Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Luke (Full Book)
0. Purpose and Method
This analysis extends the Romans-baseline Language Package to the Luke curriculum. It does not re-derive baseline terms (see §5 for a compliance note) but instead:
- Maps each of the eight curriculum doctrines to its available Burmese vocabulary, naming weaknesses and a recommended handling strategy (§1).
- Separates genuinely missing vocabulary (no existing Burmese word/phrase covers the concept at all) from crowded semantic neighborhoods (a Burmese word exists but is already occupied by a Theravada Buddhist or folk-religious concept and needs “fencing” — i.e., mandatory translator notes and consistent contrastive framing) (§2).
- Records every transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision made for new Luke vocabulary, with rationale (§3).
- Produces a ranked list of the curriculum’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 escalation routing (§4).
- Confirms full-book chapter coverage (§6).
Risk tiers, review routing, and script/register conventions are unchanged from the baseline (doctrine_risk_registry.json risk definitions apply identically here). All Burmese renderings cited below match analysis/08_core_glossary.md and the extended assets/bible_term_registry.json exactly; this document does not introduce new renderings, only analyzes the gap landscape that produced them and flags decisions for Phase 2 review.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
| # | Curriculum Doctrine | Available Burmese Terms | Weaknesses / Collision Risk | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People (Jew and Gentile, Rich and Poor) | ကယ်တင်ခြင်း (salvation) [BASELINE]; ကယ်တင်ရှင် (savior) [NEW]; တစ်ပါးအမျိုးသား (gentiles) [BASELINE]; အလင်းတော်/ဗျာဒိတ်ပြခြင်း (light for revelation to Gentiles) [NEW]; ဆင်းရဲသား (poor) [NEW]; ချမ်းသာသူ (rich) [NEW]; တပ်မှူး (centurion) [NEW]; ရှမာရိလူ (Samaritan) [NEW]; ဒါဝိဒ်၏သားတော် (Son of David) [NEW]; ပသခါပွဲ (Passover) [NEW] | No inherited term risk of doctrinal collapse, but real risk of narrowing: Burmese Buddhist-Burman majority identity can unconsciously read “all nations” as a courteous but non-binding universalism, and “rich/poor” language can be silently re-read through a karma-merit lens (wealth = past merit, poverty = past demerit). | Retain universality language unqualified (per baseline Universal Scope rule). Every “poor/rich” occurrence must carry the standing note rejecting karmic-merit causation (see #58/#59 glossary notes). Samaritan/centurion episodes should be taught with an explicit bridge to Myanmar’s own ethnic-minority relationships, since Luke’s rhetorical strategy depends on an outsider being the positive exemplar. |
| 2 | The Holy Spirit’s Work in Salvation History | သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော် (Holy Spirit) [BASELINE]; ဘုရားသခင်၏တန်ခိုးတော် (power of God) [BASELINE]; လွှမ်းမိုးတော်မူခြင်း (overshadow) [NEW]; ဘိသိက်ပေးတော်မူခြင်း (anoint) [NEW]; တန်ခိုးတော်ကို ဝတ်ဆင်ခြင်း (clothed with power) [NEW] | Luke is the most Spirit-saturated Gospel (Spirit named at every major turning point: conception, baptism, wilderness, inaugural sermon, Pentecost promise). The single greatest risk is NOT mistranslation of the noun itself (the baseline term is secure) but thinning — treating the Spirit’s repeated appearances as decorative narrative color rather than a unified salvation-historical thread. | Maintain terminological consistency of သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော် across all 15+ occurrences without variant phrasing (some English translations use “Spirit of the Lord,” “the Spirit,” “Holy Spirit” interchangeably — all must resolve to the one baseline term). Flag 1:35 (overshadow) and 4:18 (anoint) as anchor verses for teaching notes that trace the Spirit’s continuous activity from incarnation to Pentecost. |
| 3 | Good News to the Poor and Marginalized | ဆင်းရဲသား (poor); မျက်စိကန်းသူ (blind); သုံ့ပန်း (captive); ညှင်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခံရသူများ (oppressed); လွှတ်ငြိမ်းခွင့် (release); ကျေးဇူးတော်နှစ် (acceptable year of the Lord); မင်္ဂလာရှိသော (blessed); အမင်္ဂလာ (woe); ညစာပွဲ (banquet); ငရဲ (Hades); အာဗြဟံ၏ရင်ခွင် (Abraham’s bosom); နူနာစွဲသူ (leper); မုဆိုးမ (widow) — all [NEW] | This is the doctrine with the highest concentration of crowded semantic neighborhoods in the entire curriculum (see §2.1): poverty-as-karma, blessedness-as-achievement (Mangala Sutta), and hell-as-samsara-realm are all live folk-Buddhist frames that could silently absorb the biblical vocabulary and reverse its theological direction. | Every core-passage term (Luke 4:18-19) requires a standing translator note. The Jubilee background (Leviticus 25) behind “acceptable year of the Lord” must be taught explicitly, since Myanmar culture has no cyclical debt-cancellation institution to anchor the metaphor. The လွှတ် root shared between “release” (4:18) and “forgiveness of sins” (1:77 etc.) must be preserved visibly across both senses — this wordplay is a genuine translation asset, not a liability, once flagged. |
| 4 | Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins | နောင်တရခြင်း (repentance); အပြစ်လွှတ်ခြင်း (forgiveness of sins); ဗတ္တိဇံ (baptism); အမျက်တော် (wrath); ပျောက်ဆုံးနေသော (lost); ဝမ်းမြောက်ရွှင်လန်းခြင်း (joy); ဘုရားကို ပုတ်ခတ်ပြောဆိုခြင်း (blasphemy) — all [NEW] | Burmese religious life has a well-developed vocabulary of ritual confession and demerit-reduction (e.g., confessing faults to a monk, transferring merit to offset past wrongs) that could be conflated with biblical repentance. နောင်တရ itself is not inherently Buddhist-loaded, which is an advantage, but the mechanism (turning to a personal God who forgives, vs. adjusting one’s own karmic ledger) must be taught explicitly. | Anchor repentance teaching in the Prodigal Son (15:17-24) and the tax collector’s prayer (18:9-14) as narrative paradigms of relational return, not ledger adjustment. Luke 12:10’s “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” requires deliberately non-alarmist framing (settled final rejection, not momentary doubt) — flag every occurrence for theologian review per the baseline blasphemy escalation rule. |
| 5 | Prayer and Dependence on God | ဆုတောင်းခြင်း (prayer); ဆုတောင်းရာအိမ်တော် (house of prayer); စိုးရိမ်ပူပန်ခြင်း (worry); ပြင်းစွာစိုးရိမ်ပူပန်ခြင်း (agony); အသနားခံခြင်း (intercession) [BASELINE reuse] | Burmese religious practice includes petitioning the 37 nats and ancestral spirits for protection and favor — a practice functionally adjacent to “asking for help” but categorically different from covenantal prayer to a personal Father. Vipassana meditation practice also risks reframing prayer as an inward calming technique rather than address to a Person. | Every major prayer passage (11:1-13 Lord’s Prayer; 18:1-8 persistent widow; 22:39-46 Gethsemane) should be explicitly taught as direct address to the Father grounded in filial confidence (cf. baseline Abba/Father entries), never propitiation of an unpredictable power. Distinguish worry/anxious dependence (12:22-32) from meditative detachment — the contrast is trust in a Person, not achieving inner equanimity. |
| 6 | The Kingdom of God Present and Future | ဘုရားသခင်၏နိုင်ငံတော် (kingdom of God) [BASELINE]; ယနေ့ (today/inaugurated fulfillment) [NEW]; သင်တို့အလယ်၌ / သင်တို့အထဲ၌ (kingdom within/among you) [NEW, ambiguity flagged]; ကျဉ်းသောတံခါး (narrow door); ဘုရားသခင်၏လက်ချောင်းတော် (finger of God); ရွေးနှင်းခြင်း (redemption, eschatological) | The single highest-stakes genuine Greek ambiguity in the whole book sits here: ἐντὸς ὑμῶν (17:20-21) admits both an individual “within you” and a corporate “among you” sense, and the individual sense risks resonance with Buddhist inward-cultivation frameworks (the kingdom as an interior state one cultivates, rather than Christ’s objective in-breaking reign). | Recommend the corporate “among you” (သင်တို့အလယ်၌) rendering as primary per Luke’s consistently objective, event-centered kingdom-language pattern elsewhere (4:43-19:11 registers the kingdom as an active in-breaking, not an interior cultivated state); record the alternative per baseline ambiguity protocol and flag 17:20-21 for mandatory theologian AND native-speaker review. Preserve ယနေ့’s “already, not yet fully” inaugurated force consistently across 4:21, 19:9, and 23:43. |
| 7 | The Cost and Joy of Discipleship | တပည့်တော် (disciple); နောက်တော်လိုက်ခြင်း (follow); လက်ဝါးကပ်တိုင် (cross); ဆုလာဘ် (reward); ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ (love/agape); အုပ်ထိန်းသူ (steward); ဆား (salt); ဝမ်းမြောက်ရွှင်လန်းခြင်း (joy); ရန်သူ (enemy) — all [NEW] | တပည့် (disciple/apprentice) is structurally identical to a monk’s lay pupil or a traditional teacher’s apprentice, risking reduction of discipleship to skill-acquisition toward one’s own eventual attainment rather than allegiance to a living, resurrected Lord. ဆုလာဘ် (reward) and ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ (love) both sit adjacent to merit-reward and Brahmavihara-cultivated-compassion frames respectively (see §2.1). | Teach တပည့်တော် consistently with reference to a Person to be followed (နောက်တော်လိုက်ခြင်း), not a technique to be mastered. Frame ဆုလာဘ် as a gracious gift from the Father (consistent with baseline grace doctrine), not an earned wage. Frame ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ as flowing from the Father’s own commanded character (6:35-36), not self-cultivated equanimity extended impartially to all beings. |
| 8 | Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners | သနားညှာတာစိတ်ရှိသော (compassion); အပြစ်ရှိသူ (sinner); အခွန်ခံ (tax collector); ညစာပွဲ (banquet); မုန့်ဖဲ့ခြင်း (breaking of bread); ပျောက်ဆုံးနေသော (lost); ကရုဏာတော် (mercy) — all [NEW] | Compassion/mercy vocabulary again crosses into the Brahmavihara neighborhood (see #43 in glossary; §2.1 below). Table fellowship with the ritually/socially unclean (tax collectors, “sinners,” lepers) has no precise cultural analogue in Myanmar religious life, where ritual and status separations (e.g., from monks, or across ethnic-religious lines) tend to be reinforced rather than deliberately transgressed as a matter of religious principle. | Teach Jesus’ table fellowship (5:29-32; 7:36-50; 15:1-2; 19:1-10) as a deliberate, scandalous enactment of the doctrine that grace precedes and does not depend on ritual/moral qualification — a direct challenge to any framework (Buddhist or otherwise) where table-sharing tracks purity/status. Distinguish သနားညှာတာစိတ်ရှိသော/ကရုဏာတော် as Christ’s spontaneous, personal, initiative-taking compassion flowing from his own identity as Savior, not a detached meditative disposition cultivated toward all beings impartially. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (existing Burmese word, occupied meaning — requires fencing)
These are cases where a serviceable Burmese word/phrase already exists and is even the established Myanmar Bible rendering, but the same word carries a strong, well-known meaning within Theravada Buddhist doctrine or Burmese folk religion. “Fencing” means: retain the term (do not invent an artificial neologism that would alienate the reader), but attach a standing, non-negotiable translator note at every occurrence (or at minimum every first occurrence per document) that names the contrastive boundary explicitly.
| Term | Burmese | Occupied Meaning | Fencing Note Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sabbath | ဥပုသ်နေ့ | The Buddhist Uposatha observance day (precept-keeping, pagoda visits, lunar-calendar merit-fasting) | Creation-rest/covenant-sign fulfilled in Christ’s Lordship (6:5), not a merit-earning precept day. Critical — every occurrence. |
| Demon / Devil / Satan | နတ်ဆိုး / မာရ်နတ် / စာတန် | The Burmese nat-spirit pantheon (ambivalent, propitiated, sometimes protective, sometimes malevolent) | Names a wholly evil, subordinate, already-defeated personal being; never propitiated, fed, or venerated — categorically unlike any nat. Critical — every occurrence. |
| Hades | ငရဲ | The naraka hell-realms, one destination among many within the cyclical rebirths of samsara | A fixed intermediate state awaiting final judgment, not one stop on an ongoing cycle of rebirth. High. |
| Paradise | ပရဒိသု | Adjacent conceptually to a temporary deva-loka heavenly rebirth, still within samsara | A relational, final destination secured by Christ’s own word (23:43), not a temporary abode pending further rebirths. High. |
| Mercy / Love (agape) | ကရုဏာတော် / ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ | Two of the four Brahmavihara (karuna, metta) — meditatively cultivated, impartially extended states of mind | God’s/Christ’s mercy and love flow from personal character and covenant commitment toward specific needy people, initiated by God, not a self-attained meditative attainment extended impartially to all beings alike. High — major occurrences (Magnificat, Benedictus, Good Samaritan, Prodigal Son, Great Commandment). |
| Blessed | မင်္ဂလာရှိသော | The Mangala Sutta’s 38 blessings, achieved through right conduct | Sovereign favor bestowed by God on the lowly, poor, hungry, and persecuted — the opposite direction from a conduct-achieved blessing list. High — every occurrence in the Sermon on the Plain (6:20-22). |
| Reward | ဆုလာဘ် | Devotional merit-reward for religious giving/observance | A gracious gift from the Father for enduring persecution/loving enemies, not an earned wage in strict transactional sense. Medium. |
| Fasting | အစာရှောင်ခြင်း | Merit-generating discipline tied to Uposatha days | Reoriented entirely around the Messiah’s presence/absence (5:34-35), not a merit-generating discipline in itself. High. |
| Poor | ဆင်းရဲသား | Present poverty read as fruit of past-life demerit (ကံဆိုး) | God’s favor toward the poor is unconditioned mercy and covenantal reversal, not a statement about karmic merit-standing; poverty is not thereby made inherently virtuous either. High. |
| Synagogue | တရားစရပ် | Shares the တရား root, already dharma-adjacent per baseline law term | Names the Jewish assembly hall specifically, not a Buddhist teaching hall; risk is lower because the baseline already accepts this shared root, but should still be glossed on first occurrence (4:16). Medium. |
| Sign | နိမိတ်လက္ခဏာ | Everyday Burmese term for astrological/divinatory omens | A God-given, meaning-bearing validation of Jesus’ identity/message, not a fortune-telling omen. Medium. |
| Grace / “acceptable year of the Lord” | ကျေးဇူးတော် / ကျေးဇူးတော်နှစ် | ကုသိုလ် (merit-making), the single most pervasive daily religious practice in Burmese Buddhist life | Already fenced at Critical tier by the Romans baseline; Luke’s Jubilee-echoing 4:19 phrase inherits the same fencing requirement plus a new Leviticus 25 background note. Critical. |
2.2 Missing Vocabulary (no existing Burmese lexical item — requires periphrasis or compound coinage)
These concepts have no single existing Burmese word at all (crowded or otherwise); a compound phrase or explanatory periphrasis must be constructed, as was already done for several baseline Romans terms (e.g., justification).
| Concept | Constructed Rendering | Gap Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ”Acceptable year of the Lord” (Jubilee, Lev 25) | ကျေးဇူးတော်နှစ် | No cyclical debt-cancellation/land-restoration institution exists in Burmese culture | Requires explanatory background note every occurrence (4:19); cannot be understood from the compound alone. |
| Kingdom “within/among you” | သင်တို့အလယ်၌ (primary) / သင်တို့အထဲ၌ (alternative) | Genuine source-text ambiguity, not a lexical gap per se, but no single Burmese preposition-phrase cleanly resolves both senses | See ranked ambiguity #4 below; both renderings must be recorded per baseline ambiguity protocol. |
| ”Today” as inaugurated-eschatology marker | ယနေ့ | Ordinary Burmese ယနေ့ carries no inherent theological weight; the “already/not yet” force must be supplied by teaching, not the word itself | Requires consistent cross-referencing across 4:21, 19:9, 23:43 so the pattern is visible to the reader/hearer. |
| ”It was necessary” (divine necessity, ἔδει) | ဖြစ်ရမည့်ကိစ္စဖြစ်သည် | No single Burmese word captures purposive divine necessity distinct from impersonal fate (ကံ) | Periphrastic construction adopted; must be explicitly taught alongside the baseline providence doctrine. |
| ”Good pleasure” (εὐδοκία) | နှစ်သက်တော်မူခြင်း | No single-word Burmese equivalent for God’s freely-given favorable disposition | Echo baseline grace concept: favor initiated by God, not merited. |
| ”Clothed with power” (metaphor) | တန်ခိုးတော်ကို ဝတ်ဆင်ခြင်း | Burmese has no idiomatic equivalent for the “clothing” metaphor applied to spiritual empowerment | Literal-metaphor calque retained; anticipates Pentecost, builds on baseline power-of-God/Holy-Spirit terms. |
| ”Light for revelation to the Gentiles” | အလင်းတော် / ဗျာဒိတ်ပြခြင်း | Compound theological title with no single Burmese lexical equivalent | Must retain full universal scope of “the nations,” resisting narrowing given Burmese Buddhist-Burman majority-identity sensitivities. |
| Son of Man (Danielic exalted title) | လူသားတော် | The ordinary Burmese word လူသား (“a human being”) carries none of Daniel 7’s exalted, authority-receiving connotation | The added တော် honorific particle is the fencing device; teaching must still supply the Daniel 7 background explicitly, since the honorific alone will not convey it to readers unfamiliar with the OT. |
| ”House of prayer” (Isaiah 56:7 echo) | ဆုတောင်းရာအိမ်တော် | No single-word Burmese equivalent for a building’s purpose-designation as prayer-house | Compound retained; denounces commercial corruption of worship (19:46). |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Burmese Form | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Messiah | Transliterate (doctrinal category) | မေရှိယ | Baseline-mandated; preserves the unique OT promise against မိတ္တေယျ (Metteyya) collision. |
| Christ (running title) | Transliterate/loan-compound | ခရစ်တော် | Established Myanmar Bible convention since Judson; distinct register from the doctrinal category name. |
| Satan | Transliterate | စာတန် | No native Burmese word adequately isolates one specific, wholly malevolent personal being from the ambivalent nat category; transliteration avoids false-equivalence with any existing spirit name. |
| Mammon | Transliterate (retain personification) | မာမုန် | Paraphrasing as “money” (ငွေ) would strip the deliberate personification of wealth as a rival master (16:13); transliteration preserves the personal, idol-like force. |
| Baptism | Transliterate | ဗတ္တိဇံ | Avoids conflation with indigenous ritual-bathing/purification vocabulary tied to merit-making at pagodas; matches baseline convention. |
| Abba | Transliterate (retain alongside အဖ) | အဗ္ဘ | Preserves Aramaic filial intimacy the formal Father-term alone may not fully carry (consistent with Romans baseline handling, though Abba itself appears in Romans not Luke — retained here for cross-curriculum consistency). |
| Passover | Transliterate-compound | ပသခါပွဲ | Established Myanmar Bible term; requires an Exodus 12 background note rather than a fresh paraphrase, since the term itself is already lexicalized. |
| Sadducee / Pharisee | Transliterate | ဇဒ္ဒုကဲ / ဖာရိရှဲ | Proper names of historical religious-political parties; no meaningful Burmese paraphrase exists or is desirable. |
| Pilate / Caesar | Transliterate | ပိလာတု / ကဲသာ | Historical proper names; established Myanmar Bible forms. |
| Mina | Transliterate | မိန | Historical currency unit; no functional Burmese equivalent, and converting to modern currency would misrepresent the parable’s first-century economics. |
| Justification, Incarnation, New Covenant, Son of God, Acceptable Year of the Lord, Divine Necessity, Clothed with Power, House of Prayer, Light for Revelation to the Gentiles | Paraphrase (compound descriptive phrase) | (see respective glossary entries) | No single Burmese word carries the required forensic, ontological, or covenantal precision; a compound is required to prevent doctrinal flattening — consistent with the baseline’s own handling of “justification.” |
| Kingdom within/among you | Paraphrase, with recorded ambiguity | သင်တို့အလယ်၌ / သင်တို့အထဲ၌ | Genuine two-way source ambiguity; neither transliteration nor a single fixed paraphrase can resolve it — both candidate renderings are recorded per the baseline ambiguity-handling protocol. |
General principle applied: transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names/historical titles with no theological content to paraphrase, and (b) terms where any existing Burmese word would import an unwanted competing conceptual frame (Satan, Mammon, Baptism). Paraphrase/compound coinage is reserved for genuinely new theological categories that must be built from transparent, glossable Burmese morphemes so a first-generation Buddhist-background reader can parse the compound’s internal logic even before full catechesis.
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities (Luke Curriculum)
Ranked by combined severity of doctrinal stakes × collision proximity × frequency of occurrence. All items below require, at minimum, human theologian review per occurrence; items marked ”(+NS)” additionally require native-speaker review for register/naturalness.
- Sabbath (ဥပုသ်နေ့) — Critical. Lexically identical to the Buddhist Uposatha day; occurs at the doctrinal hinge of Christ’s Lordship claim (6:5) and recurs across five chapters (4, 6, 13, 14, 23). The single highest-frequency Critical collision in the book.
- Demon / Devil / Satan (နတ်ဆိုး, ညစ်ညမ်းသောနတ်ဝိညာဉ်, မာရ်နတ်, စာတန်) — Critical. Direct lexical overlap with the living, practiced 37-nat pantheon; risk is not merely conceptual confusion but potential unintentional legitimization of propitiation practices if the “wholly evil, already defeated” distinction is not taught at every occurrence (4:33-41, 8:26-39, 10:18, 11:14-26, 22:3,31).
- Kingdom “within/among you,” ἐντὸς ὑμῶν (17:20-21) — High, genuine source ambiguity. Unlike items 1–2 (a translation collision), this is a real interpretive fork in the Greek itself, compounded by the fact that the “individual/inward” reading resonates strongly with Buddhist inner-cultivation frameworks. Requires both theologian and native-speaker review, with the alternative rendering formally logged.
- Hades (ငရဲ) — High. Same-word collision with the naraka/samsara hell-realm cosmology; concentrated in a single high-visibility parable (16:19-31) but doctrinally load-bearing for Luke’s teaching on fixed post-mortem destiny vs. cyclical rebirth.
- Mercy (ကရုဏာတော်) and Love/agape (ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာ) — High. Both collide with the Brahmavihara categories (karuna, metta); high-frequency across the birth narrative hymns, the Good Samaritan, and the Great Commandment — the sheer repetition raises the cumulative risk of readers defaulting to the meditative-cultivation frame absent constant reinforcement.
- Blessed (မင်္ဂလာရှိသော) — High. Collides with the Mangala Sutta’s achieved-blessing list at the exact point of the Sermon on the Plain’s most quotable, memorized content (6:20-22), making silent reinterpretation especially likely in oral/catechetical transmission.
- Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (ဘုရားကို ပုတ်ခတ်ပြောဆိုခြင်း, 12:10) — Critical pastoral framing risk. Not a lexical collision but a severe risk of alarmist or fear-inducing mistranslation/misteaching that could wound consciences; requires theologian review with explicit pastoral-tone guidance every occurrence.
- Paradise (ပရဒိသု) vs. deva-loka — High. Lower frequency (single occurrence, 23:43) but doctrinally climactic (the dying criminal’s assurance) — a single mistranslation here has outsized pastoral impact.
- Poor (ဆင်းရဲသား) and its karma-of-poverty undertow — High. Pervasive across the whole Gospel (over ten occurrences); risk is cumulative and structural rather than located in one verse, making it harder to “flag” than a single-occurrence term.
- Fasting (အစာရှောင်ခြင်း) vs. merit-generating Uposatha practice — High. Concentrated in 5:33-35 and 18:12; the Pharisee/tax-collector prayer (18:12) directly contrasts merit-oriented fasting with justification by grace, doubling the doctrinal stakes.
- Anoint/Messiah wordplay (ဘိသိက်ပေးတော်မူခြင်း ↔ ခရစ်တော်/မေရှိယ) — High. Single occurrence (4:18) but the etymological link to the title “Christ” is easily lost in translation if not explicitly cross-referenced in teaching notes; core-passage risk.
- Forgiveness/Release wordplay (အပြစ်လွှတ်ခြင်း ↔ လွှတ်ငြိမ်းခွင့်) — High. Luke’s deliberate pun linking social liberation and sin-forgiveness (4:18 and throughout) depends on the shared လွှတ် root remaining visible; a translator unaware of the wordplay could select a synonym for one sense and break the link.
- Son of Man (လူသားတော်) — Critical (frequency risk). Highest-frequency Christological title in Luke (20+ occurrences); the honorific တော် particle is a thin fence against flattening to ordinary “a human being,” especially for readers not given the Daniel 7 background.
- Reward (ဆုလာဘ်) vs. merit-reward connotation — Medium/High. Lower doctrinal stakes than items above but high pastoral visibility (Sermon on the Plain, 6:23,35) in a culture where reward-for-virtuous-deed is a default assumption.
- Synagogue (တရားစရပ်) shared တရား root — Medium. Lowest-severity item on this list because the baseline already accepts and fences the shared root for “Law” (ပညတ်တရား); included for completeness since it recurs at the core passage (4:16, 4:20).
5. Baseline Compliance Note
No renderings in this analysis deviate from or contradict translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, or doctrine_risk_registry.json as established by the Romans baseline. All terms shared between Romans and Luke (gospel, grace, faith, righteousness, justification, salvation, apostle, called/calling, holy, sanctification, resurrection, lord, son of God, incarnation, peace, thanksgiving, fellowship, kingdom of God, law, sin, gentiles, glory, power of God, messiah, prophet, prophecy, covenant, election, intercession, providence, mission, david, israel, jesus, god, holy spirit, father, exhort) reuse the baseline Burmese rendering exactly, per the hard rule against altering established terms. This document’s proposals are limited to genuinely new Luke-specific vocabulary and the gap/ambiguity analysis surrounding it.
6. Full-Book Chapter Coverage Confirmation
Every chapter of Luke (1–24) has been reviewed for load-bearing vocabulary contributing to this gap analysis. No chapter was silently omitted; each is represented in the table below either by newly analyzed terms or, where a chapter’s vocabulary is already fully covered by terms introduced in an earlier chapter, by explicit cross-reference.
| Chapter | Coverage Status | Representative Terms Analyzed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reviewed — new terms | angel, holy spirit, virgin, overshadow, mercy, redemption, most high, son of God, calling, covenant, joy, prayer |
| 2 | Reviewed — new terms | glory, gentiles, temple, manger, good pleasure, light for revelation to Gentiles, redemption, savior, prophecy, sign |
| 3 | Reviewed — new terms | sin, baptism, wrath, repentance, son of God (voice from heaven) |
| 4 | Reviewed — core passage; highest term density | sabbath, synagogue, proclaim, anoint, acceptable year of the Lord, today, poor, blind, captive, oppressed, release, devil, temptation, authority, demon, holy spirit, power of God |
| 5 | Reviewed — new terms | disciple, follow, sinner, tax collector, leper, faith, forgiveness of sins |
| 6 | Reviewed — new terms | apostle, love (agape), reward, blessed, woe, sabbath (lordship dispute), law |
| 7 | Reviewed — new terms | centurion, compassion, offended/scandalized, faith saved, prophet, sinner, tax collector |
| 8 | Reviewed — new terms | seed parable, word of God, lamp, blood, faith, kingdom of God, salvation |
| 9 | Reviewed — new terms | son of man, Christ of God, cloud (theophany), follow, cross, glory, transfiguration |
| 10 | Reviewed — new terms | harvest, mission (Seventy), satan, neighbor, samaritan, holy spirit (Jesus’ rejoicing), father |
| 11 | Reviewed — new terms | prayer (Lord’s Prayer), finger of God, sign, blasphemy, pharisee, word of God |
| 12 | Reviewed — new terms | treasure, steward, worry, son of man, blasphemy against the Spirit, kingdom of God |
| 13 | Reviewed — new terms | narrow door, sabbath healing, repentance, kingdom of God (mustard seed, leaven) |
| 14 | Reviewed — new terms | banquet, humble oneself, salt, poor/blessed (invite the poor), sabbath (healing) |
| 15 | Reviewed — new terms | lost (sheep/coin/son), joy, repentance, father (prodigal), sinner |
| 16 | Reviewed — new terms | mammon, hades, Abraham’s bosom, rich, law |
| 17 | Reviewed — new terms | kingdom within/among you (flagged ambiguity), leper (ten lepers), faith saved, thanksgiving |
| 18 | Reviewed — new terms | justification (tax collector’s prayer), widow, son of David, blind healed, kingdom of God (children) |
| 19 | Reviewed — new terms | salvation (Zacchaeus, mission statement 19:9-10), mina, house of prayer, today, redemption (eschatological, ch.21 cross-ref) |
| 20 | Reviewed — new terms | sadducee, resurrection debate, son of David, caesar, scribe, lord (Ps 110 citation) |
| 21 | Reviewed — new terms | redemption (eschatological), widow (offering), sign, temple |
| 22 | Reviewed — new terms | passover, new covenant, body (eucharistic), blood (sacrificial sense), agony, satan, apostle |
| 23 | Reviewed — new terms | crucify, cross (literal), pilate, paradise, righteousness (centurion’s confession) |
| 24 | Reviewed — new terms | resurrection, tomb, witness, clothed with power, breaking of bread, divine necessity, holy spirit (Pentecost anticipation) |
Conclusion: All 24 chapters contribute load-bearing vocabulary; no chapter required a “reviewed, no new terms” placeholder, since Luke’s narrative density ensures doctrinal/lexical content in every chapter, including genealogical (ch. 3) and travel-narrative (chs. 9–19) material.
This document extends, and must be read alongside, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, the updated assets/bible_term_registry.json, and the Romans-baseline translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json. It feeds directly into the Phase 1 doctrine risk registry extension and the Phase 2 AI translation requirements update for the Luke curriculum.