Executive Summary — 1 Peter | English → Czech Language Package

Why it matters

The Czech Republic is one of Europe’s most secular societies, so the Romans baseline’s core finding still governs: most readers bring no inherited framework, not a wrong one, to biblical vocabulary. 1 Peter changes the calculus. It anchors this curriculum’s core passage (1:3-9) and central doctrine — living hope grounded in Christ’s resurrection — in vocabulary (“naděje,” “vzkříšení,” “dědictví”) that is recognized but doctrinally inert for a secular reader. Worse, 1 Peter’s own images (priesthood, elders, submission, redemption, spirits in prison, baptism) surface a second, distinct risk pattern: live secular, commercial, and denominational associations that pull readers toward a specific wrong concept, not just toward comprehension failure. Getting this Language Package right requires both conceptual scaffolding (the baseline pattern) and active doctrinal fencing (a new pattern this curriculum introduces).

Key findings

• 93 total terms tracked in the 1 Peter term registry; 23 Critical and 42 High risk (65 combined, ~70% of all tracked terms) require human theologian review — a markedly higher concentration than typical for this pipeline, reflecting 1 Peter’s doctrinal density relative to its length.
• 21 doctrines analyzed across the full book; 8 Critical + 8 High = 16 doctrines route to human theologian review, 6 Medium route to native speaker review, and zero doctrines are automated-review-only — every doctrine in this book carries meaningful translation risk.
• 1 Peter never uses ἐκκλησία (“church”); the “Church as a Holy and Royal Priesthood” doctrine must be built entirely from 2:4-10’s own vocabulary, with no fallback to the baseline’s “církev.”
• Five terms introduce genuine rival-framework collisions not typical for this Language Package: holy priesthood (clergy-only default), elder/oversight (age-only default, or false “biskup” import), redemption (commercial coupon-redemption default), submission (totalitarian-era political memory), and spirits in prison/baptism (Catholic purgatory-adjacent default).
• The core passage’s own thesis term, “živá naděje” (living hope), is the single highest-stakes rendering in the curriculum: every mainstream Czech translation renders it fluently, but none of them supply the conceptual bridge a secular reader needs to connect it to the resurrection clause in the same verse.

Risks

• Doctrinal inversion risk (highest): “Svaté kněžstvo” left uncorrected will be read as ordained clergy — the theological opposite of Peter’s all-believers claim.
• Denominational-office import risk: any lapse into “biskup” for ἐπισκοπέω (5:1-2; 2:25) falsely imports a hierarchical office the text does not describe, across every major Czech Christian tradition.
• Purgatory-adjacent misreading risk: careless handling of “duchové v vězení” (3:19) or “evangelium zvěstováno mrtvým” (4:6) could be read as endorsing a post-mortem “second chance,” given Czech Catholic tradition’s developed purgatory doctrine.
• Trivialization risk: “vykoupení” left bare defaults to everyday coupon/pawn/lottery redemption, undercutting the costly, blood-bought doctrine of 1:18-19.
• Political-complicity risk: “poddat se/podřídit se” without Peter’s own qualifiers, given living Czech memory of Nazi-occupation and Communist-era enforced submission, risks the text reading as an endorsement of coerced political compliance.
• Sectarian-echo risk: any drift toward “kůl” (Watchtower/NWT’s crucifixion-instrument rendering) or an impersonal-force reading of “Duch svatý” would silently import a specific rival theology this project must never echo.

Opportunities

• Apostles’ Creed traction: “soudit živé i mrtvé” (4:5) is one of the few phrases in this entire curriculum with genuine positive cultural recall among secular Czechs (weddings, funerals) — a rare foothold to build on rather than correct.
• 20th-century historical memory: genuine Czech experience of persecution under Nazi occupation and Communist rule offers an authentic, non-abstract entry point into “Suffering for Righteousness’ Sake,” if handled without implying suffering itself earns merit.
• Ecumenical common ground: ČEP (Český ekumenický překlad), already this project’s readability anchor, is accepted across Czech Catholic and Protestant traditions, minimizing confessional-bias risk in the base text itself.
• Existing mainstream consensus on elders: every major Czech Bible translation already avoids “biskup” for 1 Peter’s elder/oversight vocabulary — this curriculum can follow, rather than fight, the existing translation landscape on this specific point.

Recommended actions

1. Route all 16 Critical/High doctrines and all 65 Critical/High terms to human theologian review per the escalation rules in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md; do not downgrade any of them to native-speaker-only review.
2. Enforce the forbidden-substitution list (never “biskup,” never “kůl,” never “čert,” never bare “vykoupení,” never bare “poddat se”) as automatic-fail validation conditions, not soft warnings.
3. Require the mandatory corrective clause on “kněžstvo” (“všichni věřící, ne jen vysvěcení duchovní”) at every occurrence without exception.
4. Render 1 Peter 3:18-20 literally in every instance; do not resolve the passage’s exegetical ambiguity through translation choice at any point in Phase 2.
5. Confirm the YouVersion version_id (405, ČEP) against the live API before hardcoding it into any Phase 2 production hyperlink tooling.
6. Treat the core passage (1:3-9) as the template for how every other Critical/High term in the book must be handled: never a bare label, always narrative scaffolding plus, where applicable, an explicit fencing statement against the wrong secular or denominational reading.