Executive Summary — Acts 1–28 (English → Dogri)

Why it matters

Acts is the riskiest curriculum this Language Package has processed to date. Romans argued doctrine in the abstract; Acts narrates it — pouring, filling, washing, vowing, healing, casting lots — in scenes that map directly onto lived Duggar Hindu practice (Raghunath Mandir Rama-Vishnu devotion, the Bahu Fort Kali shrine, the Vaishno Devi mannat economy, oracle-medium possession, and the Baba Jitto folk-martyr cult) far more concretely than Romans’ epistolary argument ever did. The core passage, Acts 2:1-41 (Pentecost), alone contains ten Critical-tier doctrines. Getting this book wrong in Dogri does not create vague confusion; it re-baptizes converts into a purification framework, re-brands the Holy Spirit as a possessing deity, or quietly re-imports caste-purity thinking into the one text (Acts 10) written specifically to dismantle it.

Key findings

• 120 total glossary terms now govern Acts translation: 47 inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline, 73 newly ratified for Acts.
• 38 doctrines are tracked in the Acts doctrine risk registry, spanning all 28 chapters with zero silent omissions (five chapters — 12, 18, 22, 23, 27 — are explicitly marked “reviewed, no new vocabulary” rather than skipped).
• Combined Critical+High term count: 66 (24 Critical + 42 High) requiring mandatory human theologian sign-off before Phase 2 use — nearly double the term-level oversight load the Romans package carried.
• Doctrine-level oversight: 28 of 38 doctrines (74%) require human theologian review; 7 require native speaker review; only 3 are automated-only.
• The single highest-stakes new term in the entire package is शुद्ध/अशुद्ध (clean/unclean, Acts 10) — the first term in either curriculum upgraded to Critical specifically because it collides with a live, socially consequential caste-purity system, not a historical or comparative-religion abstraction.
• A genuinely new class of risk, absent from Romans, is the context-restricted double-bind term: मन्नत (vow) is simultaneously forbidden (for grace) and required (for the Acts 21 Nazirite vow); मंदर (temple) is simultaneously forbidden (for church) and required (for the literal Temple building). Both demand mandatory disambiguating notes, not simple substitution rules.
• A second new risk class, also absent from Romans, is sect/cult-adjacent proof-texting: Acts 2:38 is the primary proof-text of regional Oneness-Pentecostal “baptism-saves” tract literature, and Acts 17:23 (“unknown god”) is repeatedly abused by informal syncretistic gospel tracts to imply Hindu deities are unknowing worship of the true God. Neither risk existed in Romans’ argumentative structure.

Risks

1. Critical — Purity/caste collision (Acts 10-11, 15): शुद्ध/अशुद्ध maps directly onto untouchability categories. Under-explaining this as dietary trivia would fail to deliver the text’s actual force; over-explaining without care would read as an attack on caste identity itself rather than a theological claim about Jew-Gentile inclusion.
2. Critical — Spirit-possession collision (Acts 2, 5, 8, 16, 19): “Filled with,” “poured out,” and counterfeit-spirit language all sit one careless word away from oracle-medium possession vocabulary (masani/devi-aana) and Shakta goddess-power framing already flagged Critical in the baseline.
3. Critical — Baptism/purification collision (Acts 2, 8, 9, 10, 16, 19): Baptism must never drift toward स्नान (pilgrimage ritual bathing) or, a genuinely new risk, अमृत/Amrit Sanchar-adjacent Sikh initiation vocabulary circulating informally in Punjabi-border gospel materials.
4. High — Folk-martyr conflation (Acts 7): Stephen’s death is emotionally proximate to the locally beloved Baba Jitto/Bua Kauri narrative; a careless teaching illustration could make Stephen’s death more relatable for precisely the wrong reason.
5. High — Idol/temple-image tone risk (Acts 7, 14, 15, 17, 19): मूर्ति is unavoidable and correct, but the same word names reverentially-held images at Raghunath Mandir and Vaishno Devi; doctrinal force and respectful tone must both survive simultaneously.
6. High — Circumcision/interfaith mislabeling (Acts 15, 16, 21): खतना’s contemporary Islamic-practice association risks a communal, not theological, misreading without a mandatory note every time.
7. Medium — Sectarian proof-texting drift (Acts 2:38, 17:23): Without disciplined sequencing (repentance/faith prior to baptism) and disciplined framing (Paul corrects, never affirms, pagan worship), this curriculum could be cited by both baptism-mechanism sects and syncretistic fulfillment-theology tracts.

Opportunities

1. Acts 2:1-41 as an integrated teaching unit. The core passage’s sermon structure (Scripture fulfillment → Messiah/resurrection/Lordship → repentance/baptism call) is itself a ready-made model for Dogri evangelism and discipleship material — assuming its ten Critical doctrines are translated and reviewed as a cumulative whole, not fragmented across disconnected verse segments.
2. Direct pastoral relevance of Acts 15 and Acts 10-11 for a lineage/honor culture. God’s impartiality and the abolished purity-boundary are not abstract doctrines here — they speak directly and pastorally into Dogra Rajput izzat and caste stratification in a way few other New Testament books can.
3. Artemis/Ephesus (Acts 19) as a low-friction teaching bridge. The silversmiths’ riot over threatened shrine income offers a respectful, non-confrontational way to help Dogri learners understand why the gospel can provoke economic resistance, using a distant historical parallel rather than a direct critique of the Vaishno Devi pilgrimage economy.
4. मन्नत and मंदर as teaching moments in disambiguation itself. Explicitly teaching why the same word is forbidden in one context and required in another (grace vs. Nazirite vow; church vs. literal Temple) models exactly the kind of careful biblical literacy this Language Package exists to build.

Recommended actions

1. Ratify all 73 new Acts terms into assets/translation_memory.json before any Phase 2 segment translation begins — 10 Critical and 25 High terms require theologian sign-off on the specific Dogri rendering prior to first use, per the escalation rules in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md v2.0.
2. Route Acts 2 (core passage), Acts 10-11 (clean/unclean), Acts 15 (Jerusalem Council), Acts 7 (Stephen), and Acts 21 (Nazirite vow) to human theologian review as first-priority blocks, ahead of the rest of the book, given their combined Critical-doctrine density.
3. Build the mandatory disambiguating-note mechanism into the Phase 2 pipeline now, not as an afterthought — मन्नत, खतना, मंदर, and the Acts 19:1-7 dual-baptism note each require it structurally, not optionally.
4. Confirm the Dogri YouVersion {version_id} and the BSI Dogri Bible’s settled renderings for Pentecost, “the Way,” and the Acts 2:38 cluster before Phase 2 production, per the open verification items flagged in 05_translation_landscape.md.
5. Brief theologian reviewers explicitly on the two sect-specific risks (Jehovah’s Witnesses’ NWT impersonal-Spirit/divine-name pattern; regional Oneness-Pentecostal baptism-saves tracts) so review is proactive, not merely reactive to translator error.
6. Carry the full 120-term combined translation memory (Romans + Acts) forward as the single enforced glossary for all future curricula in this Language Package, to prevent term drift across books.