Executive Summary — Acts (English → english)

Why it matters

Acts is where the church’s theology happens — Pentecost, the Gospel crossing from Jews to Gentiles, baptism practice, and church governance all get their founding narrative here, not just their doctrinal statement. Because English is both source and destination language in this pipeline, the risk isn’t cross-language loss — it’s drift within English itself: false-friend collisions (a Bible word’s meaning quietly replaced by a stronger secular/legal/pop-culture sense), live denominational contest among English-speaking Christian traditions, and post-Christian erosion that hollows out a word’s felt weight. Acts concentrates far more of this risk per chapter than Romans did, because Acts narrates the very practices (baptism, tongues, Spirit-filling, church office) that English-speaking traditions still actively dispute today.

Key findings

• Denominational-contest density is Acts’ defining risk profile. The combined term registry carries 21 Critical-risk terms and 28 High-risk terms (49 total requiring theologian review) — up sharply from Romans’ 7 Critical baseline terms alone. Six new Critical terms are entirely Acts-specific: filled_with_the_spirit, tongues, baptism, household_baptism, baptism_of_john, elders_overseers_shepherds, chosen_instrument, gift_of_god, and whole_counsel_of_god.
• Doctrine-level risk is even more concentrated. The Acts doctrine registry alone carries 13 Critical-risk doctrines and 7 High-risk doctrines — 20 of 32 total doctrines require human theologian review, versus 10 requiring only native-speaker review and 2 automated-only. Combined with the Romans baseline (7 Critical, 9 High), the two-curriculum total requiring theologian oversight is 36 doctrines.
• Baptism is the single highest-stakes term in the whole pipeline. It recurs across at least seven distinct Acts narratives (2:38; 8:36-38; 9:18; 10:47-48; 16:15,31-34; 18:25; 19:1-5), compounding mode, subject, and theological-effect disputes every time it appears.
• “No other name” (4:12) is this curriculum’s sharpest collision with contemporary culture — a direct, unambiguous exclusivity claim landing squarely against “many paths to God” pluralism.
• A documented sectarian mistranslation is live at Acts 20:28 (NWT’s inserted “[Son],” denying the plain sense that God shed his own blood) and a documented historical anachronism at Acts 12:4 (KJV’s “Easter” for “Passover”) — both must be actively excluded, not merely avoided by accident.

Risks

• Silent denominational adjudication. The greatest failure mode is not omission but silently picking a side — e.g. rendering “filled with the Spirit” as a one-time conversion event, or “elders/overseers/shepherds” as endorsing one governance polity — without the mandated transparency statement.
• Entertainment-flattening of real spiritual conflict. Simon Magus, Elymas, and the spirit of divination risk being read as harmless “magic” by a culture that treats the occult as consumer entertainment.
• False-friend erosion at scale. “Circumcision,” “idols,” “Pharisee,” “the Way,” and “election/chosen instrument” all carry dominant modern senses (medical procedure, pop-culture “idol,” pure hypocrisy synonym, an unrelated new religious movement, political voting) that actively displace the biblical sense rather than merely under-informing the reader.
• Softening the universal call to repent (17:30) or the exclusivity claim (4:12) under pressure from non-judgmental, pluralistic cultural defaults.

Opportunities

• Acts’ narrative genre is a genuine asset: vivid storytelling (Pentecost, the Damascus road, the Philippian jailer, the shipwreck) carries doctrinal weight more memorably than discursive argument, provided the mandated clarifications ride along with the story rather than being bolted on afterward.
• The book’s own literary bracket (Acts 1:8 → 28:31) gives this curriculum a built-in, ready-made structural thesis-statement, directly parallel to Romans 1:16-17’s role in that curriculum.
• Acts narrates ancient precedent for modern skepticism (Athenian resurrection-mockery, 17:32; Sadducee denial, 23:6-8) — a rhetorically strong, textually grounded answer to contemporary “resurrection as myth” framing that requires no imported argument.
• Positive resonance points (adoption imagery inherited from Romans; “God shows no partiality,” 10:34, resonating with contemporary equality discourse) offer genuine, low-risk bridges to secular readers when handled with the required Christ-centered anchoring.

Recommended actions

1. Adopt and publish this curriculum’s stated working readings for the six highest-stakes denominational-contest terms (baptism, filled with the Spirit, tongues, household baptism, church governance, breaking of bread) before Phase 2 content generation begins, so all parallel workers apply identical transparency language.
2. Route all 20 theologian-review doctrines and all Critical/High terms through mandatory human review per the escalation rules in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md; do not allow automated-only approval for any segment touching these.
3. Build a standing exclusion checklist (NWT’s Acts 20:28 alteration; KJV’s Acts 12:4 “Easter”) into automated validation, not just editorial awareness.
4. Lock cross-references between Acts and Romans (13:39 ↔ Romans 3:20-28; 15:11 ↔ Romans 3:24; 4:12 ↔ Romans 10:9-13) to identical clarifying language in both directions.
5. Prioritize Phase 2 scheduling on the assumption that Acts requires a higher proportion of theologian-review throughput than Romans did — do not carry Romans’ review-capacity assumptions forward unadjusted.