01 Executive Summary — Hebrews (English → Burmese) Language Package

Why it matters: Hebrews carries the highest concentration of doctrine-collision risk of any curriculum analyzed for Burmese to date — higher than the Romans baseline this package extends. Its central argument (a permanent High Priest, a single non-repeatable atoning sacrifice, a “perfecting” work, and a promised “rest”) runs directly into the vocabulary of the destination culture’s dominant religious tradition at more points, and with more severity, than any doctrine in Romans. Getting this package wrong risks Burmese readers hearing Hebrews’ central claims as confirmations of Buddhist merit-cultivation and self-attained enlightenment rather than as their categorical opposite.

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Key Findings

• 83 terms are now fixed in assets/translation_memory.json v2 for this curriculum: 33 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline (no changes permitted) and 50 new Hebrews-specific terms required by vocabulary this book alone introduces.
• 16 Critical-risk terms and 34 High-risk terms — 50 terms total, 60% of the glossary — require mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence, per assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json escalation rules.
• 32 doctrines are documented across the book’s 13 chapters; 10 are Critical-risk and 14 are High-risk, for a combined 24 doctrines (75% of all named doctrines) requiring human theologian review. Only 6 require native-speaker-level review and 2 are automated-review-only.
• The single highest-priority new risk in this curriculum is τέλειος/τελειόω (“perfect/perfection”), which collides directly with ပါရမီ (the Bodhisatta’s ten self-cultivated perfections across countless lifetimes) — a collision of equal severity to grace-versus-merit in Romans, but recurring at eleven separate locations across eight chapters (2:10; 5:9; 6:1; 7:11,19,28; 9:9; 10:1,14; 11:40; 12:2,23).
• Two additional first-encountered collision risks, not present in the Romans baseline: “enlightened” (φωτίζω, 6:4/10:32) colliding with self-attained Buddhist awakening (ဗောဓိဉာဏ်), and “rest” (κατάπαυσις, Ch. 3-4) colliding with နိဗ္ဗာန် (nirvana/cessation).
• The core passage, Hebrews 9:11-28, is the single densest concentration of risk in the book: it contains representatives of 8 of the top 12 ranked ambiguities in the entire curriculum in one continuous stretch of text, and is therefore routed to theologian review in full, by default, rather than per-term.
• Documented cult/sect divergences (Watchtower Burmese NWT’s weakened worship at Hebrews 1:6; informal “bridge-term” tracts using ပါရမီ or ဗောဓိဉာဏ် for perfection/enlightenment) give this curriculum a negative-reference library that Phase 2 quality review must actively screen against, not merely a positive glossary to follow.

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Risks

• ယဇ်ပူဇော်ခြင်း (sacrifice/offer) is the highest-frequency, highest-density collision term in the letter — the everyday Burmese verb for merit-offerings to Buddha images, pagodas, and monks. It cannot be replaced (no alternative Burmese lexical slot exists and none should be invented), so every occurrence across Chapters 5, 7–10, and 13 depends entirely on disciplined, mandatory co-located teaching notes to prevent readers hearing Christ’s sacrifice as a repeatable, merit-generating gift.
• Hebrews 9:16–17’s covenant/testament wordplay (Greek διαθήκη) has no Burmese lexical solution; this is a structural translation-mechanics risk inside the core passage itself, requiring a mandatory translator’s note rather than a vocabulary fix.
• The apostasy warning passages (2:1-3; 3:12-19; 6:4-8; 10:26-31; 12:25) carry a dual risk: syncretism (via “enlightened”) and doctrinal overreach (the translation itself must not resolve the historic Christian debate over whether true believers can lose salvation).
• “Eternal” and “indestructible life” recur across nearly every doctrinal category in the book (redemption, covenant, salvation, Spirit, inheritance, judgment, priesthood) and collide with အနိစ္စ, Theravada’s foundational doctrine of universal impermanence — a single soft rendering anywhere weakens assurance everywhere.
• High Priest and Mediator vocabulary sit adjacent to two distinct, well-established Burmese religious authority categories (monastic hierarchy; nat spirit-mediums) that could each independently corrupt the doctrine if fencing notes are dropped during Phase 2 batch processing.

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Opportunities

• Burmese already possesses serviceable, non-collision-prone vocabulary for covenant (ပဋိညာဉ်), blood (သွေး), and angels (ကောင်းကင်တမန်) — these are “missing vocabulary” categories requiring explanation, not “crowded neighborhood” categories requiring fencing, which lowers their execution risk relative to the terms above.
• The cognate သဒ္ဓါ (saddha) gives Burmese Buddhist-background readers a genuine entry point into Hebrews 11’s definition of faith, provided the object of trust is consistently anchored to God’s spoken promise rather than left to read as self-verified experiential confidence.
• The Judson/Myanmar Standard Bible tradition has already solved the register and core-term questions for this book (ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်, ပဋိညာဉ်, ထမြောက်ခြင်း); this package’s job is disciplined consistency and mandatory teaching-note enforcement, not vocabulary invention.
• Because Hebrews’ collision risks are heavily concentrated in a small number of terms (perfection, enlightened, rest, sacrifice, high priest), Phase 2 review effort can be efficiently front-loaded onto these five terms and the core passage, rather than spread evenly across the whole book.

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Recommended Actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json v2 (83 terms) and assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json (32 doctrines) before any Phase 2 segment processing begins; confirm all 33 Romans-inherited entries are byte-identical to the baseline.
2. Route all of Hebrews 9:11–28 to human theologian review as a single block, per the core-passage maximum-density rule, rather than relying on per-term flags.
3. Enforce the mandatory co-located teaching-note requirement for every occurrence of ယဇ်ပူဇော်ခြင်း, ပြီးပြည့်စုံခြင်း, and အလင်းရရှိသူများ before any segment is marked approved.
4. Auto-escalate any segment whose back-translation surfaces ပါရမီ, ဗောဓိဉာဏ်/ဗုဒ္ဓဇာတိ, ယေဟောဝါ, weakened worship phrasing at 1:6, or ကံဇာတာ/ကံကြမ္မာ, regardless of the term’s assigned risk tier, per the documented cult/sect screening list.
5. Confirm the exact YouVersion numeric version ID for the Judson/Myanmar Standard Bible edition before generating any Phase 2 hyperlinks, using the HEB book code fixed in this package.
6. Carry the 24-doctrine, 50-term theologian-review load into Phase 2 staffing and scheduling estimates now, before segment volume is finalized, given this is 75% of all named doctrines and 60% of the full glossary.