Linguistic Gap Analysis — 2 Peter

Purpose and Method

This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the 2 Peter curriculum. It builds directly on 07_semantic_analysis.md, 08_core_glossary.md, and assets/bible_term_registry.json, and it never contradicts the baseline Romans Language Package, which remains the language authority for every term it already governs (Lord, God, grace, election, faith, righteousness, salvation, calling, holy, sin, kingdom of God, etc.).

Because English is simultaneously the source and destination language for this pipeline, “linguistic gap” here does not mean a missing target-language word for a source-language concept in the ordinary cross-language sense. It means one of four distinct things, using the same four-part risk framework established in 08_core_glossary.md:

1. Missing Vocabulary — 2 Peter’s Greek draws distinctions (e.g., epignōsis vs. gnōsis; hypomonē vs. makrothymia) that ordinary English simply has no separate word for, forcing one English word to silently absorb two or more distinct biblical senses.
2. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods — a single English word is already occupied by one or more strong competing senses (legal, political, pop-cultural, therapeutic) that must be actively “fenced off” so readers do not import the wrong sense by default.
3. Obsolescence/Obscurity — a term is simply rare in ordinary contemporary speech, creating a knowledge gap rather than a false belief.
4. Cultural-Collision Drift — a specific contemporary movement, genre, franchise, or controversy has attached new, competing associations to an old word.

This letter is unusual among the New Testament epistles in the density of load-bearing vocabulary packed into a short text (3 chapters, 61 verses) and in how many of its key terms sit in currently live, high-visibility cultural fault lines (myth-critique of Christianity, “many paths” pluralism, positive prestige of skepticism, virtue-signaling cynicism, canon skepticism, millennial debates). This gap analysis is organized to feed directly into Phase 2 content generation and into the Step 17 review-routing logic.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

Doctrine	Available Destination-Language (English) Terms	Weaknesses of Available Terms	Recommended Strategy
The Reliability and Inspiration of Scripture	Scripture, prophecy, prophet, eyewitnesses, “cleverly devised myths,” “carried along,” “private interpretation,” “more sure”/confirmed, canon (implied)	English “Scripture” flattens into generic comparative-religion category; “moved” (a common gloss for pheromenoi) imports an emotional false-friend; “private interpretation” reads, on first contemporary impression, as permitting individual interpretive freedom rather than restricting the prophecy’s origin/authority; “myths” collides with live academic “Bible-as-myth” framing rather than registering as Peter’s own rebuttal of that exact charge; no single English word captures the legal-guarantee force of bebaioteron without dilution into vague reassurance.	Prefer “carried along by [the Holy Spirit]” over bare “moved” throughout. Retain “Scripture” but explicitly name and reject the comparative-religion leveling move on first substantive use. State the “cleverly devised myths” denial as a direct, named rebuttal of the contemporary “Bible as myth” framing, not a generic pious disclaimer. Pair “confirmed”/“more sure” with legal-guarantee language (“guaranteed,” “certified”) rather than leaving it to read as subjective reassurance. Disambiguate “private interpretation” explicitly regardless of which of the two standard exegetical options (origin vs. reading) is adopted.
Growing in Christian Virtue	virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection, love, faith, “make every effort”	English collapses epignōsis and gnōsis into one word, “knowledge,” erasing Peter’s own relational/informational distinction; “virtue” is primed by “virtue signaling” toward irony/cynicism; “self-control” and “perseverance” are readily reframed as secular willpower/productivity-culture achievements; “godliness” is archaic and requires definition from scratch; “perseverance” risks conflation with the distinct systematic-theology doctrine “perseverance of the saints.”	Gloss “virtue” as “moral excellence/goodness of character” on first use to counter the ironic association. Explicitly flag wherever epignōsis and gnōsis occur near each other (1:2-8; 3:18) that English uses one word for two distinct Greek terms. State the effort/grace relationship explicitly (1:3-5): the virtue chain is built ON prior divine power and promises, not a self-generated improvement project. Distinguish the hypomonē of 1:6 from the Reformed systematic category “perseverance of the saints” by name.
False Teachers and Their Judgment	false teachers/false prophets, destructive heresies, the Master (despotēs), the way, Sodom and Gomorrah, Balaam, Tartarus, greed/covetousness, dominion and authority, judgment	”Heresy” has softened into an admiring or ironic term for bold contrarian thinking in secular fields; “false teachers” risks flattening into a merely factual “fake news” problem rather than morally corrupt, soul-destroying teaching; “the Master” as a gloss for despotēs loses the total-ownership/slave-master background, while the literal cognate “despot” imports an unwanted tyrant connotation; “the way” collides with strong contemporary “many paths” pluralism; “Sodom and Gomorrah” sits inside a live, sharply contested contemporary sexual-ethics debate; “authority” (kyriotēs) risks confusion with Romans 13 civil government.	Name the “fake news” partial-asset/partial-liability tension explicitly and insist on the moral (not merely factual) dimension of false teaching. Explain despotēs with a short etymological note (ownership/absolute authority) while steering clear of both “despot” and a merely soft “Master.” Explicitly state that “the way” in 2 Peter is a singular-path exclusivity claim, naming and setting aside the “many paths” cultural instinct. State this curriculum’s own interpretive basis for Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin with care, per the Denominational Transparency Rule, noting other readings exist. Disambiguate “authority”/“dominion” from civil-government material explicitly.
The Certainty of Christ’s Return	the coming, Second Coming, parousia, promise, Morning Star	”Coming” is generically weak; “Second Coming” is heavily absorbed into pop-apocalyptic culture (failed date-setting, “Left Behind”-style fiction) that primes skepticism/amusement rather than sober expectation; “promise” risks casual softening into a mere assurance rather than a solemn binding pledge; “Morning Star” collides with the Lucifer/“Day Star” association via Isaiah 14 and Milton.	Transliterate and gloss parousia on first substantive use as the technical term this curriculum anchors to, explicitly naming and addressing the failed-date-setting track record rather than avoiding it. Reinforce “promise” with “solemn,” “binding,” or “pledge” language, especially at 3:4,9,13. Explicitly and immediately disambiguate “Morning Star” from any Lucifer/Satan association every time it names Christ (1:19).
The Day of the Lord and Final Judgment	the Day of the Lord, judgment, elements, new heavens and new earth, reserved/kept, fire	”The Day of the Lord” is an unfamiliar OT technical term to most readers without explicit background; “judgment” (krisis) collides both with the English derivative “crisis” (chaotic emergency) and with post-Christian non-judgmentalism (“don’t judge,” “judgment-free zone”); “elements” imports a modern periodic-table chemistry frame; “reserved” defaults to a benign administrative sense (a reserved table); judgment imagery alone, without the following new-creation material, risks a purely destructive impression.	Actively supply OT prophetic background (Joel 2, Amos 5, Zephaniah 1) for “the Day of the Lord” rather than assuming recognition. Present “judgment” as an orderly legal verdict, explicitly distinguished from both “crisis” and secular non-judgmentalism, with the same explicitness the baseline requires for Romans’ universal-accountability material. Gloss “elements” as “the basic components of the created world,” not chemical elements. Pair “reserved” with “kept,” “held,” “guarded.” Always present 3:7-12’s fire imagery alongside 3:13’s restorative “new heavens and a new earth” so judgment is not taught as purely destructive.
Patience of God’s Timing	patience, longsuffering, a thousand years, salvation (linked at 3:15)	Ordinary English “patience” skews passive/resigned (patiently waiting in line), understating the active, purposeful, morally loaded forbearance of makrothymia; “a thousand years” inevitably intersects with the separate, contested millennial-systems debate (premillennial/postmillennial/amillennial) even though 2 Peter 3:8 itself makes a narrower point; instant-gratification contemporary culture has little native sympathy for patience as a serious, weighty virtue at all.	Render makrothymia as “patience” but actively supplement with “active forbearance,” distinguishing it explicitly from hypomonē (“perseverance,” 1:6). Keep 2 Peter 3:8’s own limited point (God transcends human timescales) explicitly separate from the broader millennial debate while acknowledging readers will likely arrive with strong existing assumptions. Surface the direct textual identification of patience with salvation (3:15) as a deliberate teaching point, not an incidental phrase.
Divine Nature and Escaping Corruption	divine nature, partakers/sharers, corruption, corrupt desire/lust, divine power, promises	”Divine nature” collides directly with contemporary New Age/“spiritual but not religious” claims that all humans already possess an inner “divine spark”; “corruption” defaults to a political/financial (bribery, embezzlement) sense; “lust” has narrowed almost exclusively to sexual desire, obscuring the broader greed/self-indulgence pattern 2 Peter actually targets; Eastern Orthodox theosis readings and Western conservative readings of “partakers of the divine nature” genuinely diverge.	State explicitly that “partakers of the divine nature” describes a GIVEN participation received only through escaping corruption, not a universal human birthright, directly naming and setting aside the New Age “inner divinity” association. Note the Orthodox theosis reading alongside the more conservative Western moral/spiritual-transformation reading per the Denominational Transparency Rule. Broaden “corruption” beyond institutional misconduct to pervasive moral decay. Prefer “corrupt desire(s)” over bare “lust” wherever the broader greed/self-indulgence sense, not narrowly sexual sin, is intended (1:4; 2:10,18; 3:3).

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2. Missing Vocabulary (True Gaps — No Adequate Single English Word Exists)

These are cases where 2 Peter’s Greek makes a distinction that English structurally cannot preserve with a single native word, unlike most “false-friend” cases elsewhere in this registry where an English word exists but is contested or diluted.

Gap	Greek Terms Collapsed into One English Word	Consequence if Unaddressed	Recommended Handling
Two kinds of “knowledge”	epignōsis (relational, saving, near-summary-of-faith knowledge: 1:2,3,8; 2:20) vs. gnōsis (a cultivated, growing virtue: 1:5-6; 3:18) — both rendered “knowledge” in English	Readers cannot tell from the English text alone that Peter is making a structural argument (foundational relational knowing → growing cultivated understanding); the virtue chain’s logic is partly invisible	Explicitly flag both occurrences side by side wherever they appear near each other; consider a working gloss such as “knowing Christ personally” (epignōsis) vs. “understanding/discernment” (gnōsis) in explanatory material, while keeping “knowledge” as the running English text per translation-memory consistency
Two kinds of “endurance/waiting”	hypomonē (endurance under pressure/circumstance: 1:6) vs. makrothymia (active forbearance toward culpable people, giving opportunity for repentance: 3:9,15)	English “patience”/“perseverance” can be used interchangeably by readers, erasing Peter’s distinction between a personal virtue and a specifically relational, redemptive divine posture	Reserve “perseverance” for hypomonē and “patience” (qualified as “active” or “purposeful” patience) for makrothymia; state the distinction explicitly at least once per document
”Lord” vocabulary density and register	kyrios (supreme Lord, used ~13x) vs. despotēs (absolute Master/Owner, 2:1) — both plausibly glossed “Lord”/“Master” in English	Collapsing both into “Lord” erases the specific, starker ownership claim of despotēs that makes the false teachers’ “denial” so serious	Reserve “Lord” for kyrios consistently (per baseline); render despotēs as “Master” with an explicit note on its total-ownership sense, distinct from the more familiar kyrios
”Moved” vs. an agency-transferring verb	pheromenoi (carried, borne along by an outside force: 1:21) has no single-word English equivalent that avoids the emotional false-friend of “moved”	Readers default to “I was moved” = an emotional reaction, precisely inverting the sense of the prophets being carried by an external, controlling agent	Use the multi-word rendering “carried along by [the Holy Spirit]” as the standing translation-memory entry; never use bare “moved”
Servant/slave register gap	doulos (1:1) has no single English word that carries both first-century total-ownership legal reality and a register acceptable across the full range of contemporary connotations (voluntary employee vs. chattel slavery)	Either choice (“servant” or “slave”) imports its own distortion — “servant” softens into voluntary/paid work; “slave” imports the specific, painful weight of the English-speaking world’s own chattel-slavery history in a way the first-century term did not carry	State plainly and once, in a dedicated note, which rendering this curriculum uses (“servant,” consistent with most mainstream English Bible translations) and why, while explicitly naming what is lost by not using “slave”

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3. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Active Fencing

Unlike the “missing vocabulary” cases above, these are terms where English has a serviceable word — but that word already has one or more strong, ready-made competing occupants that will be imported by default unless explicitly fenced off. Ranked roughly by how automatically and confidently the wrong sense will be supplied.

1. “Election” / “calling” (1:10) — political-voting frame is near-total in contemporary usage; compounded by the verb “make sure,” which sounds like a campaign-logistics instruction. [BASELINE REUSE — Critical]
2. “Judgment” (2:3-4,9; 3:7) — crowded by both the “crisis” etymological false friend and blanket therapeutic non-judgmentalism (“judgment-free zone”). [NEW — Critical, parallel to baseline’s universal_human_accountability]
3. “Grace” (1:2; 3:18) — crowded by elegance/poise and the legal “grace period.” [BASELINE REUSE — Critical]
4. “Coming”/“Second Coming” (1:16; 3:4,12) — crowded by pop-apocalyptic date-setting culture and generic vagueness. [NEW — Critical]
5. “Lord” (throughout) — crowded by British aristocratic titles and fantasy-genre “dark lords,” compounded here by unusually high frequency. [BASELINE REUSE — Critical]
6. “Virtue” (1:3,5) — crowded by “virtue signaling” cynicism. [NEW — High]
7. “Heresy”/“heresies” (2:1) — crowded by an admiring, ironic secular usage for bold contrarianism. [NEW — High]
8. “The way” (2:2,15,21) — crowded by “find your own path” spiritual pluralism. [NEW — High]
9. “Myths” (1:16) — crowded by academic/popular “Bible as myth” comparative-religion framing — this is the one case where the crowding is not accidental drift but the exact live objection the text itself is rebutting. [NEW — High]
10. “Scoffers”/“skeptic” (3:3) — crowded by contemporary intellectual culture’s positive prestige of skepticism as a virtue. [NEW — High]
11. “Corruption” (1:4; 2:12,19) — crowded by the political/financial bribery sense. [NEW — Medium]
12. “Lust” (1:4; 2:10,18; 3:3) — narrowed almost exclusively to sexual desire. [NEW — High]
13. “Reserved” (3:7) — crowded by the benign restaurant/administrative-reservation sense. [NEW — High]
14. “Divine nature” (1:4) — crowded by New Age “inner divine spark” language. [NEW — High]
15. “Morning Star” (1:19) — crowded by the Lucifer/Isaiah 14/Milton association. [NEW — Medium]
16. “Elements” (3:10,12) — crowded by the periodic-table chemistry sense. [NEW — Medium]
17. “A thousand years” (3:8) — crowded by the separate millennial-systems denominational debate. [NEW — High]
18. “Despot”/“Master” (2:1) — the literal cognate is crowded by the modern tyrant sense; softer glosses are crowded by loss of ownership force. [NEW — High]
19. “Authority”/“dominion” (2:10) — crowded by association with Romans 13 civil government. [NEW — Medium]
20. “Majesty” (1:16) — crowded by royal-address and nature-documentary aesthetic usage. [NEW — Medium]
21. “Self-control”/“perseverance” (1:6) — crowded by secular productivity/willpower culture. [NEW — Medium]

Fencing principle applied throughout Phase 2 content: for every term above, the required editorial move is not merely definition but explicit exclusion — naming the competing sense and stating plainly that it is NOT what the text means, following the baseline’s established “NOT X — explain Y” pattern for Critical false-friend terms.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Because source and destination language are both English, “transliteration” here refers specifically to the pedagogical decision of whether to surface and gloss the underlying Greek term (in transliterated form) alongside the English rendering — as a teaching device to recover a distinction English otherwise erases — versus paraphrasing entirely in plain English and accepting the loss of that distinction. This is a genuinely new category of decision for this curriculum beyond what the Romans baseline required, because 2 Peter’s missing-vocabulary gaps (Section 2) are more numerous and more load-bearing than in Romans.

Term	Decision	Rationale
parousia	Transliterate and gloss on first substantive use (1:16; 3:4,12)	Anchor term for “The Certainty of Christ’s Return”; English “coming” alone is too weak and too culturally contaminated by date-setting movements to carry the doctrine unaided. Naming the Greek technical term gives readers a stable peg distinct from “Second Coming” pop-culture baggage.
epignōsis / gnōsis	Transliterate in explanatory/footnote material only; keep running English text as “knowledge” both times	The distinction is real and doctrinally useful (see Section 2) but introducing two different English headwords risks looking like an invented distinction not in the text; better to keep translation-memory consistency (“knowledge”) in the primary text and carry the Greek distinction in glosses/footnotes.
doulos	Paraphrase only (“servant”); state the slave/servant decision explicitly in a dedicated note, do not rely on transliteration	Transliterating “doulos” would evade rather than resolve the genuine, weighty English-language decision; the curriculum must own the servant/slave choice in English terms, not hide behind Greek.
despotēs	Paraphrase as “Master” with a brief etymological aside naming the Greek root	A light-touch transliteration mention (“the Greek word here, despotēs, is the root of our word ‘despot’”) helps readers understand both the total-ownership force and why the modern cognate is misleading, without adopting “despot” itself as the rendering.
makrothymia / hypomonē	Paraphrase both (“patience” / “perseverance”); transliterate only in a comparison footnote	The English words are serviceable once distinguished; a full transliteration apparatus is unnecessary here compared to epignōsis/gnōsis, where the English collapse is more damaging to the argument’s structure.
krisis	Paraphrase as “judgment”; name the English derivative “crisis” explicitly as a warning, not as an aid	Here the transliteration-adjacent move (naming the English derivative) is used defensively, to warn readers away from a false friend, rather than constructively to recover a lost distinction.
sesophismenois mythois (“cleverly devised myths”)	Paraphrase fully in English; no transliteration needed	The English phrase itself is already vivid and the pedagogical need is not lexical recovery but explicit contemporary application (naming the live “Bible as myth” objection), which transliteration would not assist.
phōsphoros (“Morning Star”)	Paraphrase in English; note the Latin/Greek etymology only to explain the Lucifer collision, not as a primary teaching device	The disambiguation task here is cultural (the Isaiah 14/Milton association), not lexical; transliteration adds little.
tartarōsas (“Tartarus”)	Retain the transliterated proper noun “Tartarus” as the standing English rendering (already a loanword in English), paired with explicit real-referent clarification	Unlike the other cases, “Tartarus” is already a transliteration by long precedent in English Bible translations; the task here is not a transliteration decision but a cultural-collision fencing move against Percy-Jackson-style fantasy associations.
stoicheia (“elements”)	Paraphrase only (“basic components of the created world”)	Transliteration would add an unfamiliar term with no compensating gain; the risk is a false-friend (periodic table), not a missing distinction, and is best solved by a plain descriptive gloss.

General rule for Phase 2: transliteration is reserved for cases where (a) English structurally collapses two distinct Greek senses into one word AND (b) the doctrinal argument depends on the reader perceiving the distinction (Section 2 cases), or (c) the Greek term is needed as a stable anchor against heavy pop-cultural contamination of all available English glosses (parousia). It should not be used merely to sound authoritative, and it must never replace the mandatory plain-English clarification required for Critical and High risk terms.

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5. Ranked List of This Letter’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (likelihood of confident misreading × doctrinal weight) and required review routing, consistent with doctrine_risk_registry.json’s Critical/High/Medium/Low framework.

Rank	Term/Passage	Risk Tier	Why It Ranks Here
1	”not willing that any should perish… all reach repentance” (3:9)	Critical	Sits directly on the oldest, most consequential English-speaking-Christian denominational fault line (particularist vs. universal reading of God’s salvific will); misreading here reshapes an entire soteriology, not just one verse.
2	parousia / “the coming” (1:16; 3:4,12)	Critical	Anchor term for the letter’s central certainty-of-return doctrine; contemporary pop-apocalyptic contamination actively primes the exact scoffing response (3:3-4) the text predicts and warns against — the risk is self-reinforcing.
3	”election”/“calling” paired in “make your calling and election sure” (1:10)	Critical	Near-total political-voting capture of “election” in contemporary English, compounded by a verb (“make sure”) that sounds like campaign language; risk of readers inverting the verse’s logic (confirm a prior gift vs. earn/create one).
4	”judgment” / krisis (2:3-4,9; 3:7)	Critical	Double false-friend: etymological (“crisis”) and cultural (therapeutic non-judgmentalism); this is the letter’s core warning about false teachers and final judgment, so a softened reading undermines two of the seven curriculum doctrines at once.
5	”Lord” (throughout, unusually dense)	Critical	Baseline Critical risk compounded by frequency; repeated exposure to a faded word risks cumulative desensitization rather than the single-occurrence risk documented in Romans.
6	”grace… and knowledge” (3:18, closing anchor verse)	Critical	Anchor-verse status means any drift here propagates across every Phase 2 document; combines the baseline’s Critical grace risk with the missing-vocabulary knowledge gap (Section 2) in a single verse.
7	”cleverly devised myths” (1:16)	High	The single clearest place where a contemporary reader’s default assumption (the Bible IS myth, in the modern comparative-religion sense) is the exact opposite of what the text asserts; failure to name this explicitly risks readers missing that Peter is rebutting, not conceding, the charge.
8	”private interpretation”/“one’s own interpretation” (1:20)	High	Reader-response individualism (“everyone has their own interpretation”) is one of the most deeply internalized instincts of contemporary Western readers; the verse’s plain-sense trajectory runs directly against this instinct regardless of which exegetical option is followed.
9	”the way” (2:2,15,21)	High	Contemporary spiritual pluralism’s “many paths” framework is a mirror-image risk to the baseline’s own universal-scope-of-gospel note, but running in the opposite (relativizing) direction; risk of softening an exclusivity claim the text actually makes.
10	”scoffers” (3:3) and their argument (3:4)	High	Contemporary prestige of “skepticism” as an intellectual virtue risks readers sympathizing with, rather than being warned against, the very posture the text predicts; the scoffers’ argument is constructed to sound reasonable, raising the stakes of a shallow reading.
11	”servant” vs. “slave” (doulos, 1:1)	High	Not a false-friend risk but a live, values-laden English-register decision with real historical weight (chattel slavery in English-speaking cultures); silence on this choice is itself a failure of transparency.
12	”virtue” (1:3,5)	High	”Virtue signaling” has measurably reshaped the connotation of the bare word in contemporary political/social-media discourse toward irony and suspicion — a fast-moving cultural-collision risk likely to keep intensifying.
13	”divine nature… partakers” (1:4)	High	Compounds a genuine denominational contest (theosis vs. conservative moral-transformation readings) with an active New Age/“spiritual but not religious” cultural collision claiming the identical English phrase for a universal-birthright doctrine 2 Peter explicitly denies.
14	”a thousand years” (3:8)	High	Risk is not primarily false-friend but scope-creep: readers will likely import the entire separate millennial-systems debate onto a verse making a narrower point about divine timelessness.
15	”Sodom and Gomorrah” (2:6)	High	Sits inside one of the most politically and denominationally live contemporary controversies in the entire registry; any interpretive silence will be read by some segment of readers as an implicit position.

This ranked list should be used to prioritize Phase 2 Step 16 editorial attention and Step 17 human-theologian review routing alongside, not in place of, the full doctrine_risk_registry.json tier assignments to be produced for this curriculum.

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6. Summary of Required Downstream Actions

1. Extend translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json with the [NEW] entries already drafted in 08_core_glossary.md, incorporating this document’s transliteration decisions (Section 4) as additional translation_notes fields.
2. Ensure Phase 2 system-prompt instructions (per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md’s pattern) add 2 Peter-specific mandatory clarifications for the Section 3 fenced terms, using the same “NOT X — explain Y” template already established for Romans.
3. Confirm 2 Peter 1:16-21 and 3:18 receive identical, consistently-clarified rendering across every Phase 2 document, per the Anchor-Verse Consistency Requirement already stated in 08_core_glossary.md.
4. Route all Rank 1-6 ambiguities above to mandatory human theologian review; Rank 7-15 to human theologian review per their individual tier assignments already carried in bible_term_registry.json.