01 Executive Summary — Acts 1–28

English → Filipino | Acts | Language Package

Format: Smart Brevity

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Why it matters

The Acts curriculum extends a proven, doctrinally sound Filipino Language Package (Romans) into a book that narrates the church’s birth, its expansion to the Gentiles, and its first direct confrontations with folk-magic, idolatry, and Torah-observance disputes. Acts introduces 35 new theological terms across 28 chapters, of which 3 are Critical risk and 18 are High risk — most concentrated in exactly the territory where Filipino folk-Catholic devotional practice (sacramental confession, infant baptism, saint intercession, and above all the Panata sa Poong Nazareno vow tradition) most closely resembles, and could distort, the text’s own claims. Getting this Language Package right determines whether Filipino learners encounter Acts’ repentance-baptism-Spirit pattern, its grace-alone resolution of the Law question, and its Gentile-inclusion narrative on the text’s own terms — or absorb them into competing devotional frameworks already present in their culture.

Key findings

• 75 total glossary terms now govern Phase 2 translation: 40 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 35 newly introduced for Acts (per assets/translation_memory.json).
• 32 doctrines are tracked in the full risk registry (per assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json): 8 Critical (per the registry’s aggregate field; 7 by strict per-doctrine tagging — discrepancy documented and flagged for correction in 11_doctrine_analysis.md), 14 High, 8 Medium, 3 Low.
• The single highest cultural-syncretism risk in the entire curriculum is panata (Acts 18:18; 21:23-26), the Nazirite-type vow, which collides directly with the Panata sa Poong Nazareno (Black Nazarene devotion) — one of the most visible mass religious practices in the Philippines.
• The core passage (Acts 2:1-41) is the book’s highest term-density zone, containing three Critical/High risk clusters simultaneously: Pentecost tongues/filling (Holy Spirit doctrine), the repentance-baptism hinge verse (2:38), and the salvation-formula verse (2:21) — each with a documented, live folk-Catholic or Charismatic-devotional collision point.
• Acts adds church-office vocabulary (elder, overseer) that requires deliberately avoiding the obvious Filipino loanwords (presbitero, obispo) because both are already fully occupied by Catholic sacramental-hierarchical office.
• Cult/sect collision inventory expanded: Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Tagalog NWT, Iglesia ni Cristo’s unitarian Christology, and the “Ang Dating Daan” broadcast ministry’s name collision with the Acts technical term “the Way” (Ang Daan) are all newly documented as renderings/framings that must never be echoed.

Risks

• Critical-risk terms (7 total: 4 inherited — salvation, saints, intercession, imputed_righteousness; 3 new — repentance, baptism, panata) and Critical-risk doctrines (7-8) require mandatory human theologian review at every single occurrence in Phase 2. Under-resourcing this review tier is the single largest quality risk to this curriculum.
• High-risk terms (31 total: 13 inherited, 18 new) carry significant syncretism potential if translators default to the “obvious” Filipino word (e.g., presbitero for elder, sinapian for Spirit-filling, anting-anting for signs and wonders) rather than the fenced alternative.
• The repentance-baptism sequencing in Acts 2:38 is this curriculum’s most theologically contested single verse (per 05_translation_landscape.md), sitting at the intersection of folk-Catholic sacramentalism, Church-of-Christ-adjacent baptismal-regeneration readings, and mainstream evangelical faith-then-sign readings; any translation drift here has outsized doctrinal consequence.
• The Jerusalem Council’s grace/yoke resolution (Acts 15) risks conflation between its two adjacent but doctrinally distinct provisions (rejection of the Law as salvation-requirement vs. pastoral holiness guidelines) if teaching notes are dropped.

Opportunities

• Acts’ own narrative supplies built-in corrective case studies (Simon Magus, ch. 8; the sons of Sceva, ch. 19) that directly confront the exact folk-magic/power-purchase framework the baseline Romans package already flags — this curriculum can teach the doctrine by pointing to the text’s own negative examples rather than only asserting a rule.
• Paul’s Areopagus method (ch. 17) offers a positive, textually-grounded model for respectful engagement with existing devotional practice followed by clear doctrinal correction — directly reusable as the tone template for every folk-Catholic collision point in this Language Package.
• The Gentile-inclusion narrative (chs. 10-15) gives Filipino learners a a strong, concrete biblical case for the curriculum’s grace-versus-utang na loob distinction, since the Jerusalem Council’s own resolution (“we are saved through grace,” 15:11) is the text’s explicit doctrinal payoff.
• Consistent cross-document rendering requirements for Acts 2:1-41, 2:38, 4:12, 16:31, and 28:31 create a clear, auditable quality bar for Phase 2 and future curricula built on this same Language Package.

Recommended actions

1. Route all 7 Critical-risk terms and all Critical/High-risk doctrines (22 of 32) to mandatory human theologian review per occurrence, per assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json routing — no automated or native-speaker-only approval path for these.
2. Prioritize theologian review capacity for Acts 2:1-41 (the core passage) and for the panata occurrences (18:18; 21:23-26) as the two highest-density risk zones.
3. Load both the baseline Romans and Acts translation memories at every Phase 2 session per the updated 12_ai_translation_requirements.md; never allow a worker to translate Acts segments against the Romans TM alone.
4. Fix and reuse verbatim the renderings of Acts 2:38, 4:12, 16:31, and 28:31 across every future document in this curriculum, consistent with the cross-document consistency rules now formalized in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
5. Resolve the Critical-risk doctrine count discrepancy (registry aggregate of 8 vs. per-doctrine tagging of 7) in the next registry version update, without disrupting current Phase 2 routing, which operates per-doctrine.

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Prepared under PRD Phase 1 Step 11. Synthesizes 07_semantic_analysis.md, 08_core_glossary.md, assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, 11_doctrine_analysis.md, 04_comparative_theology.md, 05_translation_landscape.md, and 06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md.