Core Glossary
Core Glossary — Luke (Full Book)
This glossary consolidates every load-bearing term identified in 07_semantic_analysis.md, drawn from the core passage (Luke 4:16-21) and every chapter of Luke 1-24. Per TRI Phase 1 rules:
- Terms already recorded in the baseline Romans
translation_memory.json/bible_term_registry.jsonare marked “Reuse baseline exactly” in the Baseline Cross-Reference column, and their established risk tier, rejected alternatives, and notes carry over unchanged into this curriculum. - Terms new to this curriculum (not present in the Romans baseline) receive a fresh risk assessment here, to be added to translation memory in Phase 1 Step 2.
- Risk tiers use the same framework as the baseline: Critical / High / Medium / Low.
A. Terms Reused Exactly from the Romans Baseline
| Term | Greek / Transliteration | Key Luke Occurrences | Risk (per baseline) | Baseline Cross-Reference | Curriculum-Specific Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gospel / good news | εὐαγγέλιον, εὐαγγελίζω / euangelion, euangelizō | 2:10; 4:18, 43; 7:22; 8:1; 9:6; 20:1 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | Verbal form (euangelizō) is doctrinally load-bearing at 4:18 — “to preach good news to the poor” — establishing the addressee (the poor) as intrinsic to the gospel’s content. |
| grace / favor | χάρις / charis | 1:30; 2:40, 52; 4:22 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | 1:30’s “found favor with God” applies the term concretely to Mary — apply baseline’s “unmerited, not merit-based” clarification to this specific narrative instance. |
| faith | πίστις / pistis | 5:20; 7:9, 50; 8:25, 48; 17:19; 18:8, 42; 22:32 | High | Reuse baseline exactly | Repeatedly applied to Gentiles (7:9) and social outcasts (7:50), reinforcing Savior-for-All-Nations doctrine. |
| righteousness / righteous | δικαιοσύνη, δίκαιος / dikaiosynē, dikaios | 1:6, 17, 75; 2:25; 5:32; 15:7; 18:9; 23:47 | High | Reuse baseline exactly | Zechariah/Elizabeth’s “righteous… blameless” (1:6) and the centurion’s “righteous man” (23:47) bracket the Gospel; guard against the baseline’s “self-righteous/smug” false-friend at both ends. |
| justification / justified | δικαίωσις, δικαιόω / dikaiōsis, dikaioō | 18:14 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | 18:14’s tax collector “went down to his house justified” is the clearest narrative enactment of this doctrine outside Paul’s letters; cross-reference directly to Romans. |
| salvation / saved | σωτηρία, σῴζω / sōtēria, sōzō | 1:69, 71, 77; 2:11 (title Savior); 7:50; 8:48; 9:24; 17:19; 18:42; 19:9-10 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | Luke’s sōzō wordplay spans physical healing and spiritual salvation with one verb (8:48; 17:19; 18:42); English translations obscure this by using different words — must be flagged explicitly. |
| apostle(s) | ἀπόστολος / apostolos | 6:13; 9:10; 11:49; 22:14; 24:10 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | 6:13’s formal appointment of the Twelve as apostles. |
| called / calling | κλητός, κλῆσις / klētos, klēsis | (conceptually present in disciple-calling narratives, e.g., 5:10-11, 27-28; 9:59-62; distinct Greek vocabulary — see “disciple” below) | High | Reuse baseline exactly | Luke’s calling narratives use kaleō/proskaleomai and discipleship vocabulary rather than the specific klētos/klēsis noun forms common in Paul; the underlying doctrine (divine initiative, not self-selection) is identical and should be taught using the baseline’s framework. |
| holy | ἅγιος / hagios | throughout, esp. of the Holy Spirit; 1:35, 49, 70, 72 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| saints | ἅγιοι / hagioi | (rare in Luke’s Gospel itself; more frequent in Acts) | High | Reuse baseline exactly | Minimal direct occurrence in Luke’s Gospel; flagged for completeness and forward reference to Acts. |
| sanctification | ἁγιασμός / hagiasmos | (not a distinct Lukan Gospel term; conceptually present in holiness/discipleship material) | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| adoption | υἱοθεσία / huiothesia | (not a distinct Lukan Gospel term; sonship/inheritance themes present, e.g., 15:11-32’s father-son restoration) | Low | Reuse baseline exactly | The prodigal son narrative (ch. 15) is a strong illustrative, though not lexical, parallel to the adoption doctrine’s full-restoration-of-status emphasis. |
| resurrection | ἀνάστασις / anastasis | 2:34 (implied); 9:22; 14:14; 18:33; 20:27-38; 24:1-53 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | 24:5’s “why seek the living among the dead” is the strongest single Lukan text for the baseline’s “state plainly as historical fact” mandate. |
| Lord | κύριος / kyrios | throughout; 1:43; 2:11; 6:5; 10:1; 20:41-44; 24:34 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | 20:41-44’s “David’s Lord” riddle (Psalm 110) is a key cross-reference to Romans 1:3-4. |
| Son of God | υἱὸς θεοῦ / huios theou | 1:35; 3:38; 4:3, 9, 41; 8:28; 22:70 | Medium (baseline notes Critical risk for the closely related deity-of-Christ doctrine) | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| incarnation | (theological category; cf. ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, John 1:14) | 1:31-35; 2:1-20 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | Luke’s infancy narrative is the primary Gospel-of-Luke locus for this doctrine; the “overshadow” (episkiazō) term (1:35) is new and requires its own entry (see Section B). |
| peace | εἰρήνη / eirēnē | 1:79; 2:14, 29; 7:50; 8:48; 10:5-6; 19:38, 42; 24:36 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | 2:14’s “peace on earth” deliberately echoes and contests Roman Pax Romana propaganda — new curriculum-specific note supplements baseline entry. |
| thanksgiving | εὐχαριστία (concept; cf. εὐχαριστέω) / eucharistia | 17:16; 18:11; 22:17, 19 | Low | Reuse baseline exactly | 22:19’s “he gave thanks” at the Last Supper is the root of the term “Eucharist” in later Christian tradition — worth noting for denominational awareness. |
| fellowship | κοινωνία (concept; limited direct Lukan Gospel occurrence) | table fellowship scenes throughout (5:29-32; 7:36-50; 15:1-2; 19:1-10; 24:30-35) | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | Luke’s Gospel enacts “fellowship” narratively (shared table with sinners) far more than it uses the lexical term itself; curriculum material should draw this connection explicitly. |
| church | ἐκκλησία (not a Lukan Gospel term; appears extensively in Acts) | — | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | Not present in the Gospel of Luke itself; flagged for forward reference to Acts. |
| kingdom of God | βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ / basileia tou theou | 4:43; 6:20; 7:28; 8:1, 10; 9:2, 60, 62; 10:9, 11; 11:20; 13:18-29; 14:15; 17:20-21; 18:16-25, 29; 19:11; 21:31; 22:16-18; 23:42 (implied via “kingdom”); 22:29-30 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | Among the most pervasive terms in Luke; 17:20-21’s “within/among you” ambiguity requires the baseline’s ambiguity-handling protocol (present both readings transparently). |
| law | νόμος / nomos | 2:22-27, 39; 10:26; 16:16-17; 24:44 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| sin | ἁμαρτία / hamartia | 1:77; 3:3; 5:20-24, 32; 7:37-49; 11:4; 13:2-4; 15:1-2, 7, 10, 18, 21; 17:3-4; 19:7; 24:47 | High | Reuse baseline exactly | Densely present throughout, especially bound up with the aphesis (“forgiveness/release”) word family — see Section B. |
| Gentiles | ἔθνη / ethnē | 2:32; 21:24; 24:47 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | 2:32’s “light for revelation to the Gentiles” is a foundational text for the Savior-for-All-Nations doctrine. |
| glory | δόξα / doxa | 2:9, 14, 32; 9:31-32; 17:18; 19:38; 21:27; 24:26 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| obedience of faith | (conceptually present; no exact Lukan phrase match) | discipleship-obedience material throughout, esp. 5:5, 11, 27-28; 8:21; 11:28 | High | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| power of God | δύναμις θεοῦ / dynamis theou | 1:35; 4:14, 36; 5:17; 6:19; 9:1; 10:19; 21:27; 24:49 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | 24:49’s “power from on high” is the direct narrative bridge to Acts/Pentecost. |
| Messiah / Christ | Χριστός / Christos | 2:11, 26; 3:15; 4:41; 9:20; 20:41; 22:67; 23:2, 35, 39; 24:26, 46 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | 9:20’s “the Christ of God” (Peter’s confession) is the Gospel’s structural turning point. |
| prophet | προφήτης / prophētēs | 1:76; 3:4; 4:17, 24-27; 7:16, 26, 39; 9:8, 19; 11:47-50; 13:33-34; 16:29-31; 20:6; 24:19, 25, 27, 44 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | 4:24’s “no prophet is accepted in his hometown” is a direct extension of the core passage narrative. |
| prophecy | προφητεία / prophēteia | (fulfillment-of-prophecy concept pervasive; esp. 4:21; 24:25-27, 44-47) | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | 24:25-27, 44 form the Gospel’s climactic statement on prophecy fulfillment, bookending 4:21. |
| covenant | διαθήκη / diathēkē | 1:72; 22:20 | High | Reuse baseline exactly | 22:20’s “new covenant in my blood” requires new denominational-transparency treatment for Lord’s Supper theology (see Section B). |
| election | ἐκλογή (concept; cf. ἐκλεκτός, ἐκλέγομαι) / eklogē | 6:13 (chose the Twelve); 9:35 (“my Chosen One”); 18:7 (“his elect/chosen ones”) | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | 9:35’s application to Christ himself (unique election) should be distinguished from 18:7’s application to believers (derivative election). |
| intercession | (concept; cf. Jesus’ prayer for Peter, 22:32) | 22:32 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| providence | (concept; cf. sovereignty/human-responsibility tension, esp. 13:34-35; 22:22) | 13:34-35; 22:22 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | 13:34-35’s lament over Jerusalem holds divine sovereignty and human responsibility together without resolving the tension; treat with the same care as the baseline’s Romans 8:28 guidance. |
| mission | (concept; ἀποστέλλω word family) | 9:1-6; 10:1-12; 24:47-49 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| David | Δαυίδ / David | 1:27, 32, 69; 2:4, 11; 3:31; 6:3; 18:38-39; 20:41-44 | Low | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| Israel | Ἰσραήλ / Israēl | 1:16, 54, 68, 80; 2:25, 32, 34; 4:25, 27; 7:9; 22:30; 24:21 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| Jesus | Ἰησοῦς / Iēsous | throughout | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| God | θεός / theos | throughout | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| Holy Spirit | Πνεῦμα Ἅγιον / Pneuma Hagion | 1:15, 35, 41, 67; 2:25-27; 3:16, 22; 4:1, 14, 18; 10:21; 11:13; 12:10, 12; 24:49 | Critical | Reuse baseline exactly | Present and active from before Jesus’ birth through the Gospel’s close — foundational text-base for the curriculum doctrine “The Holy Spirit’s Work in Salvation History.” |
| Father | Πατήρ / Patēr | 2:49; 6:36; 10:21-22; 11:2, 13; 12:30, 32; 15:12-32; 22:42; 23:34, 46; 24:49 | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | 11:2’s Lord’s Prayer address and 22:42’s Gethsemane submission are key model texts. |
| exhort | παρακαλέω (concept; limited direct Lukan Gospel occurrence relative to Epistles) | 3:18 | Low | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| seed of David | (concept; cf. 1:32-33, 69; 2:4; 20:41-44) | — | Medium | Reuse baseline exactly | |
| imputed righteousness | (not a distinct Lukan narrative term; conceptually anticipated by 18:14’s justification narrative) | 18:14 | High | Reuse baseline exactly |
B. New Terms Introduced by Luke (Not in Romans Baseline)
| Term | Greek / Transliteration | Key Luke Occurrences | Risk | Rejected Alternatives | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| repentance | μετάνοια / metanoia | 3:3, 8; 5:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 17:3-4; 24:47 | Critical | ”self-improvement” / “growth mindset” (secular therapeutic substitute lacking God-directed content); “REPENT” sandwich-board-preacher caricature (produces hostility/fanaticism association) | Foundational to the doctrine of Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins; requires active correction of both the caricatured-fanaticism association and the softer secular self-improvement substitute. |
| forgiveness / release | ἄφεσις (noun), ἀφίημι (verb) / aphesis, aphiēmi | 1:77; 3:3; 4:18-19; 5:20-24; 7:47-49; 11:4; 17:3-4; 22:20 (implied); 23:34; 24:47 | Critical | ”amnesty” (too legal/political); “letting it go” (popular therapeutic idiom that can trivialize the moral seriousness of what is released) | The single most important new lexical family in this curriculum: one Greek word rendered inconsistently in English (“release” in 4:18, “forgiveness” elsewhere), obscuring Luke’s deliberate theological link between social/physical liberation and forgiveness of sins. Must be taught as a unified concept across all occurrences. |
| the poor | πτωχός / ptōchos | 4:18; 6:20; 7:22; 14:13, 21; 16:19-31; 18:22; 19:8; 21:1-4 | High | ”poor in spirit” (Matthew’s distinct, more spiritualized phrase — should not be imported into Luke’s more concrete usage); “underprivileged” (a modern bureaucratic euphemism that can drain the term’s covenantal weight) | Central to Good News to the Poor and Marginalized; risk of politicization (partisan economic-policy readings) in both directions must be actively managed. |
| anointed | χρίω (verb) / chriō | 4:18 | High | ”anointed successor” (secular business/sports idiom for a designated favorite, missing the Spirit’s specific empowering action) | Must be tied explicitly to the Holy Spirit’s action (4:18’s “Spirit of the Lord… anointed me”), not treated as mere human designation. |
| the acceptable year of the Lord | ἐνιαυτὸς Κυρίου δεκτός / eniautos Kyriou dektos | 4:19 | High | ”acceptable” as merely adequate/tolerable (a significant undershoot of dekton’s “welcomed, favorable, delightful” sense) | Jubilee-year background (Leviticus 25) must be explicitly supplied; contemporary readers have no independent access to it. |
| Savior (title) | Σωτήρ / Sōtēr | 2:11 | High | (none directly rejected, but risk noted:) a generic “rescuer” gloss that misses the specific rival-claim to Caesar’s imperial title | Requires the Roman-imperial-cult background (Sōtēr as a standard Caesar-honorific) to be supplied for the political edge of Luke’s claim to register. |
| mercy | ἔλεος / eleos | 1:50, 54, 58, 72, 78; 10:37; 15:20 (implied via compassion); 18:38-39; 20:9-16 (implied) | High | ”leniency” (a narrow judicial-sentencing sense that misses covenant-loyalty dimension) | Combines covenantal loyalty with active, costly compassion; not mere pity or judicial softness. |
| compassion (deep, gut-level) | σπλαγχνίζομαι / splagchnizomai | 7:13; 10:33 (Good Samaritan); 15:20 (prodigal’s father) | High | ”felt sorry for” (too passive/emotional, lacks the biblical term’s characteristic action-follow-through) | Restore the etymological “gut-level” physicality and consistent action-follow-through absent from ordinary English “compassion.” |
| disciple | μαθητής / mathētēs | 5:1-11; 6:13, 17, 20; 9:1, 14, 18, 40, 54; 10:1-24; 14:26-33; 22:11, 39, 45 | High | ”fan/follower” (contemporary social-media-influencer sense, missing costliness and exclusivity of allegiance); “student” (too narrowly academic) | Central to The Cost and Joy of Discipleship; risk primarily obsolescence plus a secondary “guru-fandom” dilution risk. |
| tax collector | τελώνης / telōnēs | 3:12-13; 5:27-30; 7:29, 34; 15:1; 18:10-14; 19:2, 7-8 | High | ”IRS agent” (too mild/bureaucratic — misses the first-century collaborator-traitor stigma) | First-century social ostracism and ritual-impurity association must be actively supplied; central to Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners. |
| sinners (as a social class) | ἁμαρτωλοί / hamartōloi | 5:30-32; 6:32-34; 7:34, 37-39; 15:1-2, 7, 10; 18:13; 19:7 | High | (see baseline “sin” for the universal-accountability sense — should not be confused with this narrower social-category usage) | Distinguish Luke’s specific despised-social-group usage from Paul’s universal “all have sinned” claim; both operate and should be taught together, not conflated. |
| blessed | μακάριος / makarios | 1:45; 6:20-22; 7:23; 10:23; 11:27-28; 12:37-38, 43; 14:14-15; 23:29 | High | ”#blessed” (ironic/humblebragging social-media usage celebrating good fortune — nearly opposite Luke’s paradoxical blessing of the poor, hungry, and grieving) | Central to the Lukan Beatitudes (6:20-23); must be actively distinguished from casual good-fortune usage. |
| woe | οὐαί / ouai | 6:24-26; 10:13; 11:42-52; 17:1; 21:23; 22:22 | High | (obsolescence risk; no strong secular competing sense, but risk of being read as merely poetic rather than weighty warning) | Paired structurally with “blessed” in the Sermon on the Plain; requires restoring prophetic weight against both archaism and contemporary economic-comfort resistance. |
| neighbor | πλησίον / plēsion | 10:27-37 | High | ”the person next door” (mere physical-proximity sense, missing the parable’s deliberate ethnic-boundary-crossing scandal) | The Good Samaritan’s scandal (a Samaritan helping a Jew) must be actively restored as provocative, not assumed retained by cultural familiarity with the parable. |
| cross (take up one’s cross) | σταυρός / stauros | 9:23; 14:27; 23:26 | Critical | ”my cross to bear” (a domesticated secular idiom for any minor inconvenience or nagging annoyance — a severe trivialization) | Nearly two millennia of Christian visual/idiomatic culture have detached this word from its horrifying, shameful, state-execution meaning; requires more explicit historical restoration than almost any term in this glossary, on par with or exceeding the baseline’s treatment of “grace,” “justification,” or “election.” |
| hate father and mother (idiom of relative priority) | μισέω / miseō | 14:26 | High | literal “hatred” (a serious misreading); dismissal as mere hyperbole to be ignored | A Semitic comparative-priority idiom (cf. Genesis 29:30-31’s “hated” = “loved less”); requires explicit idiom explanation to avoid both over-literal and dismissive misreadings. |
| count the cost | ψηφίζω τὴν δαπάνην / psēphizō tēn dapanēn | 14:28-33 | Medium | — | Deliberate, forethought-requiring commitment; central to Cost and Joy of Discipleship. |
| lost | ἀπόλλυμι (participle) / apollymi | 15:4, 6, 8-9, 17, 24, 32; 19:10 | Medium | ”feeling lost” alone, without the relational sin-and-restoration content | Threads through the ch. 15 parables to 19:10’s Gospel-summarizing “seek and save the lost.” |
| joy | χαρά / chara | 1:14, 44; 2:10; 6:23; 10:17; 15:7, 10; 19:6, 37; 24:41, 52 | Medium | fleeting mood/happiness (too shallow for the sustained, theologically-grounded gladness Luke describes) | Bookends the Gospel (1:14 to 24:52); central to the “Joy” half of The Cost and Joy of Discipleship. |
| mammon | μαμωνᾶς / mamōnas | 16:9, 11, 13 | Medium | ”money” alone (loses the personified rival-master sense) | Aramaic loanword left untranslated in Greek itself; retain transliteration alongside plain-language gloss, per this curriculum’s archaism-with-gloss convention. |
| rich man and Lazarus (afterlife imagery) | (parable; ᾍδης/Hadēs, “Abraham’s bosom”) | 16:19-31 | High | over-systematized afterlife geography drawn from parabolic detail | Parabolic genre should be noted without explaining away the text’s real moral/eschatological weight. |
| the kingdom of God is within/among you | ἐντὸς ὑμῶν / entos hymōn | 17:20-21 | High | ”within you” read as purely private/individual inward spirituality (overstates one defensible reading at the expense of the other) | Genuine textual ambiguity (“within” vs. “in your midst”) — present both readings transparently per the baseline’s ambiguity-handling protocol. |
| exalted / humbled (reversal principle) | ὑψόω / ταπεινόω / hypsoō / tapeinoō | 1:52-53; 14:11; 18:14 | Medium | — | Recurring structural reversal theme from the Magnificat through the Gospel’s end. |
| house of prayer | οἶκος προσευχῆς / oikos proseuchēs | 19:46 | Medium | — | Connect explicitly to the baseline’s “church” institutional-erosion risk — both address the gap between an institution’s purpose and its corrupted practice. |
| Son of Man | υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου / huios tou anthrōpou | throughout, esp. 9:22, 26, 44, 58; 12:8, 10, 40; 17:22-30; 18:8, 31; 19:10; 21:27, 36; 22:22, 48, 69; 24:7 | High | ”a human being” alone (misses the Daniel 7:13-14 exalted/authority-bearing background) | Jesus’ most frequent self-designation; requires the Daniel 7 background to be taught explicitly, not left as a self-evident synonym for mere humanity. |
| new covenant (in my blood) | καινὴ διαθήκη / kainē diathēkē | 22:20 | High (extends baseline covenant, Critical) | — | Denominational-transparency note required: English-speaking traditions differ substantially on the Lord’s Supper’s meaning (memorial, real spiritual presence, transubstantiation, sacramental real presence); state this curriculum’s own reading plainly while noting the range, per baseline principle. |
| paradise | παράδεισος / paradeisos | 23:43 | High | ”a tropical paradise” (travel-industry marketing sense — an idealized vacation destination, entirely secularized) | Third of Luke’s three “Today” statements (2:11; 4:21; 19:9; 23:43); illustrates grace received with no time for works. |
| Today (theological refrain) | σήμερον / sēmeron | 2:11; 4:21; 19:9; 23:43 | Medium | — | Deliberate Lukan literary/theological pattern asserting the kingdom’s present-tense arrival; teach as a connected set, not isolated instances. |
| ascension | ἀναλαμβάνω / analambanō | 9:51 (analēmpsis); 24:51 | Medium | corporate/career “ascension” to power (mild, generally harmless dilution) | Completes the historical-event chain (incarnation–death–resurrection–ascension); obsolescence risk more than false-friend risk. |
| overshadow | ἐπισκιάζω / episkiazō | 1:35 | High | vague “spiritual influence” (loses the specific Exodus 40:35 tabernacle-cloud echo) | Requires explicit Old Testament background to avoid flattening into generic spiritual language. |
| devil | διάβολος / diabolos | 4:2-13; 8:12; 22:3 | Medium | horror/superstition caricature (dismissive); “devil may care” / “devil’s advocate” (casual metaphor for mischief or contrarian argument) | Distinguish the real, personal, defeated-but-active adversary from both dismissive folklore and casual idiom. |
| demons | δαιμόνιον / daimonion | 4:33-41; 8:2, 27-33; 9:1, 42, 49; 10:17; 11:14-20; 13:32 | Medium | horror-genre sensationalism; “my demons” (psychological-struggle metaphor) | Distinguish real, personal, hostile spiritual beings from both horror-genre and merely psychological usage. |
| authority | ἐξουσία / exousia | 4:32, 36; 5:24; 9:1; 10:19; 20:2, 8, 20; 22:53; 23:7 | Medium | negative institutional/authority-abuse framing dominant in contemporary discourse (cf. baseline “power of God” note) | Jesus’ authority should be distinguished as legitimate, self-evidencing, and benevolent, not coercive. |
| baptism | βάπτισμα / baptisma | 3:3, 7, 12, 16, 21; 7:29; 12:50 (implied); 20:4 | High | — | Denominational-transparency note: state John’s specific preparatory sense plainly (repentance-baptism anticipating Jesus) without adjudicating the wider mode/meaning debate among English-speaking traditions. |
| wrath to come | ὀργή / orgē | 3:7; 21:23 | High | vague “consequences” language (too soft) | Counterbalances grace/compassion emphasis with real accountability; handle with the same care as baseline’s Universal Human Accountability doctrine. |
| blasphemy against the Holy Spirit | βλασφημία εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον / blasphēmia eis to Pneuma to Hagion | 12:10 | High | — | Pastorally sensitive: describes hardened, decisive rejection of the Spirit’s testimony, not momentary doubt or private sin; address explicitly given its history of causing sincere believers needless anxiety. |
| daily bread | ἐπιούσιος (ἄρτος) / epiousios (artos) | 11:3 | Medium | — | Exceptionally rare Greek word; reflects deliberate day-by-day dependence rather than accumulated security. |
| do not be anxious | μὴ μεριμνᾶτε / mē merimnate | 12:22-32 | Low-Medium | generic secular stress-management advice (misses the specifically theological ground: God’s fatherly provision, kingdom priority) | |
| great banquet / compel them to come in | ἀνάγκασον εἰσελθεῖν / anankason eiselthein | 14:15-24 | Medium | historical misuse to justify forced conversion (a serious misapplication to guard against explicitly) | Means urgent, earnest invitation to the excluded, not coercive force against the unwilling. |
| eternal life | ζωὴ αἰώνιος / zōē aiōnios | 10:25; 18:18, 30 | Medium | ”living forever” (mere quantity of unending time, missing the qualitatively different life of the age to come) | |
| census | ἀπογραφή / apographē | 2:1-2 | Low-Medium | — | Historical-chronology debates (Quirinius dating) should be acknowledged briefly without undermining the historical intent of the claim. |
| manger | φάτνη / phatnē | 2:7, 12, 16 | Low | reduction to sentimental holiday imagery devoid of poverty significance | |
| consolation of Israel | παράκλησις τοῦ Ἰσραήλ / paraklēsis tou Israēl | 2:25 | High | — | Rare, formal word (obsolescence risk); gloss as active comfort/deliverance, not mere emotional soothing. |
| light for revelation to the Gentiles | φῶς εἰς ἀποκάλυψιν ἐθνῶν / phōs eis apokalypsin ethnōn | 2:32 | Medium (extends baseline Gentiles) | — | Foundational anchor text for Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People. |
| redemption | λύτρωσις / lytrōsis | 2:38 (concept); cf. 21:28; 24:21 | High | ”redeem a coupon/gift card/loyalty points” (commercial usage — a genuine false-friend, diluting a costly rescue/ransom into routine transactional exchange) | Distinct from but related to baseline “salvation”; requires explicit distinction from commercial usage. |
| genealogy (Adam-ward) | γενεαλογία / genealogia | 3:23-38 | Medium | — | Deliberate universalizing structure (to Adam, not stopping at Abraham) easily missed if skimmed. |
| chosen (of Christ) | ἐκλεκτός / eklektos | 9:35 | (extends baseline election, Critical) | — | Distinguish Christ’s unique elect status from believers’ derivative election (18:7). |
| mysteries of the kingdom | μυστήριον / mystērion | 8:10 | Low | detective-novel “mystery” (an unsolved puzzle) | This is a revealed, not an unsolved, mystery — easily corrected with brief context. |
| your faith has saved/healed you | σέσωκέν σε / sesōken se | 7:50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42 | (extends baseline salvation, Critical) | — | Same verb (sōzō) spans physical healing and spiritual salvation; English translations obscure this by rendering it differently in different contexts. |
| word of God (as seed) | λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ / logos tou theou | 8:11, 21; 11:28 | Medium | — | Ties Scripture/proclamation to Inspiration of Scripture doctrine. |
| one thing is necessary / better portion | ἑνὸς χρεία / henos chreia | 10:42 | Medium | flattened “contemplation vs. action” binary; gendered household-role weaponization | Present as receptive priority, not blanket devaluation of practical service. |
| narrow door | στενὴ θύρα / stenē thyra | 13:24 | Medium | — | Hold in tension with the immediately following inclusive “east and west” (13:29), per baseline ambiguity-handling. |
| lament over Jerusalem | (no single lexical term; 13:34-35; 19:41-44) | — | Medium | — | Combination of divine sovereignty and genuine relational grief; handle non-reductively. |
| centurion’s confession (righteous/innocent) | δίκαιος / dikaios | 23:47 | (extends baseline righteousness, High) | — | Gentile-witness pattern bracketing the Gospel (cf. 7:9). |
| temple curtain torn | καταπέτασμα / katapetasma | 23:45 | Medium | — | Requires temple/Holy-of-Holies background to be supplied. |
| power from on high | δύναμις ἐξ ὕψους / dynamis ex hypsous | 24:49 | (extends baseline power of God, Medium) | — | Direct narrative bridge to Acts/Pentecost. |
Risk Summary for This Curriculum
| Risk Tier | Count (new terms, Section B) | Count (baseline terms reused, Section A) |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 3 (repentance, forgiveness/release, cross) | 12 |
| High | 20 | 6 |
| Medium | 19 | 14 |
| Low | 3 | 4 |
Human theologian review required (Critical/High, per baseline review-routing convention): repentance, forgiveness/release, the poor, anointed, the acceptable year of the Lord, Savior (title), mercy, compassion, disciple, tax collector, sinners (social class), blessed, woe, neighbor, cross, hate father and mother, the kingdom of God is within/among you, Son of Man, new covenant, paradise, redemption, consolation of Israel, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, wrath to come, baptism, rich man and Lazarus imagery — plus all Critical/High baseline terms reused (grace, faith, righteousness, justification, salvation, resurrection, Lord, incarnation, sin, Messiah, covenant, election, providence, Jesus, God, Holy Spirit, Father, obedience of faith, seed of David/imputed righteousness, church, called/calling, saints).
Companion document: 07_semantic_analysis.md provides full verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter contextual analysis for every term listed above.
Critical Risk Terms
Grace
Approved rendering: grace
Transliteration: grace
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: elegance/poise (the dominant secular sense), a grace period (the dominant legal/financial sense)
Original: χάρις
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT and CRITICAL DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST unchanged from Romans baseline. Luke-specific note: 1:30’s ‘found favor with God’ applies the same word concretely to Mary — must be taught as God’s initiating, unearned choice, not a reward for her piety, since readers instinctively read merit into favor language applied to a named person rather than an abstract soteriological statement. The elder brother’s resentment in the prodigal son parable (15:25-32) dramatizes the exact grace-versus-merit tension named in the baseline as a live denominational contest, rendered as concrete family drama — flag as a strong curriculum teaching opportunity.
Justification
Approved rendering: justification
Transliteration: justification
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: justifying your answer / justifying an action (the near-universal everyday sense: giving a reason for an action already taken)
Original: δικαίωσις / δικαιόω
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT unchanged: everyday English ‘justify’ means giving a reason or excuse for an action, not a forensic declaration of righteousness. Luke-specific value: 18:14’s tax collector ‘went down to his house justified’ after a bare cry for mercy, with no accompanying works, is the clearest narrative dramatization of this doctrine outside Paul’s letters, and should be cross-taught directly with the Romans baseline treatment.
Salvation
Approved rendering: salvation
Transliteration: salvation
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: being saved (contested denominational shorthand), rescue (too generic a gloss on its own)
Original: σωτηρία / σῴζω
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. CRITICAL DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST unchanged (event vs. process). Luke-specific CRITICAL compounding risk not present in Romans: Luke’s verb sozo spans both physical healing and spiritual rescue with one Greek word (7:50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42; 19:9-10), but standard English Bible translation practice renders it ‘made you well’ in healing contexts and ‘saved you’ in salvation contexts, silently splitting one word into two and hiding Luke’s deliberate ambiguity. See ‘faith_has_saved_you’ entry below; must be taught as a unified wordplay, not resolved silently in either direction. ‘Redemption’ (2:38) additionally risks confusion with commercial coupon/loyalty-point usage — see ‘redemption’ entry.
Resurrection
Approved rendering: resurrection
Transliteration: resurrection
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ
Rejected alternatives: Easter (the commercialized cultural holiday sense)
Original: ἀνάστασις
Category: Eschatology
Inherited from Romans package, risk tier elevated to Critical for this curriculum since Luke’s own resurrection narrative (24:1-53) is the fullest single Gospel treatment of the event. Must never be rendered as reincarnation or cyclical rebirth. Luke-specific value: 24:5’s angelic rebuke, ‘why do you seek the living among the dead,’ is the single strongest text in either Testament for stating the resurrection plainly as historical fact rather than metaphor, given contemporary secular ‘resurrection as myth’ framing.
Lord
Approved rendering: Lord
Transliteration: Lord
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: boss / master (loses exclusivity and worship-worthiness), a British Lord (the aristocratic title sense)
Original: κύριος
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. ‘Lord’ has nearly disappeared from ordinary spoken English outside this specific religious usage. Luke-specific note: Elizabeth’s startling address to the unborn Jesus as ‘my Lord’ (1:43) risks landing as merely warm politeness rather than a staggering theological claim unless the term’s total, exclusive, personal-allegiance weight is actively restored at this very early point in the Gospel. The ‘David’s Lord’ riddle (20:41-44, citing Psalm 110:1) must be taught as a deliberate paradox, not resolved toward either humanity or deity alone.
Incarnation
Approved rendering: incarnation
Transliteration: incarnation
Doctrine: Incarnation
Original: ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο (theological category applied to Luke 1:26-38; 2:1-20)
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package, risk tier elevated to Critical for this curriculum since Luke’s infancy narrative (1:26-38; 2:1-20) is this curriculum’s primary Gospel locus for the doctrine and carries additional new-term risk (overshadow, manger, census) not present in Romans. Must not be rendered compatible with a repeatable avatar-like pattern; this is a unique, unrepeatable event.
Church
Approved rendering: church
Transliteration: church
Doctrine: Church as God’s People
Original: ἐκκλησία (not a Lukan Gospel term; appears extensively in Acts)
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Must actively restore the doctrine’s relational, living, Spirit-filled sense rather than assume the English word still carries it. Luke-specific note: the lexical term ekklesia does not occur anywhere in Luke’s Gospel itself (it appears extensively only in Luke’s sequel, Acts); the living community Jesus gathers around himself — the Twelve, the Seventy-Two, the women disciples of 8:1-3, the gathered believers at the Gospel’s close (24:33-49) — is precisely the reality this doctrine names, forming before it is ever named. Curriculum material must teach this Gospel material as the church’s formation prior to its naming, not treat ecclesiology as absent from Luke because the word is.
Messiah
Approved rendering: Messiah
Transliteration: Messiah
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
Rejected alternatives: a messiah complex (pop-psychology pejorative)
Original: Χριστός
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package, risk tier elevated to Critical for this curriculum given the density of messianic material across Luke’s infancy narrative, ministry, and Peter’s confession. Luke-specific value: 9:20’s ‘the Christ of God’ (Peter’s confession) is the Gospel’s structural turning point, immediately followed by the first Passion prediction and teaching on the cost of discipleship.
Election
Approved rendering: election
Transliteration: election
Doctrine: Effectual Calling and Election
Rejected alternatives: an election (near-total dominant contemporary sense: a political vote)
Original: ἐκλέγομαι / ἐκλεκτός
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT unchanged. Luke-specific compounding distinction: 9:35’s ‘my Chosen One’ applies election language uniquely and non-repeatably to Christ himself, distinct from (though the ground of) 18:7’s derivative election of ordinary believers — see ‘chosen_of_christ’ entry below; English readers must not merge these two applications into one undifferentiated ‘being chosen.‘
Providence
Approved rendering: providence
Transliteration: providence
Doctrine: Providence
Rejected alternatives: everything happens for a reason (secular folk-spiritual substitute), Providence (proper noun, Rhode Island)
Original: (concept; cf. Luke 13:34-35; 22:22)
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific note: 13:34-35’s lament over Jerusalem holds sovereign divine initiative and genuine relational grief at human refusal together in a single utterance (‘how often I wanted… but you were not willing’); contemporary readers, primed toward either hard-determinist or purely voluntarist defaults, tend to flatten this in one direction, and both must be preserved without resolution. 22:22’s ‘as it has been determined’ and Gethsemane’s ‘not my will but yours’ (22:42) reinforce the same tension in the passion narrative.
Jesus
Approved rendering: Jesus
Transliteration: Jesus
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: Jesus (as a casual interjection/expletive)
Original: Ἰησοῦς
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. Popular ‘historical Jesus’ framings often quietly strip out the divine claims Luke’s Gospel makes about him. No new Luke-specific drift beyond the baseline.
God
Approved rendering: God
Transliteration: God
Doctrine: Sonship and Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: a higher power (vague contemporary substitute), the universe (New-Age-influenced impersonal substitute)
Original: θεός
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. God is not a placeholder concept but the specific God personally engaged in Luke’s narrative from before Jesus’ conception to the ascension. No new Luke-specific drift beyond the baseline.
Holy Spirit
Approved rendering: Holy Spirit
Transliteration: Holy Spirit
Doctrine: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Salvation History
Rejected alternatives: good vibes / positive energy (vague contemporary spiritual substitutes)
Original: Πνεῦμα Ἅγιον
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific note: this is the primary Gospel-of-Luke text base for the curriculum doctrine bearing this name, demonstrating the Spirit’s active, personal agency well before Pentecost (1:15, 35, 41, 67; 2:25-27; 3:16, 22; 4:1, 14, 18; 10:21; 11:13; 12:10, 12; 24:49) — the baseline’s caution against vague impersonal substitutes applies with particular force given how consistently Luke names the Spirit as personally initiating specific historical events.
Repentance
Approved rendering: repentance
Transliteration: repentance
Doctrine: Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins
Rejected alternatives: self-improvement / growth mindset (secular therapeutic substitute lacking God-directed content), REPENT sandwich-board-preacher caricature (produces hostility/fanaticism association)
Original: μετάνοια
Category: Repentance
New curriculum-specific CRITICAL risk, not present in the Romans baseline. Contemporary English ‘repent’/‘repentance’ survives mainly as a stereotyped caricature carrying connotations of fanaticism or hostility, the opposite of Luke’s own hopeful, joy-producing reorientation (15:7, 10’s heavenly rejoicing). A second, opposite risk: therapeutic-culture ‘self-improvement’/‘growth mindset’ language can quietly substitute for repentance’s specifically God-directed, sin-acknowledging content. Both drifts must be actively corrected, in opposite directions simultaneously. Foundational across 1:77; 3:3, 8; 5:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 17:3-4; 24:47.
Forgiveness Release
Approved rendering: release / forgiveness
Transliteration: aphesis
Doctrine: Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins
Rejected alternatives: amnesty (too legal/political), letting it go (popular therapeutic idiom that can trivialize the moral seriousness of what is released)
Original: ἄφεσις / ἀφίημι
Category: Repentance
New curriculum-specific CRITICAL risk with NO parallel in the Romans baseline — a NARRATIVE-FLATTENING risk unique to Luke. The single Greek word aphesis (verb aphiemi) is conventionally rendered by different English words depending on context: ‘release’/‘liberty’ at the core passage (4:18) but ‘forgiveness’ at 1:77, 24:47, and elsewhere, silently severing a wordplay Luke intends readers to hear as one continuous concept — physical/social liberation and the forgiveness of sins are, in Luke’s Greek, literally the same word. Occurrences: 1:77; 3:3; 4:18-19; 5:20-24; 7:47-49; 11:4; 17:3-4; 22:20 (implied); 23:34; 24:47. Must be taught as a unified doctrinal unit across all occurrences, with explicit cross-referencing every time, never left to stand as unrelated verses.
Cross
Approved rendering: cross
Transliteration: stauros
Doctrine: The Cost and Joy of Discipleship
Rejected alternatives: my cross to bear (a domesticated secular idiom for any minor inconvenience or nagging annoyance — a severe trivialization), torture stake (a doctrinally motivated sectarian rendering; see forbidden-substitutions list in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md)
Original: σταυρός
Category: Discipleship
New curriculum-specific CRITICAL risk, arguably the single most severe false-friend risk in this entire curriculum, exceeding even the Romans baseline’s treatment of ‘grace,’ ‘justification,’ or ‘election’ in severity. A Roman instrument of torturous public execution reserved for the worst criminals and rebellious slaves; Jesus calls disciples to ‘take up their cross daily’ (9:23; 14:27; realized at 23:26). Nearly two millennia of Christian jewelry, architecture, and casual idiom have completely domesticated this word, detaching it from its horrifying, shameful, state-sanctioned-execution meaning. Must be explicitly and vividly restored, not assumed retained by cultural or religious familiarity.
Chosen Of Christ
Approved rendering: my Chosen One
Transliteration: eklektos
Doctrine: Effectual Calling and Election
Original: ἐκλεκτός
Category: Salvation
New curriculum-specific CRITICAL risk extending the baseline’s ‘election’ entry. The heavenly voice’s declaration at the Transfiguration (9:35), ‘This is my Son, my Chosen One,’ applying election language uniquely and non-repeatably to Christ himself. This must be explicitly distinguished from 18:7’s derivative election of believers generally; English readers, primed by the baseline’s political-voting false-friend correction alone, need this additional unique-versus-derivative distinction made explicit, or the two applications risk being merged into one undifferentiated idea of ‘being chosen.‘
Faith Has Saved You
Approved rendering: your faith has saved/healed you
Transliteration: he pistis sou sesoken se
Doctrine: Salvation
Original: ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε
Category: Salvation
New curriculum-specific CRITICAL risk, a NARRATIVE-FLATTENING risk parallel to but distinct from the ‘forgiveness_release’ aphesis entry above, and with no parallel in the Romans baseline. A single Greek formula (sozo) spanning physical healing and spiritual salvation, repeated identically at 7:50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42. Standard English translations typically render this differently in different contexts (‘made you well’ for healing, ‘saved you’ for salvation), obscuring that Luke’s Greek uses exactly one verb throughout. This deliberate ambiguity is a load-bearing Lukan theological point that must be made explicit rather than silently resolved in either direction; present all four occurrences together as a connected set in curriculum material.
High Risk Terms
Faith
Approved rendering: faith
Transliteration: faith
Doctrine: Faith
Rejected alternatives: faith in humanity / a leap of faith (secularized idioms meaning generic optimism or an unsupported gamble)
Original: πίστις
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. Contemporary English has detached ‘faith’ from any specific object. Luke-specific compounding risk: the same word covers both saving trust in Christ and confidence producing physical healing (7:9, 50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42), a double duty English readers may not notice is one concept; also repeatedly credited to Gentiles (7:9) and social outcasts (7:50), reinforcing the Savior-for-All-Nations doctrine but risking a sentimentalized ‘faith as generic sincerity regardless of object’ misreading if the Christ-directed content is not made explicit each time.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: righteousness
Transliteration: righteousness
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: self-righteous / holier-than-thou (the dominant negative connotation ‘righteous’ now carries)
Original: δικαιοσύνη / δίκαιος
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Biblical righteousness is a status given, not achieved or performed, contrary to the ‘self-righteous/smug’ connotation dominant in casual English. Luke-specific note: applied to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s sincere covenant devotion (1:6) and to the Gentile centurion’s verdict on Jesus at the cross (23:47, carrying both legal-innocence and moral-righteousness senses); readers must not import the baseline’s ‘smug superiority’ false-friend onto either bracketing text.
Called
Approved rendering: called
Transliteration: called
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Original: καλέω / κλητός (conceptually; Luke prefers καλέω/προσκαλέομαι over Paul’s κλητός noun form)
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Context-sensitive across at least three senses (apostleship, sainthood, salvation). Luke-specific note: Luke narrates this doctrine through story (5:1-11, the fishermen; 5:27-28, Levi) using kaleo/proskaleomai rather than Paul’s technical kletos noun form, so the connection to this doctrine must be made explicit rather than assumed recognizable from vocabulary alone.
Calling
Approved rendering: calling
Transliteration: calling
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: finding your calling (the dominant contemporary secular sense: career vocation discovered through self-reflection)
Original: κλῆσις (concept; not a distinct lexical item in Luke’s Gospel)
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. The direction of agency (God calls; the person does not self-select) must be stated explicitly. Luke-specific note: apply this caution directly to the fishermen leaving their nets (5:11) and Levi leaving his tax booth (5:27-28), where the initiative is entirely Jesus’, not the disciples’ introspective self-discovery — a narrative setting that makes the ‘finding your calling’ career-vocation drift an especially easy, and especially wrong, substitute to import.
Saints
Approved rendering: saints
Transliteration: saints
Doctrine: Sainthood
Original: ἅγιοι
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Real denominational contest (Catholic/Orthodox canonized-figure sense vs. Protestant corporate-believer sense) unchanged. Luke-specific note: the lexical term itself is rare in Luke’s Gospel proper (frequent only in Luke’s sequel, Acts); included here for full-book completeness and forward reference, since the disciple community Jesus gathers throughout the Gospel is the relational reality later named ‘saints.‘
Sin
Approved rendering: sin
Transliteration: sin
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: sinfully delicious / my one sin (trivialized marketing/joking usage)
Original: ἁμαρτία
Category: Sin
Inherited from Romans package. Contemporary marketing and non-judgmental therapeutic norms both work against the term’s real moral weight. Luke-specific compounding note: Luke pairs ‘sin’ both with universal accountability language (3:7-14’s ‘wrath to come’) and with a specific, named, socially-marked outsider class (‘sinners,’ hamartoloi — see separate entry below); English readers must hold both senses together without collapsing one into the other, since this curriculum’s Table Fellowship doctrine depends on it.
Obedience Of Faith
Approved rendering: obedience of faith
Transliteration: obedience of faith
Doctrine: Obedience of Faith
Rejected alternatives: blind obedience / just following orders (negative idioms)
Original: (concept; no exact Lukan phrase match)
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. Contemporary Western autonomy culture is broadly suspicious of ‘obedience’ as a virtue. Luke-specific note: no exact Lukan phrase matches Paul’s technical term, but the concept is present throughout Luke’s discipleship-obedience material (5:5, 11, 27-28; 8:21; 11:28), where obedience flows freely from encounter with Jesus rather than external compulsion.
Covenant
Approved rendering: covenant
Transliteration: covenant
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: a restrictive covenant (dominant contemporary legal sense)
Original: διαθήκη
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific note: 1:72 recalls God’s covenant with Abraham; 22:20 institutes the ‘new covenant in my blood,’ which introduces a Luke-specific denominational-contest addition beyond the baseline’s general legal-document-drift caution — see ‘new_covenant’ entry below for the Lord’s Supper-specific transparency requirement.
Imputed Righteousness
Approved rendering: imputed righteousness
Transliteration: imputed righteousness
Doctrine: Justification by Faith
Rejected alternatives: earned righteousness / good-person status
Original: (not a distinct Lukan narrative term; conceptually anticipated by 18:14)
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific value: 18:14’s justified tax collector conceptually anticipates the doctrine Paul later systematizes and should be paired directly with the ‘justification’ entry above as this curriculum’s strongest available narrative anchor for a doctrine the Romans baseline otherwise treats only abstractly.
The Poor
Approved rendering: the poor
Transliteration: ptochos
Doctrine: Good News to the Poor and Marginalized
Rejected alternatives: poor in spirit (Matthew’s distinct, more spiritualized phrase — must not be imported into Luke’s more concrete usage), underprivileged (a modern bureaucratic euphemism that drains the term’s covenantal weight)
Original: πτωχός
Category: Poverty and Marginalization
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Contemporary English-language political polarization means ‘the poor’ is a live, contested category in ongoing welfare/poverty-policy debate, risking reduction of Luke’s theological claim to a partisan economic position in either direction. A second, opposite risk: readers may reflexively import Matthew’s ‘poor in spirit’ to spiritualize away Luke’s deliberately concrete, materially inclusive claim (4:18; 6:20; 7:22; 14:13, 21; 16:19-31; 18:22; 19:8; 21:1-4). Requires explicit framing as a claim about whom the gospel is for, not an endorsement of a specific economic policy.
Anointed
Approved rendering: anointed
Transliteration: chrio
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
Rejected alternatives: anointed successor (secular business/sports idiom for a designated favorite, missing the Spirit’s specific empowering action)
Original: χρίω
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk, occurring in the core passage itself (4:18). Contemporary English retains ‘anointed’ mainly in secularized business/sports idiom, which preserves the sense of special designation but strips out the divine, Spirit-empowering source entirely, reducing it to human favoritism. Must always be tied back explicitly to ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me’ in the same verse — never let ‘anointed’ stand alone as a bare status term.
Acceptable Year Of The Lord
Approved rendering: the acceptable year of the Lord
Transliteration: eniautos Kyriou dektos
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Rejected alternatives: acceptable as merely adequate/tolerable (a significant undershoot of dekton’s ‘welcomed, favorable, delightful’ sense)
Original: ἐνιαυτὸς Κυρίου δεκτός
Category: Kingdom
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk, occurring in the core passage itself (4:19). An allusion to the Jubilee year (Leviticus 25) — periodic release of debts, slaves, and land — announced by Jesus as now beginning once for all, not on a repeating fifty-year cycle. Contemporary readers have essentially no independent cultural knowledge of the Jubilee background; without it supplied explicitly, this reads as vague sentimental favor rather than a specific, radical socioeconomic and spiritual reset. Requires active explanatory paraphrase every time, not a one-word gloss; plain transliteration is not a safe option here since ‘acceptable’ actively undershoots the meaning rather than merely flagging unfamiliarity.
Savior Title
Approved rendering: Savior
Transliteration: Soter
Doctrine: Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People
Rejected alternatives: a generic ‘rescuer’ gloss (misses the specific rival-claim to Caesar’s imperial title)
Original: Σωτήρ
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Soter was a standard honorific applied to the Roman emperor in the first-century world. Luke 2:11’s ‘a Savior… Christ the Lord,’ announced first to shepherds rather than to the powerful, directly and provocatively contests the imperial cult’s use of the identical title for Caesar Augustus. Contemporary readers have no access to this background without it being supplied, flattening a politically charged, provocative claim into generic religious comfort language.
Mercy
Approved rendering: mercy
Transliteration: eleos
Doctrine: Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners
Rejected alternatives: leniency (a narrow judicial-sentencing sense missing the covenant-loyalty dimension)
Original: ἔλεος
Category: Compassion
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Contemporary English ‘mercy’ survives mainly in judicial/legal contexts (a judge ‘showing mercy’) or as a plea in dire circumstances, both reducing the term to leniency toward the guilty rather than the fuller biblical sense of steadfast covenant loyalty joined to active, costly compassion. Central to the Magnificat and Benedictus (1:50, 54, 72, 78), the Good Samaritan (‘go and do likewise,’ 10:37), and implicit throughout the prodigal son and Zacchaeus narratives.
Compassion
Approved rendering: compassion
Transliteration: splagchnizomai
Doctrine: Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners
Rejected alternatives: felt sorry for (too passive/emotional, lacks the biblical term’s characteristic follow-through into action)
Original: σπλαγχνίζομαι
Category: Compassion
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. The Greek term denotes a deep, gut-level compassion (literally, moved in one’s inward parts) that prompts immediate, concrete action, as in raising the widow of Nain’s son (7:13), the Good Samaritan (10:33), and the prodigal’s father (15:20). Ordinary English ‘compassion’ has lost this etymological gut-level physicality and consistent action-entailment, and can describe a feeling alone with no follow-through; must be actively restored.
Disciple
Approved rendering: disciple
Transliteration: mathetes
Doctrine: The Cost and Joy of Discipleship
Rejected alternatives: fan/follower (contemporary social-media-influencer sense, missing costliness and exclusivity of allegiance), student (too narrowly academic)
Original: μαθητής
Category: Discipleship
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk, primarily obsolescence rather than false-friend. Contemporary English rarely uses ‘disciple’ outside religious or academic-mentorship contexts. Secondary risk: secular ‘disciple of [a thought leader/guru]’ usage can reduce Jesus’ call to costly, exclusive allegiance into one more lifestyle-guru fandom among many. Central to the calling narratives (5:1-11, 27-28) and the cost-of-following teaching (14:25-33).
Tax Collector
Approved rendering: tax collector
Transliteration: telones
Doctrine: Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners
Rejected alternatives: IRS agent (too mild/bureaucratic — misses the first-century collaborator-traitor stigma)
Original: τελώνης
Category: Table Fellowship
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. A collector of tolls for Rome, viewed in first-century Jewish society as a despised, collaborationist traitor, ritually and morally compromised — not merely an unpopular bureaucrat as modern ‘IRS agent’ jokes suggest. This first-century social ostracism and ritual-impurity association must be actively supplied, since it is what made Jesus’ table fellowship with such figures genuinely scandalous (5:27-32; 7:29, 34; 15:1; 18:10-14; 19:2, 7-8).
Sinners Social Class
Approved rendering: sinners
Transliteration: hamartoloi
Doctrine: Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners
Original: ἁμαρτωλοί
Category: Sin
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. A recognized, socially marginalized class publicly regarded as sinful (e.g., tax collectors, prostitutes), distinct from — but not to be confused with, or separated from — the universal ‘all have sinned’ sense treated under the baseline’s ‘sin’ entry. English readers, once taught the baseline’s universal-accountability sense, risk collapsing Luke’s narrower social-category usage into it, or vice versa; both senses operate in Luke (5:30-32; 6:32-34; 7:34, 37-39; 15:1-2, 7, 10; 18:13; 19:7) and must be taught together, since this curriculum’s Table Fellowship doctrine depends on holding both.
Blessed
Approved rendering: blessed
Transliteration: makarios
Doctrine: Good News to the Poor and Marginalized
Rejected alternatives: #blessed (ironic/humblebragging social-media usage celebrating good fortune — nearly opposite Luke’s paradoxical blessing)
Original: μακάριος
Category: Poverty and Marginalization
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. A state of divine favor and flourishing, paradoxically pronounced over those in apparently unfortunate circumstances. Central to the Lukan Beatitudes (6:20-23, ‘blessed are the poor… the hungry… those who weep’), unlike Matthew’s more spiritualized parallels. Contemporary English ‘#blessed’ is heavily used in casual, self-congratulatory good-fortune usage — must be actively and explicitly distinguished, since the two senses point in nearly opposite directions.
Woe
Approved rendering: woe
Transliteration: ouai
Doctrine: Good News to the Poor and Marginalized
Original: οὐαί
Category: Poverty and Marginalization
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. A prophetic pronouncement of coming judgment or lament, structurally paired with the Beatitudes as warnings to the rich, well-fed, laughing, and well-regarded (6:24-26). ‘Woe’ is archaic and rare in ordinary contemporary speech (obsolescence risk) and also risks being read as merely poetic lament rather than a real, weighty prophetic warning; contemporary economic-comfort sensibilities may additionally create resistance to receiving this text’s force, paralleling the baseline’s documented resistance to guilt-based ‘sin’ language generally.
Neighbor
Approved rendering: neighbor
Transliteration: plesion
Doctrine: Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners
Rejected alternatives: the person next door (mere physical-proximity sense, missing the parable’s deliberate ethnic-boundary-crossing scandal)
Original: πλησίον
Category: Compassion
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Radically redefined by the Good Samaritan parable (10:25-37) from ethnic/religious in-group to anyone in need regardless of social or ethnic boundary. Contemporary English ‘neighbor’ primarily denotes physical proximity or a loosely inclusive civic-virtue slogan, largely detached from the parable’s specific, provocative first-century ethnic-boundary-crossing scandal (a Samaritan helping a Jew). This scandal must be actively restored, not assumed retained by the parable’s cultural familiarity.
Hate Father And Mother
Approved rendering: hate father and mother
Transliteration: miseo
Doctrine: The Cost and Joy of Discipleship
Rejected alternatives: literal hatred (a serious misreading), dismissal as mere hyperbole to be ignored
Original: μισέω
Category: Discipleship
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. A Semitic idiom of relative priority (cf. Genesis 29:30-31’s ‘hated’ meaning ‘loved less’), not literal hatred; Luke 14:26 requires loving Jesus supremely above even family. Contemporary English ‘hate’ is an unusually strong, emotionally loaded word with no comparable ordinary ‘relative priority’ idiom; without explicit explanation of the underlying Semitic comparative idiom, readers risk either taking this as literal endorsement of family hatred or dismissing it as ignorable hyperbole.
Rich Man And Lazarus
Approved rendering: the rich man and Lazarus
Transliteration: (parable; Hades, ‘Abraham’s bosom’)
Doctrine: Good News to the Poor and Marginalized
Rejected alternatives: over-systematized afterlife geography drawn from parabolic detail
Original: (parable; ᾍδης, ‘Abraham’s bosom’)
Category: Poverty and Marginalization
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. A parable (16:19-31) depicting reversal of fortune after death and persistent unbelief even before miraculous testimony (‘if they do not believe… neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead’). Contemporary readers, especially those from traditions with developed intermediate-state/afterlife doctrine, may import more systematic afterlife geography (‘Abraham’s bosom,’ ‘a great chasm’) than the parable intends to teach dogmatically; note the parabolic genre while preserving the text’s real moral and eschatological weight, not explaining it away.
Kingdom Within Among You
Approved rendering: the kingdom of God is within/among you
Transliteration: entos hymon
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Rejected alternatives: ‘within you’ read as purely private/individual inward spirituality (overstates one defensible reading at the expense of the other)
Original: ἐντὸς ὑμῶν
Category: Kingdom
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk and genuine textual/translational ambiguity (17:20-21) — ‘within’ (internal, individual) versus ‘among/in the midst of’ (present in Jesus’ own person) are both linguistically defensible. The ‘within you’ reading resonates strongly with contemporary Western individualism and self-actualization culture in a way that may overstate an inward/private reading at the expense of the more contextually likely ‘in your midst’ sense. Per the baseline’s ambiguity-handling protocol, both readings and their doctrinal implications should be presented transparently rather than one silently chosen.
Son Of Man
Approved rendering: Son of Man
Transliteration: ho huios tou anthropou
Doctrine: Sonship and Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: a human being (misses the Daniel 7:13-14 exalted, authority-bearing background)
Original: ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Jesus’ most frequent self-designation, drawing on Daniel 7:13-14’s exalted, authority-bearing figure — simultaneously humble in origin and exalted in destiny. Contemporary English ‘son of man’ has essentially no independent meaning outside biblical usage, and readers commonly (and incorrectly) assume it simply emphasizes Jesus’ humanity alone. Must be explicitly taught with the Daniel 7 background, not left as a self-evident synonym for mere humanity. Recurs throughout, especially 9:22, 26, 44, 58; 12:8, 10, 40; 17:22-30; 18:8, 31; 19:10; 21:27, 36; 22:22, 48, 69; 24:7.
New Covenant
Approved rendering: new covenant
Transliteration: kaine diatheke
Doctrine: New Covenant and the Lord’s Supper
Original: καινὴ διαθήκη
Category: Covenant
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk extending the baseline’s ‘covenant’ (High), with a Luke-specific DENOMINATIONAL-CONTEST addition unique to this text. The New Covenant instituted at the Last Supper (22:20) ‘in my blood,’ fulfilling Jeremiah 31:31-34. English-speaking Christian traditions differ substantially on the Lord’s Supper’s meaning: memorial/symbolic (most Baptist/free-church traditions); real spiritual presence (Reformed traditions); transubstantiation (Catholic teaching); real presence without transubstantiation (Lutheran and some Anglican teaching). This curriculum must state its own reading plainly while noting the range of views, per the baseline’s denominational-transparency principle. Also note the well-known textual variant at 22:19-20 (the ‘Western non-interpolation’), which should be footnoted honestly rather than silently ignored.
Paradise
Approved rendering: paradise
Transliteration: paradeisos
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: a tropical paradise (travel-industry marketing sense, an idealized vacation destination, entirely secularized)
Original: παράδεισος
Category: Eschatology
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. The immediate blessed presence of God after death, promised by Jesus to the repentant criminal (23:43): ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’ Contemporary English usage overwhelmingly means an idealized vacation destination, entirely detached from the specific, personal, immediate presence-with-Christ meaning intended here. Also connects to Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins: the thief’s minimal, dying-breath confession is one of Scripture’s starkest illustrations of salvation received by grace alone, with no time for works. The comma placement in English translation (‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’) must follow the mainstream reading, not the doctrinally-motivated minority punctuation associated with soul-sleep theology — see 12_ai_translation_requirements.md forbidden substitutions.
Overshadow
Approved rendering: overshadow
Transliteration: episkiazo
Doctrine: Incarnation
Rejected alternatives: vague ‘spiritual influence’ (loses the specific Exodus 40:35 tabernacle-cloud echo)
Original: ἐπισκιάζω
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Divine presence enveloping/protecting, echoing the cloud of God’s presence over the tabernacle (Exodus 40:35); describes the Holy Spirit’s action in the virginal conception (1:35). No significant competing secular meaning, but the risk is under-appreciating the deliberate Old Testament background without explicit teaching, flattening this into generic ‘spiritual influence’ rather than a specific, historically-grounded act of divine presence enacting a real conception.
Baptism
Approved rendering: baptism
Transliteration: baptisma
Doctrine: Baptism (John’s Preparatory Baptism)
Original: βάπτισμα
Category: Repentance
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk, DENOMINATIONAL CONTEST. John’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (3:3), preparatory to and distinct from later Christian baptism (3:16). English-speaking Christian traditions differ substantially on baptism’s meaning, mode, and relationship to salvation (believer’s baptism vs. infant baptism; symbolic ordinance vs. sacramental means of grace). This curriculum should state John’s specific preparatory sense plainly without adjudicating the wider denominational debate, per the baseline’s transparency principle.
Wrath To Come
Approved rendering: the wrath to come
Transliteration: he mellousa orge
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: vague ‘consequences’ language (too soft)
Original: ἡ μέλλουσα ὀργή
Category: Sin
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Impending divine judgment; John’s warning (3:7) counterbalances Luke’s emphasis on grace and compassion with real accountability. Contemporary non-judgmental therapeutic culture is broadly resistant to divine-wrath language specifically; risk of the curriculum either over-softening this into vague consequence-language or presenting it without Luke’s own pastoral balance of compassion and warning held together.
Blasphemy Against Holy Spirit
Approved rendering: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit
Transliteration: blasphemia eis to Hagion Pneuma
Doctrine: Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit
Original: βλασφημία εἰς τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα
Category: God
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk with real pastoral stakes. A specific, unforgivable category of hardened, decisive rejection of the Spirit’s testimony to Christ (12:10), not a momentary doubt or private sin. This text has a well-documented history of causing sincere believers needless anxiety, fearing they have committed it through an intrusive thought; curriculum material must address this explicitly and reassuringly rather than leave it to free-floating fear.
Consolation Of Israel
Approved rendering: consolation of Israel
Transliteration: paraklesis tou Israel
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
Original: παράκλησις τοῦ Ἰσραήλ
Category: Covenant
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk, primarily obsolescence. The hoped-for messianic deliverance and comfort of God’s covenant people, Simeon’s motivating hope (2:25). ‘Consolation’ is a rare, formal word in contemporary English, similar to the baseline’s ‘exhort’ and ‘intercession’; requires glossing as active comfort/deliverance, not mere emotional soothing.
Redemption
Approved rendering: redemption
Transliteration: lytrosis
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: redeem a coupon/gift card/loyalty points (commercial usage — a genuine false-friend)
Original: λύτρωσις
Category: Salvation
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk. Ransoming/deliverance, often with the connotation of a price paid; Anna’s expectation (2:38), recurring at 21:28 and 24:21. ‘Redemption’ in contemporary English survives mainly in commercial usage, a significant dilution of the biblical sense of a costly rescue/ransom into routine transactional exchange for a reward. Should be explicitly distinguished.
Centurions Confession
Approved rendering: certainly this man was innocent
Transliteration: ontos ho anthropos houtos dikaios en
Doctrine: Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People
Original: ὄντως ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος δίκαιος ἦν
Category: Salvation
New curriculum-specific HIGH risk extending the baseline’s ‘righteousness’ entry. A Gentile Roman soldier’s testimony to Jesus’ innocence/righteousness at the cross (23:47), carrying both legal-innocence and moral-righteousness senses. Another instance of Gentile faith/recognition bracketing the Gospel (cf. 7:9’s centurion), reinforcing Jesus as Savior for All Nations even at the cross; the double sense of dikaios should not be flattened to only one.
Medium Risk Terms
Gospel
Approved rendering: gospel
Transliteration: gospel
Doctrine: Gospel
Rejected alternatives: good news (acceptable as an explanatory gloss, but should not fully replace ‘gospel’ since it loses the term’s proclamatory weight)
Original: εὐαγγέλιον / εὐαγγελίζω
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Comparatively stable: the idiom ‘gospel truth’ reinforces rather than undermines the word’s authoritative connotation. Main risk is confusing ‘the Gospels’ (the four books) with ‘the gospel’ (the message). Luke-specific note: the verbal form (euangelizomai) at 4:18 ties the gospel intrinsically to a named audience, the poor — the recipient is part of the content, not incidental scene-setting. Also note 2:10’s gospel announcement is made first to shepherds, low-status marginalized figures, reinforcing the same point at the Gospel’s very opening.
Apostle
Approved rendering: apostle
Transliteration: apostle
Doctrine: Apostleship
Original: ἀπόστολος
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Main risk is treating ‘apostle’ as a generic job title (‘an apostle of free trade’) rather than a specific, foundational, non-repeatable office. Luke-specific note: 6:13 records the formal, deliberate naming of the Twelve as apostles, functioning as this doctrine’s Lukan anchor text and doubling as an early anchor for the forward-referenced Church as God’s People doctrine.
Holy
Approved rendering: holy
Transliteration: holy
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: holier-than-thou (negative idiom), holy cow / holy moly (content-free exclamations)
Original: ἅγιος
Category: Sanctification
Inherited from Romans package. Must be actively re-taught rather than assumed familiar. Luke-specific note: recurs especially of the Holy Spirit throughout Luke’s opening chapters (1:35, 49, 70, 72), establishing set-apartness as a divine-initiative category from before Jesus’ birth.
Sanctification
Approved rendering: sanctification
Transliteration: sanctification
Doctrine: Sanctification
Original: ἁγιασμός (concept; not a distinct Lukan Gospel term)
Category: Sanctification
Inherited from Romans package. OBSOLESCENCE RISK rather than false-friend risk, unchanged. Luke-specific note: not a distinct lexical term in Luke’s Gospel; the concept is present in holiness and discipleship material (e.g., 6:36’s call to mercy as imitation of God) without the technical noun.
Son Of God
Approved rendering: Son of God
Transliteration: Son of God
Doctrine: Sonship and Deity of Christ
Original: υἱὸς θεοῦ
Category: Christology
Inherited from Romans package. The eternal, unique, divine sense must be actively taught, not assumed retained by cultural familiarity with the phrase. Luke-specific note: announced at the incarnation (1:35), tested by the devil (4:3, 9), and confessed before the Sanhedrin (22:70); should be taught alongside ‘Son of Man’ (a distinct, new curriculum term, see below) so the two titles are not conflated or read as simple synonyms.
Peace
Approved rendering: peace
Transliteration: peace
Doctrine: Peace with God
Rejected alternatives: world peace / inner peace (dominant secular senses)
Original: εἰρήνη
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. Must be distinguished from both the geopolitical and the merely psychological senses. Luke-specific addition: 2:14’s ‘peace on earth’ deliberately contests Roman Pax Romana propaganda — a direct political counter-claim to Caesar’s advertised peace achieved by conquest; contemporary readers should be told this was a provocative, not merely pastoral, statement in its original setting.
Fellowship
Approved rendering: fellowship
Transliteration: fellowship
Doctrine: Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: a fellowship (dominant contemporary secular sense: an academic/professional grant or appointment)
Original: κοινωνία (concept; limited direct Lukan Gospel occurrence)
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific note: this doctrine is carried almost entirely by narrative enactment in Luke — Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners (5:29-32; 7:36-50; 15:1-2; 19:1-10; 24:30-35) — rather than the lexical term itself, which is scarce in Luke’s Gospel; curriculum material should draw this connection explicitly rather than search for the word.
Kingdom Of God
Approved rendering: kingdom of God
Transliteration: kingdom of God
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Rejected alternatives: a fantasy kingdom (contemporary media associations from fantasy fiction, film, and games)
Original: βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ
Category: Kingdom
Inherited from Romans package; risk amplified for this curriculum by Luke’s sheer density and parable-based texture of kingdom teaching. Luke-specific compounding risk: 17:20-21’s ‘within/among you’ (entos hymon) is a genuine textual ambiguity requiring the baseline’s ambiguity-handling protocol — present both readings (‘within you’ individualized/inward; ‘in your midst’ corporate/Christ’s-presence) transparently, not silently resolved toward the individualist reading contemporary Western culture predisposes readers to prefer.
Law
Approved rendering: law
Transliteration: law
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Original: νόμος
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Contemporary readers’ litigious-culture default should be kept from displacing the Torah/Mosaic-Law sense. Luke-specific note: the holy family’s law observance (2:22-27, 39) and Jesus’ own affirmation and fulfillment of it (16:16-17; 24:44) frame law positively within Luke’s narrative, distinct from any ‘legalism is always bad’ caricature the baseline separately warns against.
Gentiles
Approved rendering: Gentiles
Transliteration: Gentiles
Doctrine: Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People
Rejected alternatives: non-believers (a common but incorrect modern gloss)
Original: ἔθνη
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Should not be glossed as ‘non-believers.’ Luke-specific note: 2:32’s ‘light for revelation to the Gentiles’ and 24:47’s commission to ‘all nations’ bracket the entire Gospel, making this term’s correct handling load-bearing at both the opening and closing of the book.
Glory
Approved rendering: glory
Transliteration: glory
Doctrine: Sonship and Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: glory days (nostalgic secular usage), a glory hound (pejorative self-seeking usage)
Original: δόξα
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Must be distinguished from both nostalgic and self-seeking connotations. Luke-specific note: appears at the nativity (2:9, 14, 32), the Transfiguration (9:31-32), and the resurrection appearances (24:26), consistently marking visible, radiant divine presence rather than human achievement or fame.
Power Of God
Approved rendering: power of God
Transliteration: power of God
Doctrine: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Salvation History
Original: δύναμις θεοῦ
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Should be actively distinguished from the largely negative secular power-abuse discourse. Luke-specific note: present at the incarnation (1:35), throughout Jesus’ ministry (4:14, 36; 5:17; 6:19), and in the promised ‘power from on high’ (24:49, see separate entry) — should be taught as the same divine power throughout, not a new or different force introduced at the Gospel’s end.
Prophet
Approved rendering: prophet
Transliteration: prophet
Doctrine: Inspiration of Scripture
Rejected alternatives: a tech prophet / prophet of doom (secular usage for a confident forecaster)
Original: προφήτης
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific note: 4:24’s ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown’ directly extends the core passage narrative and should be taught as part of the same episode, not a separate saying.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: prophecy
Transliteration: prophecy
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: a self-fulfilling prophecy (unrelated secular psychological idiom)
Original: προφητεία (concept; fulfillment-of-prophecy pervasive)
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific value: 24:25-27, 44 form the Gospel’s clearest statement authorizing a whole-Bible messianic reading, directly answering the core passage’s claim at 4:21; 7:22’s echo of 4:18-19’s exact vocabulary confirms the core passage as an actively-fulfilled programmatic thesis, not an isolated one-time claim.
Intercession
Approved rendering: intercession
Transliteration: intercession
Doctrine: Prayer and Intercession
Original: (concept; cf. Jesus’ prayer for Peter, 22:32)
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. Obsolescence risk rather than false-friend risk. Luke-specific note: 22:32 depicts Jesus interceding for Peter’s faith before his denial, an accessible narrative anchor beyond the more abstract Romans 8:26-27 treatment.
Mission
Approved rendering: mission
Transliteration: mission
Doctrine: Mission to the Nations
Rejected alternatives: a mission statement (dominant contemporary corporate/organizational sense)
Original: (concept; ἀποστέλλω word family)
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific note: the sending of the Seventy-Two (10:1-12) is a Luke-specific expansion of the sending pattern beyond the Twelve alone (9:1-6), worth noting as a deliberate broadening of the mission’s scope, culminating in the commission to ‘all nations’ (24:47-49).
Israel
Approved rendering: Israel
Transliteration: Israel
Doctrine: Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People
Original: Ἰσραήλ
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Note the modern nation-state of Israel is a live, politically contested topic; context should clarify when the biblical covenant people, not contemporary geopolitics, is meant. Luke-specific note: recurs throughout the infancy narrative (1:16, 54, 68, 80; 2:25, 32, 34) as the covenant people whose ‘consolation’ (2:25, see separate entry) and light-to-the-Gentiles mission are announced together.
Father
Approved rendering: Father
Transliteration: Father
Doctrine: Prayer and Dependence on God
Original: Πατήρ
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package. Minor denominational note (Catholic priestly address) and pastoral-sensitivity caveat (painful human-father associations) both carry over. Luke-specific note: the Lord’s Prayer’s address (11:2) opens simply ‘Father’ — the pastoral-sensitivity caveat is especially relevant given this prayer’s foundational, frequently-recited status across nearly all English-speaking Christian traditions. Jesus models submission to the Father in Gethsemane (22:42).
Abba
Approved rendering: Abba
Transliteration: Abba
Doctrine: Prayer and Dependence on God
Rejected alternatives: ABBA (the Swedish pop group)
Inherited from Romans package. Luke’s own Lord’s Prayer (11:2) uses plain ‘Father,’ not ‘Abba’; this term is retained in this curriculum’s vocabulary set for cross-teaching with Romans 8:15 and to preserve the baseline’s ABBA-pop-group disclaimer intact wherever Abba-intimacy material is taught alongside Luke’s Father-material.
Seed Of David
Approved rendering: seed of David
Transliteration: seed of David
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: descendant of David (acceptable modern-register gloss)
Original: (concept; cf. Luke 1:32-33, 69; 2:4; 20:41-44)
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Luke-specific note: woven throughout the infancy narrative (1:32-33, 69; 2:4) and the climactic ‘David’s Lord’ riddle (20:41-44), which should be taught as this doctrine’s culminating text.
Count The Cost
Approved rendering: count the cost
Transliteration: psephizo ten dapanen
Doctrine: The Cost and Joy of Discipleship
Original: ψηφίζω τὴν δαπάνην
Category: Discipleship
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Deliberate, forethought-requiring calculation before committing, illustrated by the tower-builder and king-going-to-war parables (14:28-33). The English idiom survives with a meaning close to the biblical sense (a mild asset), though the specifically costly, exclusive nature of discipleship commitment should still be drawn out explicitly rather than left at the level of generic prudent planning.
Lost
Approved rendering: lost
Transliteration: apollymi
Doctrine: Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins
Rejected alternatives: feeling lost (secular therapeutic self-help framing, without the relational sin-and-restoration content)
Original: ἀπόλλυμι
Category: Repentance
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. A state of being separated from where one belongs, at risk, or perishing; threads through the lost sheep, coin, and son parables (ch. 15) to 19:10’s Gospel-summarizing ‘the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.’ Contemporary secular usage is a mild point of resonance but risks reducing the specifically relational, sin-and-restoration sense to generic personal confusion or lack of purpose.
Joy
Approved rendering: joy
Transliteration: chara
Doctrine: The Cost and Joy of Discipleship
Original: χαρά
Category: Discipleship
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Celebratory, communal gladness, including heaven’s own response to a sinner’s repentance (15:7, 10). Bookends the Gospel from 1:14, 44 to 24:41, 52. Contemporary ‘joy’ is comparatively stable but often reduced to fleeting emotional happiness (a mood) rather than the sustained, theologically-grounded gladness Luke describes.
Mammon
Approved rendering: mammon
Transliteration: mamonas
Doctrine: Good News to the Poor and Marginalized
Rejected alternatives: money (loses the personified rival-master sense)
Original: μαμωνᾶς
Category: Poverty and Marginalization
New curriculum-specific Medium risk; obsolescence rather than false-friend. Material wealth personified as a rival object of allegiance/service (16:9, 11, 13, ‘you cannot serve God and mammon’), an Aramaic loanword left untranslated in the Greek text itself. ‘Mammon’ is rare and archaic outside biblical quotation, which paradoxically makes it safer than a direct rendering (‘money’), since it flags itself as requiring definition rather than inviting confident misreading. Retain the transliteration alongside a plain-language gloss, per this curriculum’s archaism-with-gloss convention (cf. baseline’s ‘seed of David’).
Exalted Humbled
Approved rendering: exalted / humbled
Transliteration: hypsoo / tapeinoo
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Original: ὑψόω / ταπεινόω
Category: Kingdom
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. A recurring Lukan reversal principle: God’s kingdom inverts worldly status hierarchies (1:52-53’s Magnificat; 14:11; 18:14). Low competing modern meaning; the main risk is under-connecting individual instances to the wider Magnificat-inaugurated reversal theme threading through the whole book.
House Of Prayer
Approved rendering: house of prayer
Transliteration: oikos proseuches
Doctrine: Prayer and Dependence on God
Original: οἶκος προσευχῆς
Category: Prayer
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. The temple’s intended purpose (19:46, quoting Isaiah 56:7), contrasted with its corrupted commercial use (‘den of robbers,’ quoting Jeremiah 7:11). Low competing modern meaning for the phrase itself, but should be connected explicitly to the baseline’s ‘church’ institutional-erosion risk, since both texts address the gap between an institution’s God-given purpose and its corrupted practice.
Today Refrain
Approved rendering: today
Transliteration: semeron
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Original: σήμερον
Category: Kingdom
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. A deliberate Lukan literary/theological refrain asserting the kingdom’s present-tense arrival, occurring at 2:11, 4:21, 19:9, and 23:43. Contemporary readers may not notice ‘today’ as a deliberate theological pattern unless flagged; risk is under-noticing rather than active misreading, but the cumulative fourfold pattern should be taught as a connected set, not isolated instances.
Ascension
Approved rendering: ascension
Transliteration: analambano / analempsis
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ
Original: ἀναλαμβάνω
Category: Eschatology
New curriculum-specific Medium risk; obsolescence rather than false-friend. Jesus’ bodily departure into heaven (9:51 anticipates it; 24:51 narrates it), distinguished from mere death, vision, or resuscitation. ‘Ascension’ is rare in ordinary contemporary English outside explicitly religious usage; the minor competing modern sense (a corporate/career ‘ascension’ to power) is mild and generally harmless. Completes the historical-event chain (incarnation-death-resurrection-ascension), reinforcing its status as real history, not myth, and functions as the direct narrative bridge into Acts.
Devil
Approved rendering: devil
Transliteration: diabolos
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Rejected alternatives: devil may care / devil’s advocate (casual metaphors for mischief or contrarian argument)
Original: διάβολος
Category: Spiritual Warfare
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. The personal, malevolent spiritual adversary, present at the wilderness temptation (4:1-13), the sower parable (8:12), and Judas’ betrayal (22:3). Contemporary secular culture ranges from dismissing ‘the devil’ as pure superstition/folklore to using it as a casual metaphor for mischief; the real, personal, defeated-but-still-active adversary sense should be distinguished from both.
Demons
Approved rendering: demons
Transliteration: daimonion
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Rejected alternatives: my demons (psychological-struggle metaphor)
Original: δαιμόνιον
Category: Spiritual Warfare
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Personal, hostile spiritual beings subject to Jesus’ authority, present throughout Luke’s exorcism narratives (4:33-41; 8:2, 27-33; 11:14-20). Contemporary popular culture both trivializes (horror-genre sensationalism) and metaphorizes (casual psychological usage) the term; the New Testament’s real, personal, defeated-spiritual-being sense should be distinguished from both.
Authority
Approved rendering: authority
Transliteration: exousia
Doctrine: Sonship and Deity of Christ
Original: ἐξουσία
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Legitimate, recognized power to command, teach, or act, recurring regarding Jesus’ teaching, exorcisms, and forgiveness of sins (4:32, 36; 5:24). Contemporary discourse on ‘authority’ is often suspicious or critical of institutional power; Jesus’ authority should be actively distinguished as legitimate, self-evidencing, and benevolent, not coercive.
Daily Bread
Approved rendering: daily bread
Transliteration: ho artos ho epiousios
Doctrine: Prayer and Dependence on God
Original: ὁ ἄρτος ὁ ἐπιούσιος
Category: Prayer
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. An exceptionally rare Greek word (epiousios, essentially unattested elsewhere in Greek literature before this prayer), reflecting deliberate, day-by-day dependence on God (11:3) rather than accumulated security. Contemporary financial-security culture sits in some tension with this prayer’s deliberately modest framing; note the tension without moralizing against ordinary financial prudence.
Do Not Be Anxious
Approved rendering: do not be anxious
Transliteration: me merimnate
Doctrine: Prayer and Dependence on God
Rejected alternatives: generic secular stress-management advice (misses the specifically theological ground)
Original: μὴ μεριμνᾶτε
Category: Prayer
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. A command against habitual anxious care about material provision, grounded in God’s fatherly provision and kingdom priority (12:22-34). Contemporary mental-health-aware culture is a mild asset (generally receptive to anti-anxiety teaching), though risk exists of flattening this into generic secular stress management divorced from its specifically theological ground.
Great Banquet Compel
Approved rendering: compel them to come in
Transliteration: anankason eiselthein
Doctrine: Good News to the Poor and Marginalized
Rejected alternatives: historical misuse to justify forced conversion (a serious misapplication to guard against explicitly)
Original: ἀνάγκασον εἰσελθεῖν
Category: Poverty and Marginalization
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Urgent, earnest invitation to the poor, crippled, blind, and lame to a banquet from which the originally invited excluded themselves (14:15-24). ‘Compel’ has occasionally been misused historically to justify forced conversion; curriculum material should clarify this means urgent, earnest invitation/insistence toward the excluded, not coercive force against the unwilling.
Eternal Life
Approved rendering: eternal life
Transliteration: zoe aionios
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Rejected alternatives: living forever (mere quantity of unending time, missing the qualitatively different life of the age to come)
Original: ζωὴ αἰώνιος
Category: Eschatology
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Life of the age to come, inaugurated now and fulfilled at the resurrection, sought by the lawyer (10:25) and the rich ruler (18:18, 30). Contemporary secular and even much popular Christian usage reduces this to merely ‘living forever’; the quality-not-merely-quantity distinction should be made explicit.
Light For Revelation To Gentiles
Approved rendering: a light for revelation to the Gentiles
Transliteration: phos eis apokalypsin ethnon
Doctrine: Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People
Original: φῶς εἰς ἀποκάλυψιν ἐθνῶν
Category: Church
New curriculum-specific Medium risk extending the baseline’s ‘Gentiles’ entry. Simeon’s declaration (2:32) that the child is a universal illumination extending God’s saving purpose beyond Israel. Foundational anchor text for the doctrine of Jesus as Savior for All Nations, at the infancy narrative’s climax.
Genealogy Adam Ward
Approved rendering: genealogy
Transliteration: genealogia
Doctrine: Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People
Original: γενεαλογία
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Luke’s genealogy (3:23-38) traces Jesus back to Adam, ‘son of God,’ a deliberate universalizing move distinct from Matthew’s forward Abraham-to-Jesus, Israel-focused genealogy. Genealogies are widely skipped or skimmed by contemporary readers as tedious lists; this load-bearing theological choice is easily missed without explicit comment.
Word Of God Seed
Approved rendering: word of God
Transliteration: ho logos tou theou
Doctrine: Inspiration of Scripture
Original: ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ
Category: Covenant
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. God’s authoritative, life-giving message, depicted as seed in the Parable of the Sower (8:11, 21; also 11:28). Low competing modern meaning beyond generic ‘words’; should be tied explicitly to Scripture/gospel proclamation rather than left as a vague abstraction.
One Thing Necessary
Approved rendering: one thing is necessary
Transliteration: henos chreia
Doctrine: Prayer and Dependence on God
Rejected alternatives: flattened ‘contemplation vs. action’ binary; gendered household-role weaponization
Original: ἑνὸς … χρεία
Category: Discipleship
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Mary’s choice to sit and listen to Jesus’ teaching over active household service (10:38-42), ‘the good portion.’ Popular contemporary reception often flattens this into a simplistic (and somewhat unfair to Martha) binary or weaponizes it in gendered household-role debates; present Jesus’ point as receptive priority, not a blanket devaluation of practical service.
Narrow Door
Approved rendering: narrow door
Transliteration: stene thyra
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Original: στενὴ θύρα
Category: Kingdom
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. A limited, specific means of entry into the kingdom, warning against presumptuous, merely nominal belonging (13:24-30). Contemporary pluralistic culture is often uncomfortable with any ‘narrow’/exclusive access claim; hold in tension with the immediately following inclusive ‘east and west’ language (13:29) rather than resolving the tension prematurely.
Lament Over Jerusalem
Approved rendering: lament over Jerusalem
Transliteration: (no single lexical term; 13:34-35; 19:41-44)
Doctrine: Providence
Original: (no single lexical term; 13:34-35; 19:41-44)
Category: Compassion
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. Jesus’ grief-filled address to Jerusalem, combining sovereign initiative with genuine relational sorrow at rejection. No major competing modern sense, but the sovereignty/human-responsibility tension this text raises should be flagged for careful, non-reductive handling rather than resolved simplistically in either a hard-determinist or a purely voluntarist direction.
Temple Curtain Torn
Approved rendering: the curtain of the temple was torn in two
Transliteration: to katapetasma tou naou eschisthe
Doctrine: Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins
Original: τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη
Category: Salvation
New curriculum-specific Medium risk. The veil separating the Holy of Holies from ordinary access, torn at the moment of Jesus’ death (23:45), symbolizing opened access to God. Requires the temple’s architectural/ritual background to be supplied (most contemporary readers have no independent knowledge of the Holy of Holies’ significance); once supplied, not especially prone to competing modern misreadings.
Power From On High
Approved rendering: power from on high
Transliteration: dynamin ex hypsous
Doctrine: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Salvation History
Original: δύναμιν ἐξ ὕψους
Category: God
New curriculum-specific Medium risk extending the baseline’s ‘power of God’ entry. The Gospel’s final promise (24:49), anticipating Pentecost and positioning Acts as the ongoing outworking of the Holy Spirit’s work. Should be taught as the same divine power active throughout Luke, not a new or different force introduced only at the Gospel’s end; the direct narrative bridge into Acts/Pentecost.
Low Risk Terms
Adoption
Approved rendering: adoption
Transliteration: adoption
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
Original: υἱοθεσία (concept; not a distinct Lukan Gospel term)
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package. A rare case of positive secular drift (increased cultural celebration of adoption) supporting rather than undermining this doctrine. Luke-specific note: the prodigal son’s restoration to full sonship — robe, ring, feast (15:22-24) — is a strong illustrative, though not lexical, anchor text for this doctrine’s full-inheritance-rights emphasis.
Thanksgiving
Approved rendering: thanksgiving
Transliteration: thanksgiving
Doctrine: Thanksgiving
Original: εὐχαριστία / εὐχαριστέω
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. Minor risk of confusion with the capitalized national holiday. Luke-specific note: 22:19’s usage at the Last Supper (‘he gave thanks’) is the historical root of the later technical term ‘Eucharist’ in some Christian traditions — worth a brief denominational-awareness flag without adjudicating sacramental debate here (see ‘new_covenant’ entry for that discussion). 17:16’s healed Samaritan leper returning to give thanks is a further Luke-specific anchor.
David
Approved rendering: David
Transliteration: David
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Original: Δαυίδ
Category: Covenant
Inherited from Romans package. Most readers’ independent knowledge of David comes from the David-and-Goliath narrative alone, not the covenant promise; supply this background. Luke-specific note: traced through the annunciation (1:27, 32, 69), the nativity (2:4, 11), the genealogy (3:31), and the climactic ‘David’s Lord’ riddle (20:41-44).
Exhort
Approved rendering: exhort
Transliteration: exhort
Doctrine: Mutual Edification
Original: παρακαλέω (concept; limited direct occurrence)
Category: Faith
Inherited from Romans package. OBSOLESCENCE RISK, readers will likely need it glossed but are unlikely to actively misread it. Luke-specific note: 3:18 describes John the Baptist’s preaching this way.
Census
Approved rendering: census
Transliteration: apographe
Doctrine: Incarnation
Original: ἀπογραφή
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific Low-Medium risk. A Roman administrative registration anchoring the birth narrative in verifiable, dateable history (2:1-2). Minor historical/chronological debates exist among scholars regarding the Quirinius census dating; acknowledge briefly without overstating certainty, without undermining the historical intent of the claim.
Manger
Approved rendering: manger
Transliteration: phatne
Doctrine: Incarnation
Original: φάτνη
Category: Christology
New curriculum-specific Low risk. A feeding trough for animals, the humble, non-domestic birthing location of Jesus (2:7, 12, 16). Heavily embedded in English-speaking Christmas culture (nativity scenes), a mild asset for recognition, but this familiarity risks reducing a theologically loaded detail of poverty and humility to mere sentimental holiday imagery.
Mysteries Of The Kingdom
Approved rendering: mysteries of the kingdom of God
Transliteration: mysterion
Doctrine: Kingdom of God Present and Future
Rejected alternatives: detective-novel ‘mystery’ (an unsolved puzzle)
Original: μυστήριον
Category: Kingdom
New curriculum-specific Low risk. Truths of the kingdom disclosed by revelation, not humanly discoverable by unaided reason (8:10). Easily corrected with brief context: this is a revealed, not an unsolved, mystery.
Referenced passages