is [REUSED], its baseline rendering is authoritative and unchanged. Where a term is [NEW], this document supplies the linguistic reasoning behind the choice recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and bible_term_registry.json.
Section 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each doctrine in the curriculum, this table records: what Burmese vocabulary already exists (reused or newly coined), where that vocabulary is structurally weak or theologically risky, and the recommended translation strategy for Phase 2.
1.1 The Superiority of Christ over Angels, Moses, and the Levitical Priesthood
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ကောင်းကင်တမန် (angels) [NEW]; မောရှေ (Moses) [NEW, proper name]; ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ် (priest/priesthood) [NEW]; သာလွန်ကောင်းမြတ်သော (better/superior) [NEW] | (1) ကောင်းကင်တမန် is a safe coinage but the surrounding cosmology in Burmese religious imagination (deva realms, guardian nats) supplies an intuitive but wrong frame of ranked semi-divine beings who can be venerated; the comparative argument of Heb 1–2 depends on angels being created worshippers, never objects of worship. (2) Moses risks being flattened into either a discredited “old law” figure or, conversely, a guru-like founder-teacher; Hebrews 3:1-6 requires him to be honored as a genuinely faithful “servant in the household” while Christ is shown as “Son over the household” — a household/family metaphor with no automatic Burmese equivalent for the servant/son status contrast. (3) The Levitical priesthood’s hereditary, repeatable, mortal limitations (7:23-24) have no ready Burmese analogue since the Sangha’s authority model is based on ordination lineage and personal attainment, not hereditary blood-office. | Render each comparison explicitly rather than relying on a single superiority-word to carry the whole argument. Every occurrence of “better/superior” (သာလွန်ကောင်းမြတ်သော) must be paired, in translator notes, with what specifically is superior (permanence, personal sonship, once-for-all efficacy) so the term does not collapse into vague rhetorical praise. Require a standing translator’s note at 1:4-14 and 3:1-6 clarifying that angels worship Christ (never the reverse) and that Moses’ faithfulness is affirmed, not diminished. |
1.2 Christ as the Great High Priest
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်မင်း (high priest) [NEW, Critical]; ကြားဝင်စေ့စပ်သူ (mediator) [NEW]; ပျက်စီးမရသောအသက်ရှင်ခြင်း (indestructible life) [NEW]; မေလခိဇေဒက် (Melchizedek) [NEW, transliteration] | (1) The single most acute lexical gap in the entire curriculum: Burmese has no existing vocabulary for a blood-mediating religious office standing between a sinful people and a holy personal God. The nearest structurally similar Burmese role — ဆရာတော်ကြီး/ရဟန်းချုပ် (senior abbot/monastic chief) — mediates teaching and merit-transfer, not substitutionary blood-atonement, and must be explicitly avoided. (2) Melchizedek has zero native typological parallel; a priest-king outside the hereditary Levitical line, without recorded genealogy, is a category Burmese religious thought does not possess (monastic authority is always genealogically/lineage-traceable through ordination). | Keep ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်မင်း exclusive to Christ’s unique priesthood and the Aaronic office being surpassed; never let it drift toward monastic vocabulary. Melchizedek requires sustained explanatory background (parallel to the baseline’s treatment of “seed of David”) rather than a semantic substitute — transliterate the name and teach the type. Every occurrence of “high priest” in a Christological sense (2:17; 3:1; 4:14-15; 5:1-10; 6:20; 7:26-28; 8:1; 9:11) should carry the standing translator’s note distinguishing substitutionary mediation via blood before a personal God from teaching-authority or personal merit-cultivation. |
1.3 The New Covenant versus the Old
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ပဋိညာဉ် (covenant) [REUSED]; ပဋိညာဉ်သစ် (new covenant) [NEW]; ပဋိညာဉ်ဟောင်း (old/first covenant) [NEW] | (1) ပဋိညာဉ် successfully avoids the transactional “contract” sense, but Burmese has no single word that carries Greek διαθήκη’s dual sense of “covenant” AND “will/testament,” which Hebrews 9:16-17 exploits deliberately (a will takes effect only at the testator’s death — paralleling Christ’s death activating the New Covenant). This wordplay is structurally unrecoverable in Burmese. (2) ပဋိညာဉ်ဟောင်း risks being heard as “the covenant that turned out to be wrong/expired,” when Hebrews’ actual claim (8:13) is fulfillment and supersession within a single redemptive plan, not divine error or a broken promise on God’s side. | Accept the wordplay loss at 9:16-17 as unrecoverable and mandate a translator’s note at that exact verse explaining that the single Greek word διαθήκη is doing double duty as both “covenant” and “will/testament,” a distinction Burmese cannot reproduce lexically. For ပဋိညာဉ်ဟောင်း, require accompanying language (e.g., “ပြည့်စုံပြီးသော” — fulfilled/completed) in surrounding exposition wherever the term appears in a supersession argument, so obsolescence reads as fulfillment, not failure. |
1.4 The Once-for-All Atoning Sacrifice
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ယဇ်ပူဇော်ခြင်း / ပူဇော်သည် (sacrifice/offer) [NEW, Critical]; တစ်ကြိမ်တည်း (once for all) [NEW, High]; သွေး (blood) [NEW, High]; သွေးကျခြင်း (shedding of blood) [NEW]; ကရုဏာထိုင်ခုံ (mercy seat) [NEW]; ရွေးနှင်းခြင်း (redemption) [NEW] | This is the single highest-density collision zone in the curriculum. ပူဇော်ခြင်း is the everyday Burmese verb for presenting flowers, food, candles, or gifts to a Buddha image, pagoda, or monks — an act performed repeatedly, by the worshipper’s own initiative, to generate personal merit (ကုသိုလ်). Every one of these five features (repeatable / self-initiated / merit-generating / directed at an image or monk / requiring no bloodshed) is the precise opposite of what Hebrews asserts about Christ’s sacrifice (unrepeatable / God-initiated through the Son / grace-based / directed to a personal God / requiring literal bloodshed). | ယဇ်ပူဇော်ခြင်း must never appear without either (a) an explicit တစ်ကြိမ်တည်း qualifier or (b) a translator’s note distinguishing it from Buddhist merit-offering, at every occurrence in Chapters 5, 7-10, and 13. Do not attempt to coin an entirely new word to escape the collision — ပူဇော်ခြင်း is the only Burmese lexical slot available for cultic “offering,” and Myanmar Christian Bible tradition already uses it for OT sacrifice; the risk must be fenced with teaching, not evaded by invented vocabulary that would isolate the text from all existing Myanmar Bible usage. |
1.5 The Danger of Apostasy and Warning Passages
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| အလင်းရရှိသူများ (enlightened) [NEW, Critical]; ယုံကြည်ခြင်းမှ ဖေါက်ပြန်ကျရာက်ခြင်း (fall away/apostasy) [NEW, High]; တမင်တကာအပြစ်ကျူးလွန်ခြင်း (willful sin) [NEW, High]; နောင်တရခြင်း (repentance) [NEW, Medium] | The word “enlightened” (6:4; 10:32) is the second-highest collision risk in the curriculum after “sacrifice.” ဗောဓိဉာဏ်ရရှိခြင်း/ဗုဒ္ဓဇာတိရခြင်း — the Buddhist vocabulary for the Buddha’s or a disciple’s own achieved, liberating insight ending the cycle of rebirth — sits directly adjacent to the semantic space “enlightened” would naturally occupy in Burmese religious vocabulary. A careless rendering would make Hebrews 6:4-6 read as “those who achieved Buddhahood-level insight and then fell away,” a theologically incoherent and religiously provocative claim in the destination culture. | The coined phrase အလင်းရရှိသူများ (“those who have received light/illumination,” passive-received framing) must be locked as the only rendering, explicitly built to avoid any achievement-verb morphology. Flag every occurrence for mandatory theologian review per the registry. For “fall away,” preserve the warning’s rhetorical force without letting the Burmese translation itself adjudicate the eternal-security debate — avoid both a permanent-loss reading and a merely-hypothetical reading; use descriptive, non-doctrinally-loaded verb phrasing (as already coined) and let exposition/teaching notes carry the theological argument. |
1.6 Faith of the Old Testament Saints
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ယုံကြည်ခြင်း (faith) [REUSED]; ခိုင်မာသောယုံကြည်ချက် (assurance/substance of faith) [NEW, High]; ကတိတော် (promise) [NEW]; ကျိန်ဆိုချက် (oath) [NEW, Low]; သက်သေအုံ့ထူထပ်စု (cloud of witnesses) [NEW, Low] | Hebrews 11:1 supplies its own definition of faith, which will be repeatedly cross-referenced across the whole curriculum. The chief risk is not absence of vocabulary but false-friend proximity: ယုံကြည်ခြင်း’s Buddhist cognate သဒ္ဓါ (saddha) is itself built on the idea of confidence progressively verified through direct personal experience of the Triple Gem’s teaching — a confidence built from the practitioner’s own accumulated verification, not confidence resting on another’s spoken promise. Since Hebrews 11 is precisely a catalogue of people trusting promises they did not live to see fulfilled, this experiential-verification framing is the opposite of the chapter’s argument. | Every occurrence of “faith” in Chapter 11 must retain an explicit, recoverable connection to God’s spoken promise (ကတိတော်) as its object, not to accumulated internal certainty. ခိုင်မာသောယုံကြည်ချက် (11:1’s “substance/assurance”) must be taught as an objective ground given by God, not a subjectively strengthening confidence-experience — precisely the same distinction the Romans baseline already required for faith generally, now sharpened by Hebrews 11’s definitional weight. |
1.7 Perseverance and Assurance
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ငြိမ်ဝပ်ခြင်း (rest) [NEW, High]; ကြံ့ခိုင်စွာနေထိုင်ခြင်း (endurance/perseverance) [NEW, Medium]; အကျိုးဆုလာဘ် (reward) [NEW, Medium]; ဆုံးမခြင်း (discipline) [NEW, Medium]; ထာဝရ (eternal) [NEW, High] | “Rest” (Ch. 3-4) is the third-highest collision risk after “sacrifice” and “enlightened.” Burmese Buddhist vocabulary describes နိဗ္ဗာန် (nirvana) itself as the ultimate “resting” from the wearying cycle of craving and rebirth — a cessation concept. Hebrews’ “rest,” by contrast, is positively relational: continuing fellowship with a living, personal God (4:9-10 links it to God’s own Sabbath rest after creation, an act of a personal Person, not an extinguishing of personhood). “Eternal” (recurring across redemption, covenant, judgment, inheritance, Spirit) directly collides with အနိစ္စ (anicca, universal impermanence), the single most foundational Theravada metaphysical claim — everything conditioned, without exception, passes away. | ငြိမ်ဝပ်ခြင်း must always be anchored to relational, positive fellowship-with-God language in immediate context (never left to stand alone as a bare state-word), and must carry the same forbidden-substitution discipline already fixed for “salvation” regarding နိဗ္ဗာန်. For ထာဝရ, resist any impulse toward a softer “very long-lasting” gloss; every Critical/High doctrinal noun it modifies (redemption, covenant, salvation, Spirit, inheritance, judgment) must retain literal, personal, unending permanence secured by God’s own character, flagged as a standing collision category across the whole book. |
1.8 Access to God through Christ’s Blood
| Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| သွေး (blood) [NEW, High]; ရဲရင့်သောစိတ် (boldness/confidence) [NEW, High]; ချဉ်းကပ်ခြင်း (draw near) [NEW, High]; ကန့်လန့်ကာ (veil/curtain) [NEW, Medium]; သန့်ရှင်းရာဌာန / အလွန်သန့်ရှင်းရာဌာန (holy places / Most Holy Place) [NEW, Medium] | This doctrine’s core claim — direct, unmediated, confident personal access to the one true God, secured once by another’s blood — has no ready cultural analogue. Burmese folk-religious and even popular-Buddhist practice around approaching higher spiritual powers (nats, powerful monks, Buddha images, guardian spirits) typically presumes some combination of ritual intermediary, correct merit-offering, or auspicious timing/protocol. “Boldness” risks reduction to ordinary politeness or optimism if not tied explicitly to the blood/mediator vocabulary in the same sentence or teaching unit. | Never let “draw near” (ချဉ်းကပ်ခြင်း) or “boldness” (ရဲရင့်သောစိတ်) stand as isolated pastoral-encouragement vocabulary detached from the blood/mediator argument; require co-occurrence with သွေး or ကြားဝင်စေ့စပ်သူ within the same teaching unit at 4:16; 10:19-22. The veil/Most Holy Place vocabulary requires OT tabernacle background teaching (per the core glossary’s existing note) before its “torn/opened” imagery in 10:19-20 can land with force; do not assume Myanmar readers unfamiliar with Leviticus will supply this background unaided. |
Section 2: Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
Hebrews’ vocabulary risk in Burmese falls into two structurally distinct categories that require different mitigation strategies.
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (No Native Lexical Slot — Requires Paraphrase or Compound Coinage)
These concepts have no existing Burmese religious or literary term at all, native or borrowed, and therefore carry lower syncretism risk (nothing to be confused with) but higher comprehension risk (nothing to build on):
| Concept | Gap Description | Strategy Used |
|---|---|---|
| Typology (shadow/copy/pattern pointing to a later fulfilling reality) | Burmese religious thought has no genre in which an earthly ritual object is understood as a deliberately designed, temporary, God-given pointer to a later heavenly reality it structurally resembles. | Compound descriptive phrase (အရိပ် / ပုံစံ / ပုံရိပ်ဆင်တူ) plus mandatory explanatory teaching notes at every occurrence (8:5; 9:23-24; 10:1); do not expect the term alone to carry the concept. |
| Covenant-as-will/testament wordplay (διαθήκη dual sense, 9:16-17) | No Burmese word carries both senses simultaneously. | Accept the loss; mandatory translator’s note at the exact verse. |
| Melchizedek-type priest-king outside a hereditary line | No comparable figure/office exists in Burmese religious history. | Transliterate the proper name; supply sustained background teaching (parallel to “seed of David” treatment). |
| Mediator distinct from ritual intermediary/spirit-medium | The functional role “one who stands between two parties to seal a binding relationship with God” has no non-spiritist Burmese equivalent. | Coin compound term ကြားဝင်စေ့စပ်သူ, explicitly fenced against နတ်ကတော် (spirit-medium) — see Section 2.2 below; this term sits at the boundary between “missing” and “crowded” and requires both a new coinage AND active fencing. |
| Mount Zion / heavenly Jerusalem as an already-attained heavenly assembly-place | No comparable typological city-symbolism exists. | Retain the transliterated proper names with sustained OT/eschatological background teaching. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (Existing Terms Occupy Adjacent, Doctrinally Incompatible Space — Requires Active Fencing)
These are the highest-risk items in the entire curriculum because Burmese already has a well-established, culturally dominant term sitting immediately adjacent to (or overlapping) the needed theological sense. Silence or under-explanation here does not produce a blank space in the reader’s mind — it produces an active misreading pulled toward the dominant cultural concept.
| Burmese Term Needed | Adjacent Crowding Term(s) | Nature of Collision | Fencing Requirement |
|---|---|---|---|
| ယဇ်ပူဇော်ခြင်း (sacrifice/offer) | ပူဇော်ခြင်း to Buddha images, pagodas, monks | Repeatable, self-initiated, merit-generating gift-giving vs. Christ’s unrepeatable, God-initiated, substitutionary death | Mandatory note at every occurrence in Ch. 5, 7-10, 13; always co-locate with တစ်ကြိမ်တည်း |
| ပြီးပြည့်စုံခြင်း (perfect/perfection) | ပါရမီ — the Bodhisatta’s ten self-cultivated perfections across countless lifetimes | Self-cultivated moral/spiritual accumulation vs. a completed act done FOR the subject by another | Absolute forbidden-substitution status; theologian review at every occurrence (2:10; 5:9; 6:1; 7:11,19,28; 9:9; 10:1,14; 11:40; 12:2,23) |
| အလင်းရရှိသူများ (enlightened) | ဗောဓိဉာဏ်ရရှိခြင်း / ဗုဒ္ဓဇာတိရခြင်း — self-attained liberating insight | Received illumination vs. self-achieved awakening ending rebirth | Absolute forbidden-substitution status; theologian review at 6:4; 10:32 |
| ငြိမ်ဝပ်ခြင်း (rest) | နိဗ္ဗာန် — cessation of craving/rebirth | Positive ongoing personal fellowship vs. negative extinguishing of existence | Same forbidden-substitution discipline as “salvation”; anchor to relational language every occurrence |
| ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်မင်း (high priest) | ဆရာတော်ကြီး / ရဟန်းချုပ် — senior abbot / monastic chief | Blood-mediation before a personal God vs. teaching authority / merit cultivation | Never substitute; teaching note at first major occurrence (2:17) reused at 3:1; 4:14-15; 5:1-10; 6:20; 7:26-28; 8:1; 9:11 |
| ကောင်းကင်တမန် (angels) | နတ် — the 37-nat pantheon, worshipped/placated guardian spirits | Created worshippers who serve vs. spirits placated/venerated for protection | Never substitute; standing note at 1:4-14 |
| ထာဝရ (eternal) | အနိစ္စ — universal impermanence, the foundational Theravada metaphysical axiom | Literal permanence secured by God vs. everything conditioned inevitably dissolving | Flag at every doctrinally load-bearing occurrence (redemption, covenant, salvation, Spirit, inheritance, judgment) |
| ကြားဝင်စေ့စပ်သူ (mediator) | နတ်ကတော် — spirit-medium channeling nat messages through trance/possession | Unique, once-for-all God-man mediation vs. repeatable trance-channeling service | Never substitute; note at 8:6; 9:15; 12:24 |
| မာရ်နတ် (devil/satan) | Mara as psychological personification of craving in Buddhist teaching narrative | Real, personal, defeated adversary vs. a mythologized aspect of one’s own mind | Clarify as a real created being decisively defeated at 2:14, not an internal-mind metaphor |
| တရားစီရင်ခြင်း (judgment) | ကံ / ကံဇာတာ — karmic-accounting across rebirths | Single, personal, final verdict after death vs. impersonal cause-and-effect ledger carried across lifetimes | Flag at 9:27; 10:27,30; 12:23,29 |
Key methodological point for Phase 2: Missing-vocabulary items require explanation (they are blank slots that must be filled with teaching). Crowded-neighborhood items require fencing (they are already-filled slots that must be actively distinguished from their neighbor). Treating a crowded-neighborhood risk as if it were merely a missing-vocabulary gap — i.e., coining a term and assuming silence is safe — is the single most likely failure mode for this curriculum’s Phase 2 execution.
Section 3: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Melchizedek | Transliterate (မေလခိဇေဒက်) | No native semantic content to paraphrase; the name itself carries no crowding risk. Meaning is conveyed entirely through surrounding typological teaching, not through the name’s form. |
| Messiah (doctrinal-fulfillment sense) | Transliterate [REUSED] (မေရှိယ) | Baseline-fixed; must never be paraphrased with any term evoking Metteyya. |
| Christ (name/title usage) | Established transliteration [REUSED] (ခရစ်တော်) | Distinct register from “Messiah” (see registry note on christ_title); both refer to the same person but serve different rhetorical functions in Hebrews’ argument. |
| Abba (if retained in any Hebrews cross-reference material) | Transliterate alongside “Father” [REUSED pattern from Romans] (အဗ္ဘ) | Preserves Aramaic intimacy the formal term alone cannot carry; consistent with baseline precedent. |
| High priest / sacrifice / mediator / new covenant / rest / enlightened / etc. | Paraphrase via coined compound | These terms carry heavy doctrinal content that a bare transliteration (e.g., a borrowed Greek/English loanword) would leave completely opaque to a Burmese reader with no access to the source language. Compound Burmese phrases already rooted in existing Myanmar Christian usage (ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်မင်း, ကြားဝင်စေ့စပ်သူ, ပဋိညာဉ်သစ်, ငြိမ်ဝပ်ခြင်း) are strongly preferred over invented loanwords, which would isolate Hebrews’ vocabulary from the rest of the Myanmar Bible tradition already established through the Romans baseline. |
| Mount Zion / heavenly Jerusalem | Transliterate proper names, paraphrase surrounding concept | The place-names (ဇိအုန်, ယေရုရှလင်) are already fixed Myanmar Bible forms; the theological concept of an already-attained heavenly assembly-place requires paraphrase and background teaching, not name substitution. |
| Tabernacle / tent, veil/curtain, mercy seat | Paraphrase with concrete OT-object vocabulary | These are informational/background terms describing real historical objects; concrete descriptive Burmese vocabulary (တဲတော်, ကန့်လန့်ကာ, ကရုဏာထိုင်ခုံ) is preferred over abstraction, since their doctrinal weight depends on the reader visualizing an actual physical structure and ritual sequence. |
| Diathēkē wordplay (covenant/testament, 9:16-17) | Neither transliteration nor paraphrase resolves it — flag as unrecoverable | No Burmese lexical strategy reproduces the Greek dual sense; the correct decision is an explicit translator’s note acknowledging the loss rather than forcing an artificial dual-meaning coinage that would confuse rather than clarify. |
General principle: Transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names with no semantic content to translate, and (b) the small set of terms the Romans baseline already established as transliterations for doctrinal-collision reasons (Messiah). Everywhere else, paraphrase via compound Burmese phrasing — built from existing, non-Buddhist-marked vocabulary roots where possible — is preferred, because it keeps Hebrews’ vocabulary continuous with the Myanmar Christian Bible tradition the Romans baseline anchors to, rather than introducing foreign loanwords that would read as untranslated gaps.
Section 4: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Hebrews
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision proximity × frequency), for Phase 2 review-routing priority.
| Rank | Term / Passage | Risk Tier | Nature of Ambiguity | Why It Ranks Here |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ယဇ်ပူဇော်ခြင်း “sacrifice/offer” (5:1; 7:27; 9:11-28; 10:1-14; 13:15-16) | Critical | Everyday Burmese verb for merit-generating offerings to Buddha images/monks; highest-frequency term in the letter’s densest doctrinal chapters, including the entirety of the core passage 9:11-28. | Highest combination of frequency + doctrinal centrality + cultural pervasiveness of the competing practice (daily lay merit-making). |
| 2 | ပြီးပြည့်စုံခြင်း “perfect/perfection” (2:10; 5:9; 6:1; 7:11,19,28; 9:9; 10:1,14; 11:40; 12:2,23) | Critical | Direct lexical proximity to ပါရမီ, the Bodhisatta’s self-cultivated ten perfections across countless lifetimes. | Structural keyword running through the whole “superiority” and “sacrifice” argument; a single mistranslation here would corrupt multiple doctrines simultaneously. |
| 3 | အလင်းရရှိသူများ “enlightened” (6:4; 10:32) | Critical | Adjacent to ဗောဓိဉာဏ်ရရှိခြင်း, the central Theravada soteriological goal. | Sits inside the single most severe warning passage in the book (6:4-6); a collision here risks making the sharpest apostasy warning theologically incoherent to a Buddhist-background reader. |
| 4 | ငြိမ်ဝပ်ခြင်း “rest” (3:11,18; 4:1-11) | High | Adjacent to နိဗ္ဗာန် as ultimate cessation-rest. | Repeated across a four-chapter argument; if misread as nirvana-adjacent, the entire “rest” motif inverts from positive relational communion to negative self-extinction. |
| 5 | Diathēkē wordplay (9:16-17) | High (mechanical) | Untranslatable Greek dual sense (covenant/will-testament) at the exact rhetorical hinge of the core passage’s covenant argument. | Falls inside Hebrews 9:11-28 itself, the curriculum’s theological anchor; loss here directly weakens the core passage’s argument unless flagged. |
| 6 | ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်မင်း “high priest” (2:17; 3:1; 4:14-15; 5:1-10; 6:20; 7:26-28; 8:1; 9:11) | Critical | Adjacent to ဆရာတော်ကြီး/ရဟန်းချုပ် monastic-authority framing. | Anchor term for an entire doctrine (“Christ as Great High Priest”) and appears at the opening of the core passage (9:11). |
| 7 | ထာဝရ “eternal” (5:9; 6:2; 7:16,24; 9:12,14,15; 13:8,20) | High | Adjacent to အနိစ္စ, universal impermanence. | Modifies nearly every major noun in the letter’s assurance vocabulary (redemption, covenant, Spirit, inheritance, judgment); a soft rendering anywhere weakens assurance everywhere. |
| 8 | ကောင်းကင်တမန် “angels” (1:4-14; 2:2,5,16) | High | Adjacent to နတ် pantheon and deva-realm cosmology. | Foundational to the book’s opening comparative argument; misreading risks making angels objects of veneration rather than created worshippers. |
| 9 | ကြားဝင်စေ့စပ်သူ “mediator” (8:6; 9:15; 12:24) | High | Adjacent to နတ်ကတော် spirit-medium practice. | Appears at 9:15, inside the core passage’s covenant argument; a collision here risks reframing Christ’s unique mediation as a repeatable trance-channeling service. |
| 10 | ယုံကြည်ခြင်း “faith” (11:1 and throughout Ch. 11) | Medium | Adjacent to သဒ္ဓါ’s experiential-verification framing. | Lower collision risk than items above (cognate concept exists, easing comprehension) but high doctrinal-centrality frequency across the whole “cloud of witnesses” chapter. |
| 11 | ယုံကြည်ခြင်းမှ ဖေါက်ပြန်ကျရာက်ခြင်း “fall away/apostasy” (3:12; 6:6; 10:26-31) | High | Not a cultural-collision risk but a theological-precision risk: the Burmese phrasing itself must not silently resolve the eternal-security debate. | Anchors an entire named doctrine (“Danger of Apostasy”) and the book’s sharpest rhetorical passages; requires theologian review not for syncretism but for doctrinal neutrality. |
| 12 | တရားစီရင်ခြင်း “judgment” (9:27; 10:27,30; 12:23,29) | High | Adjacent to ကံ/ကံဇာတာ karmic-accounting across rebirths. | Appears at 9:27, directly inside the core passage, immediately before the “once for all” argument climaxes at 9:28. |
| 13 | ရဲရင့်သောစိတ် / ချဉ်းကပ်ခြင်း “boldness” / “draw near” (4:16; 10:19-22) | High | Risk of dilution into generic politeness/optimism if decoupled from blood/mediator vocabulary. | Doctrinally central to “Access to God through Christ’s Blood” but lower cultural-collision severity than items 1-9 since no single dominant Burmese term actively crowds this space. |
| 14 | Melchizedek typology (5:6-10; 6:20; 7:1-17) | Medium | Not a collision risk but a total-unfamiliarity risk (missing vocabulary category). | Requires sustained background teaching rather than urgent fencing; lower rank than crowded-neighborhood items despite real comprehension cost. |
| 15 | ချီးမွမ်းခြင်းယဇ် “sacrifice of praise” (13:15-16) | Medium | Risk of believers concluding they must offer their own atoning sacrifices, blurring the line with item #1. | Localized to Chapter 13; must be clearly distinguished from Christ’s unique atoning ယဇ်, but affects a smaller portion of text than the items above. |
Section 5: Special Note on the Core Passage (Hebrews 9:11-28)
Because 9:11-28 is this curriculum’s theological anchor, it is worth noting that it contains representatives of eight of the top twelve ranked ambiguities above within a single continuous passage: ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်မင်း (v.11), ပုံစံ/copies not made with hands (v.11,24), သွေး and ရွေးနှင်းခြင်း (v.12-14), ကြားဝင်စေ့စပ်သူ and the diathēkē wordplay (v.15-17), ပညတ်တရား background (v.19-22), the shadow/copy vocabulary (v.23-24), တစ်ကြိမ်တည်း (v.25-28), တရားစီရင်ခြင်း (v.27), and ကယ်တင်ခြင်း (v.28). Phase 2 processing of this passage should therefore be treated as maximum-density review load: every segment within 9:11-28 should be routed to human theologian review by default, consistent with the escalation rules already established in the baseline 12_ai_translation_requirements.md, rather than relying on per-term risk flags to trigger review individually.
This document extends, and must never contradict, the baseline Romans Language Package (translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, doctrine_risk_registry.json, 12_ai_translation_requirements.md). All Table 1 terms in 08_core_glossary.md remain governed by the baseline exactly as recorded. All Table 2 terms and the analysis above are supplied as the linguistic-gap justification for the doctrine risk registry entries to be produced in the corresponding Phase 1 Step for Hebrews.