Linguistic Gap Analysis

Linguistic Gap Analysis: Leviticus (English → English)

1. Purpose and Method

This document identifies, for the destination language (English), where ordinary contemporary vocabulary is missing entirely (no ready word/phrase exists for a Levitical concept), where vocabulary exists but sits in a crowded semantic neighborhood (multiple competing senses collide and must be actively fenced apart), and where a transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision must be made and defended. It concludes with a ranked list of this curriculum’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 routing.

Leviticus poses a distinctive version of the challenge already documented in the baseline Romans package: rather than mostly abstract soteriological vocabulary (grace, justification, election), Leviticus is dominated by concrete ritual-cultic vocabulary for which contemporary English has no living practice to anchor the word to at all — not even a faded or secularized version of the practice, as English speakers still have with “grace” (a grace period) or “election” (a political vote). This produces a distinct fourth risk category, already flagged in the core glossary as Ritual/Cultic Distance (RCD): the gap is not a wrong meaning crowding out the right one, but a total absence of lived referent, requiring the concept to be built from zero rather than corrected from a false start.

All risk tiers, definitions, and the false-friend/denominational-contest/obsolescence framework are inherited unchanged from the baseline doctrine_risk_registry.json. RCD is this curriculum’s addition to that framework, as already established in 08_core_glossary.md.

2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

Doctrine	Available English Term(s)	Weaknesses of Available Vocabulary	Recommended Strategy
The Sacrificial System and Atonement	”atonement,” “offering,” “sacrifice,” “sin offering,” “guilt offering”	English has one general word, “offering,” for at least five structurally distinct Levitical categories (burnt, grain, peace, sin, guilt), and “sacrifice” carries a diluted secular metaphorical sense (“sacrificing time for a career”); “atonement” is false-friend-critical (see §6). No single English word preserves the mandated, blood-based, substitutionary character against the dominant “voluntary donation” association of “offering.”	Retain “offering” as the umbrella term but require each offering-type compound (burnt/grain/peace/sin/guilt offering) on first use per document, with the mandated-not-voluntary distinction stated explicitly per the bible_term_registry.json “offering” entry. Reserve “sacrifice” for the general theological concept, glossed once.
The Holiness of God and the Call to Be Holy	”holy,” “holiness,” “sanctify,” “set apart,” “consecrate”	English clusters five distinct Hebrew roots (qadosh, hivdil, qiddesh, chillel [its negation], niqdashti) into two or three overlapping English words, collapsing distinctions Leviticus itself keeps separate (e.g., being holy vs. being set apart vs. actively consecrating vs. profaning). No English word captures graded holiness (a spectrum, not binary).	Fence “holy” (status/character), “set apart” (God’s distinguishing act), and “consecrate” (ritual installation into that status) as three related but distinct moves, explicitly diagrammed rather than used interchangeably. Introduce “most holy” as a technical grade-marker, not a mere intensifier.
The Priesthood and Mediation	”priest,” “mediator,” “consecrate,” “ordain"	"Priest” carries live English-speaking-Christian denominational contest (sacramental/apostolic-succession sense vs. “priesthood of all believers” sense) and general post-Christian clergy-trust erosion (cf. baseline “church” entry). “Mediator” is under-used in ordinary speech (mild obsolescence) but has no competing wrong sense.	Use “priest” as the required historical/technical term (it is what the text says), but pair it on first substantive use with “mediator” as an explanatory gloss, and state the curriculum’s own reading of how this pattern relates to Christ (Hebrews) without adjudicating the wider ordination-practice debate among English-speaking traditions.
Clean and Unclean	”clean,” “unclean,” “pure,” “impure”	CRITICAL false-friend collision with hygiene/germ-theory usage; “pure/impure” additionally collides with the sexual-purity-culture controversy in some English-speaking evangelical subcultures, importing unwanted moral-purity baggage into what is often a non-moral ritual-access category (e.g., childbirth, menstruation).	Use “clean/unclean” (matching the historic English Bible tradition) but require the explicit fourfold grid (holy / common / unclean / clean, per 10:10) on first substantive teaching of the topic, and explicitly disclaim both the hygiene-science misreading and the purity-culture moral-judgment misreading in the same breath.
The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)	“Day of Atonement,” “Yom Kippur,” “mercy seat"	"Day of Atonement” inherits all of “atonement“‘s false-friend risk; “Yom Kippur” (transliterated Hebrew, not Greek/English) is unfamiliar to many Gentile Christian readers despite being the more historically precise term still in living Jewish liturgical use today — a genuine linguistic asset unique among this book’s vocabulary.	Use “Day of Atonement” as the primary English title (matching most English Bible translations) but introduce “Yom Kippur” explicitly as the living Hebrew/Jewish name for the same day, both to build a bridge to contemporary Jewish practice and to avoid implying the observance is a purely ancient, defunct ritual.
The Scapegoat and Substitution	”scapegoat,” “substitute,” “sin-bearer”	CRITICAL — see §6. “Scapegoat” is the single most inverted false friend in the entire curriculum. “Substitute” and “sin-bearer” are accurate but under-used/obsolescent, carrying no competing wrong sense — genuine assets once introduced.	Retain “scapegoat” (it is historically the English Bible’s own word, coined by Tyndale directly from this passage) but require the explicit correction on every use: this is a divinely authorized, sanctioned substitution, the opposite of the idiom’s “unjust blame” sense. Introduce “substitute” and “sin-bearer” as the preferred teaching vocabulary alongside it.
Sabbath and Sacred Time	”Sabbath,” “rest,” “sacred time,” “holy day,” “holiday"	"Holiday” has fully secularized (etymologically “holy day” but now meaning vacation/leisure); “rest” collides with contemporary wellness-culture “self-care” framing, which risks making commanded covenant-sign rest sound like an optional lifestyle choice.	Avoid “holiday” entirely as a rendering. Use “Sabbath” and “appointed feast/sacred assembly” as technical terms, explicitly distinguished from both civic holidays and therapeutic self-care rest, per the bible_term_registry.json “sabbath” entry.
Love of Neighbor (Leviticus 19:18)	“love,” “neighbor,” “love your neighbor as yourself"	"Love” is heavily sentimentalized/romanticized in contemporary English (feeling-based) versus Leviticus’s volitional, covenant-loyalty, practical-action sense (defined concretely by its context: no grudges, no vengeance, no partiality). “Neighbor” risks being narrowed to “people I like” or wrongly assumed already fully universal in its 19:18 scope.	Retain the traditional wording (needed for continuity with its NT quotation by Jesus and Paul) but require the concrete behavioral content of 19:11-18 and the scope-expansion to the “stranger” in 19:33-34 to be taught together, never quoting 19:18 in isolation from its own defining context.

3. Missing Vocabulary (No Ready English Word)

These are concepts for which English possesses no dedicated word at all — not even a degraded or secularized one — requiring the concept to be built essentially from scratch (RCD, Ritual/Cultic Distance):

Graded holiness (a spectrum from common → holy → most holy). English “holy” is binary in ordinary use; there is no single word for “a further degree of holiness.” Strategy: explicit teaching diagram, not a single replacement word.
Nephesh’s holistic self (Lev 17:11’s “the life is in the blood”). English forces a choice between “life,” “soul,” or “self,” each importing either a materialist or a dualist frame nephesh does not carry. Strategy: use “life” as the default rendering but explicitly flag and set aside the popular soul/body dualism.
The distinct sin-offering/guilt-offering pairing (chatta’t vs. asham). English “sin offering” and “guilt offering” sound like near-synonyms; the reparative/restitution dimension distinguishing asham has no dedicated English word. Strategy: teach the distinction explicitly rather than trusting the compound nouns to carry it.
Shegagah vs. presumptuous/high-handed sin (unintentional vs. deliberate defiance, cf. Numbers 15:30 for the contrast term). English has no single crisp antonym pair; “accidental” undersells shegagah’s moral seriousness, and “deliberate” alone undersells the covenantal defiance in view. Strategy: paraphrase both sides explicitly per occurrence rather than rely on a stock word pair.
Tum’ah as a genuinely neutral ritual-access category (not moral, not hygienic). English has no word for impurity that isn’t already claimed by either the hygiene frame or the moral-guilt frame. Strategy: explicit triple disclaimer (not hygiene, not necessarily moral, but ritual-access status) on first teaching use, matching the bible_term_registry.json “unclean” entry.
The kapporet’s specific spatial-theological function (the literal geographic point where atoning blood meets divine presence). “Mercy seat” (furniture image) and “atonement cover” (functional gloss) each capture only half the concept. Strategy: retain both terms side by side, per the core glossary’s existing hybrid rendering.
A single word for “sojourner-with-covenant-protections” (ger). English “stranger,” “foreigner,” “immigrant,” “alien,” and “sojourner” each carry either legal, political, or archaic connotations ger does not straightforwardly have. Strategy: use the hybrid “stranger/sojourner (foreigner)” already fixed in the core glossary and explicitly flag rather than resolve the term’s contemporary immigration-policy charge.

4. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Needing Fencing

Unlike missing vocabulary, these are neighborhoods where English has too many overlapping words, each importing a different unwanted association, requiring active boundary-drawing so that distinct Hebrew concepts are not silently flattened into one blurred English idea.

Neighborhood	Competing English Words in Play	Fencing Required
Holy / Set apart / Consecrated / Sacred / Sanctified	holy, holiness, set apart, separated, consecrated, sacred, sanctified, hallowed	Fence “holy” (God’s own character and derivative status) from “set apart” (the distinguishing act) from “consecrate” (ritual installation) from “sanctified” (both the doctrinal, Spirit-worked sense already fixed in the baseline for believers, and the distinct reflexive sense in 22:32, “I will be sanctified,” applied to God himself). Do not use these five words interchangeably as stylistic variation — each marks a different theological move.
Offering / Sacrifice / Gift / Donation	offering, sacrifice, gift, oblation, donation, contribution	Fence Levitical “offering” (mandated, often blood-based, substitutionary) away from the contemporary “collection-plate” association of a voluntary charitable gift. Never use “donation” or “contribution” as synonyms for a Levitical offering.
Sin / Iniquity / Transgression / Trespass / Guilt	sin, iniquity, transgression, trespass, guilt, wrongdoing	Fence the Leviticus 16:16, 21 triad (avon/pesha/chatta’t) apart from a single flattened “sin,” per the core glossary’s “iniquities/transgressions/sins” entry: iniquity = guilt/liability incurred; transgression = willful rebellion; sin = general moral failure (“missing the mark”). Also fence “guilt” (an objective, addressable condition in Leviticus) away from its dominant contemporary sense as a subjective emotional state (“feeling guilty”).
Clean / Pure / Unclean / Impure / Defiled / Unholy	clean, pure, unclean, impure, defiled, unholy, dirty	Fence ritual “unclean” away from (a) hygiene/germ-theory “dirty,” (b) sexual-purity-culture “impure,” and (c) moral “unholy”/sinful. A person can be ritually unclean (e.g., after childbirth) with zero moral culpability — this must be stated explicitly every time, not left to context.
Atone / Redeem / Save / Forgive / Justify	atone, atonement, redeem, save, forgive, justify, reconcile	Fence Levitical “atonement” (a ritual mechanism God provides, applied via a substitute’s blood) away from the baseline’s Romans-registry “justification” (a forensic legal declaration) and “salvation” (holistic deliverance) — Leviticus’s atonement is a real historical anchor and forward-pointer to these New Testament doctrines, but this curriculum must not silently equate the Old Testament ritual mechanism with the New Testament doctrinal category before the connection is explicitly drawn.
Priest / Pastor / Minister / Clergy	priest, pastor, minister, clergy, cleric	Fence the Levitical, Aaronic, sacrificial priesthood away from contemporary “pastor/minister” without first explicitly addressing the denominational-contest question (see doctrine matrix above); do not casually substitute “minister” as if the offices were equivalent.
Law / Statute / Ordinance / Commandment / Rule	law, statute, ordinance, commandment, rule, regulation	Fence “statute forever” (a permanently binding divine ordinance) away from the contemporary sense of a civil “statute” (a law passed by a legislature, amendable by later legislatures) — Leviticus’s statutes are not analogous to revisable human legislation.
Blemish / Defect / Disability / Imperfection	blemish, defect, flaw, disability, imperfection	Fence the priestly/sacrificial ritual-typological category (used of both animals and priests in chs. 1, 21-22) away from any implication about the inherent worth or dignity of persons with disabilities today; this fencing is a pastoral-sensitivity requirement, not merely a lexical one.

5. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Azazel	Transliterate, with gloss “the goat sent away”	No adequate English paraphrase exists given genuine scholarly disagreement over the referent (place, ritual function, or wilderness power); transliteration honestly preserves the ambiguity rather than resolving it by translation choice. Must anticipate and set aside the fantasy/comic-book demon-villain association before teaching.
Molech	Transliterate (proper noun)	Standard practice for a foreign deity’s proper name; requires background explanation of ancient Near Eastern child-sacrifice cult practice, not a paraphrase.
Yom Kippur	Transliterate, introduced alongside the paraphrase “Day of Atonement”	Unique asset in this curriculum: unlike most Hebrew ritual vocabulary, this term remains in living contemporary use (modern Jewish observance), making transliteration a bridge to a real, ongoing practice rather than a purely historical artifact.
Kapporet	Paraphrase (hybrid): “mercy seat (atonement cover)“	Transliteration would be opaque with zero contemporary content; the existing hybrid English rendering already balances traditional-phrase familiarity with functional clarity, matching the baseline’s practice for “seed of David.”
Kipper / atonement	Paraphrase: “atonement / make atonement”	The traditional English theological term already exists and is well-established across English Bible translation history; the task here is correction of a false friend, not introduction of a foreign term. Transliterating (e.g., retaining “kipper”) would create unnecessary new vocabulary where the real problem is a wrong definition attached to a familiar word.
Tsara’at	Paraphrase: “defiling skin disease,” with “(traditionally ‘leprosy’)” retained as a bridging gloss	Direct transliteration is unfamiliar and unhelpful; the traditional English word “leprosy” is a false friend (conflated with modern Hansen’s disease) but too embedded in English Bible tradition and hymnody/idiom to drop silently — it must be named and corrected, not erased.
Qorban / general “offering”	Paraphrase: “offering”	No transliteration precedent in English Bible tradition; paraphrase is standard and adequate once fenced against the “voluntary donation” false friend (§4).
Nephesh (“life is in the blood”)	Paraphrase, context-dependent: “life” (primary), with “self” as an occasional clarifying gloss	Transliterating “nephesh” would introduce a new technical term for a concept better served by careful contextual English wording; the risk is dualistic misreading of “soul,” not unfamiliarity with a foreign word, so paraphrase with explicit correction is the right tool.
Ger	Paraphrase (hybrid): “stranger / sojourner (foreigner)“	As above (§3.7); no single English word suffices, and transliteration would add an unnecessary new vocabulary item for a concept better handled by a stacked English gloss.
Shabbat / Shabbaton	Paraphrase: “Sabbath” / “Sabbath of solemn rest"	"Sabbath” is already a fully naturalized English loanword (technically a transliteration that has become the standard English term); no further transliteration decision is needed, but the doubled intensive form (shabbat shabbaton) requires the explicit paraphrase “solemn rest” to convey the doubling, since English has no native way to double a noun for emphasis as Hebrew does.
Yovel / Jubilee	Paraphrase (already naturalized): “Jubilee”	Like “Sabbath,” “Jubilee” is a fully naturalized English loanword from this very passage; the decision here is not transliteration vs. paraphrase but active correction of the term’s now-dominant royal/institutional-anniversary sense (§6) before its actual biblical content (land return, debt release, slave freedom) can be taught.
Cherem (“devoted thing”)	Paraphrase: “devoted thing”	Chosen specifically to scope this curriculum’s usage to Leviticus 27’s narrow property-dedication sense, deliberately avoiding the transliteration “herem,” which in wider Old Testament studies carries the separate and far more fraught association with warfare/destruction texts outside this book’s scope.

6. Full-Book Chapter Sweep (Leviticus 1–27)

Every chapter has been reviewed for load-bearing vocabulary. Chapters contributing no new gap-analysis findings beyond terms already logged are noted as reviewed with cross-reference only.

Ch. 1: Burnt offering, offering, laying on of hand(s), pleasing aroma, blemish (implicit, “without defect”). Establishes the “offering ≠ donation” fencing issue (§4) from the book’s first verses.
Ch. 2: Grain offering. Flags the KJV “meat offering” false-friend trap explicitly (§5, core glossary).
Ch. 3: Peace offering, statute forever (fat prohibition), laying on of hand(s). No new gap beyond §2/§4 entries already logged.
Ch. 4: Sin offering, unintentional sin, laying on of hand(s), congregation, atonement. First full appearance of the sin-offering/guilt-offering missing-distinction gap (§3.3).
Ch. 5: Guilt offering, sin, unclean (contact-transmitted), unintentional sin. Reinforces §3.3 and §3.4 (shegagah gap).
Ch. 6: “Law of the [offering]” (torah), most holy, priest, altar. Reviewed — reuses baseline “law” entry; no new gap.
Ch. 7: Guilt offering, peace offering, vow, cut off, blood (eating prohibition). “Cut off” ambiguity flagged (§7 below).
Ch. 8: Consecrate/ordain, anointed, blood on ear/thumb/toe, tent of meeting, altar, blemish. Full priesthood-installation vocabulary; reinforces the priest/pastor fencing issue (§4).
Ch. 9: Burnt offering, glory, altar, congregation, peace offering, sin offering. Glory’s “glory days” erosion risk (baseline) is anchored here in a concrete historical event.
Ch. 10: Unauthorized fire, the holy/common/unclean/clean fourfold grid, set apart (implicit), profane (implicit). Single most important chapter for the graded-holiness missing-vocabulary gap (§3.1).
Ch. 11: Unclean/clean, detestable, “be holy, for I am holy” (first occurrence of the book’s programmatic refrain). Anchors the clean/unclean crowded-neighborhood fencing (§4).
Ch. 12: Unclean, days of purification, clean (childbirth). Purity-culture-sensitivity flag applies directly.
Ch. 13: Defiling skin disease, unclean/clean, priestly diagnosis. Anchors the tsara’at/“leprosy” transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision (§5).
Ch. 14: Defiling skin disease (houses and garments included), unclean/clean, cleansing rites, blood. Extends ch. 13’s gap; no new category.
Ch. 15: Unclean, days of purification (bodily discharge). Reinforces §3.5 (tum’ah neutrality gap).
Ch. 16 (CORE PASSAGE): Atonement, mercy seat, veil, most holy, statute forever, afflict yourselves, Sabbath of solemn rest, lots, once a year, Azazel, scapegoat, lay both hands, confess, iniquities/transgressions/sins triad, remote area, outside the camp, congregation, priest, blood. This chapter alone contains four of this curriculum’s seven Critical-tier terms (atonement, the fourfold grid as background, scapegoat, and — by direct extension — the unclean/clean framework governing the entire ritual). See §7 ranked list.
Ch. 17: The life is in the blood, cut off, sin offering, blood-eating prohibition. Anchors §3.2 (nephesh gap) as the book’s own stated rationale for the whole sacrificial-blood system.
Ch. 18: Abomination, profane, cut off, Molech. First appearance of “abomination“‘s contested-contemporary-application flag.
Ch. 19: Love your neighbor as yourself, stranger/sojourner, gleaning, “be holy” refrain repeated, assorted ethical statutes. Core chapter for the Love of Neighbor doctrine; anchors §2’s sentimentalization/scope fencing.
Ch. 20: Molech, cut off, abomination, holy/set apart, profane. Reviewed — reinforces chs. 18/10 findings; no new category.
Ch. 21: Priestly holiness standards, blemish, most holy, anointed. Anchors the disability-sensitivity fencing under “blemish” (§4).
Ch. 22: Profane, “I will be sanctified” (reflexive), blemish, eating holy things. First appearance of the reflexive-sanctification distinct-sense gap (core glossary “sanctified_reflexive”).
Ch. 23: Appointed feasts/sacred assemblies, festival proper names, burnt/grain/peace offerings (recap), Sabbath, statute forever, Day of Atonement referenced. Anchors the Sabbath/sacred-time doctrine’s “holiday” fencing issue (§2).
Ch. 24: Bread of the Presence, eye for eye, profaning God’s name (blasphemy). Anchors the “eye for eye” vengeance-cycle misreading flag (§7).
Ch. 25: Sabbath year, Jubilee, redeem/redemption/kinsman-redeemer. Anchors the Jubilee royal-anniversary false-friend (§7) and the redeem/coupon-redemption false friend.
Ch. 26: Covenant, “I will walk among you,” blessing/curse framework. Reviewed — reuses baseline “covenant” entry; strong positive teaching anchor for the relational (not contractual) sense, no new gap.
Ch. 27: Vow, valuation, devoted thing (herem). Anchors the deliberate scope-limitation decision under “devoted thing” (§5).

Coverage confirmation: all 27 chapters of Leviticus have been reviewed. No chapter was silently omitted.

7. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity of (a) how confidently readers will supply a wrong meaning and (b) doctrinal centrality to this curriculum’s eight assigned doctrines and its core passage (Leviticus 16:1-34).

“Scapegoat” (ch. 16) — CRITICAL. The single highest risk in the entire curriculum. Contemporary English “scapegoat” is a live, extremely common idiom for someone unjustly blamed for others’ wrongdoing — the near-exact inversion of a divinely authorized, sanctioned substitution. The drift is unusually subtle because the English word was coined directly from this very passage (Tyndale, 1530), so readers correctly sense a biblical connection while inheriting a meaning nearly opposite the original rite. Requires mandatory explicit correction on every use.
“Atonement” / “make atonement” (chs. 1, 4-9, 12, 14, 16-17, 19, 23) — CRITICAL. Ordinary English “atone/atonement” means self-generated moral repair through one’s own effort or remorse — nearly the opposite of Leviticus’s sense of a divinely provided remedy applied through a substitute. This is the Leviticus-book equivalent of “justification” in the baseline Romans registry: the single most confidently misread term, precisely because every reader already has a strong, wrong, ready-made definition.
The holy/common/unclean/clean fourfold grid (ch. 10, governing chs. 11-15) — CRITICAL. Readers habitually collapse four distinct categories into a simple two-category good/bad binary, missing that something can be “common” without being “unclean.” Because this grid structures the entire clean/unclean legislative block and underlies the Day of Atonement’s ritual logic, a wrong mental model here corrupts comprehension of roughly a third of the book.
“Clean” / “unclean” (chs. 5, 10-16, 22) — CRITICAL. Dominant contemporary hygiene/germ-theory association produces a persistent, confidently-held misreading of these laws as ancient food-safety or medical science, a misreading common even in well-meaning popular apologetics. Compounded by purity-culture-controversy associations importing unwanted moral-judgment baggage onto non-moral ritual-access categories (e.g., childbirth).
“Defiling skin disease” / “leprosy” (chs. 13-14) — CRITICAL. The traditional English rendering “leprosy” names a specific, identifiable modern disease (Hansen’s disease) that tsara’at’s actual scope (skin, garment, and house conditions) does not match; readers assuming a 1:1 medical equivalence miss that the text’s concern is ritual-diagnostic and community-purity-related, not epidemiological.
“Jubilee” (ch. 25) — CRITICAL. Contemporary English usage is now dominated by royal/institutional anniversary celebrations (e.g., a monarch’s Silver/Golden/Platinum Jubilee), a purely celebratory sense carrying zero debt-release, land-return, or slave-liberation content. The false association must be explicitly named and set aside before the term’s actual content can be taught, exactly as with the baseline’s “Abba”/ABBA pop-group caution.
“Love your neighbor as yourself” (ch. 19) — HIGH. Contemporary English “love” is heavily sentimentalized (feeling-based) against Leviticus’s volitional, covenant-loyalty, concretely-defined sense (no grudges, no vengeance, no partiality, defined by its own surrounding verses). Compounded by a genuine scope question (does 19:18’s “neighbor” already include the “stranger” of 19:33-34, or is that an extension?) that this curriculum must state rather than silently resolve.
“Priest” and “consecrate/ordain” (chs. 6, 8, 16, 21) — HIGH, denominational contest. English-speaking Christian traditions disagree sharply on how the Aaronic priesthood pattern carries into Christian ministry (sacramental/apostolic-succession priesthood vs. “priesthood of all believers”); this curriculum must state its own reading transparently rather than assume consensus, per the baseline’s denominational-transparency rule.
“Redeem” / “redemption” / “kinsman-redeemer” (ch. 25) — HIGH. Dominated in contemporary usage by commercial coupon-redemption and the popular “redemption arc” narrative trope (a character earning back reputation through their own effort), both differing from the Levitical picture of a qualified relative rescuing someone who cannot rescue themselves.
“Eye for eye” (ch. 24) — HIGH. Widely and popularly misread as sanctioning personal vengeance or an escalating cycle of retaliation, when its actual function is a judicial limiting principle capping retaliation at proportional measure — and its distinct register from Jesus’s teaching on personal forgiveness (Matthew 5:38-39) must be stated explicitly, not blurred.
“Abomination” (chs. 18, 20) — HIGH, live pastoral/denominational sensitivity. Carries contested contemporary application debates within English-speaking Christianity; this curriculum states the term’s Levitical content and function plainly while flagging, without adjudicating, the range of views among faithful English-speaking Christians on contemporary ethical application.
“Blemish” (chs. 1, 21-22) — HIGH, disability-sensitivity concern. Risks being read, if presented without care, as devaluing persons with physical disabilities; requires the ritual-typological function (pointing to the system’s demand for unblemished mediation, fulfilled in Christ) to be held together explicitly with Scripture’s affirmation elsewhere of the full dignity of persons with disabilities.

8. Summary Table: Gap Type by Doctrine

Doctrine	Dominant Gap Type(s)
Sacrificial System and Atonement	False-Friend Drift (atonement); Missing Vocabulary (sin/guilt offering distinction, nephesh)
Holiness of God / Call to Be Holy	Crowded Neighborhood (holy/set apart/consecrated); Missing Vocabulary (graded holiness)
Priesthood and Mediation	Denominational Contest (priest, consecrate/ordain)
Clean and Unclean	False-Friend Drift (clean, unclean, leprosy); Missing Vocabulary (tum’ah neutrality)
Day of Atonement	False-Friend Drift (inherited from “atonement”); Transliteration decision (Yom Kippur)
Scapegoat and Substitution	False-Friend Drift (scapegoat) — highest-severity single item in this curriculum
Sabbath and Sacred Time	Crowded Neighborhood (holiday/rest/Sabbath); False-Friend Drift (Jubilee)
Love of Neighbor	False-Friend Drift (sentimentalized “love”); Scope ambiguity (“neighbor”)

This document extends and does not contradict assets/translation_memory.json (baseline, Romans), assets/bible_term_registry.json, and analysis/08_core_glossary.md. All rendering decisions above are consistent with and cross-reference those registries; where this document identifies a gap not yet logged in the term registry, it should be added at Phase 2 per the baseline’s translation-memory update procedure (see 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §“Translation Memory Load and Enforcement Instructions”).

Library content is free and openly licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — share and adapt it for non-commercial use, with attribution to tri-bible.ai.