01 Executive Summary — Luke Language Package | English → Filipino

Why it matters

Luke is the Gospel of universal, compassionate salvation — good news to the poor, the Gentile, the sinner, and the marginalized, anchored in Jesus’ own thesis statement at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21). For a Filipino audience, this curriculum lands on some of the most theologically live ground in the whole pipeline: a majority folk-Catholic population with deep sacramental and Marian/saintly devotional habits, a significant Protestant/evangelical minority holding the baseline’s register anchor, and two homegrown sects (Iglesia ni Cristo, Members Church of God International) plus the globally active Jehovah’s Witnesses whose translated materials circulate locally and must never be echoed. Luke intensifies — rather than introduces — the baseline Romans package’s core risk pattern (grace vs. utang na loob, salvation vs. sacramental mechanism, prayer vs. saintly intercession) while adding a distinct new risk cluster around the afterlife (Hades, Paradise, Purgatory) and Christ’s authority over spirits (folk anito/engkanto belief).

Key findings

• 99 enforced terms now govern Phase 2 translation: 39 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline (unchanged) + 60 new terms introduced by Luke’s full 24-chapter sweep.
• 25 doctrines mapped across the whole book (not just the core passage), matching assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json: 6 Critical, 13 High, 5 Medium, 1 Low.
• 19 of 25 doctrines (76%) require human theologian review; 5 require native speaker review; only 1 (Joy in the Kingdom) is automated-only.
• At the term level: 9 Critical-risk terms and 35 High-risk terms (44 of 99 total terms, 44%) require theologian-level scrutiny at every occurrence.
• The core passage (Luke 4:16-21) alone carries 5 High/Critical-adjacent terms (anointed, acceptable year of the Lord, release/liberty, poor, fulfilled) that anchor the entire curriculum’s risk profile.
• Luke 15 (Prodigal Son) and Luke 18:9-14 (justified tax collector) are identified as the curriculum’s sharpest grace-vs-merit and faith-vs-works narrative test cases — stronger even than comparable Romans passages because they are lived stories, not propositional argument.

Risks

• Critical, Luke-specific: Hades/Paradise conflation with Purgatory or final hell (16:23; 23:43); the New Covenant institution narrative (22:19-20) colliding with transubstantiation/Mass devotion; the aphesis wordplay (release ↔ forgiveness of sins) being silently lost across 4:18 vs. 1:77/3:3/24:47; forgiveness of sins (Critical, all occurrences) collapsing into mechanical sacramental confession (kumpisal) absent genuine repentance.
• High, Luke-specific: “The poor” spiritualized away from its literal socioeconomic referent; “take up his cross” flattened by the everyday idiom krus na dinadala into generic hardship; kapwa (neighbor) left in its narrow in-group sense, undoing the Good Samaritan’s rhetorical point; Christ’s exousia (authority) blurred with anting-anting-style folk power; the Transfiguration read as shape-shifting; the Kingdom “within/among you” (17:20-21) individualized into private inner feeling.
• Cross-cutting cult/sect risk: the Jehovah’s Witness NWT’s comma relocation at 23:43 (deferring Paradise) and its denial of bodily resurrection at 24:39; Iglesia ni Cristo / MCGI’s unitarian de-personalization of the Holy Spirit and de-deification of Christ — a risk vector running in the opposite direction from the baseline’s usual folk-Catholic over-personalization caution and therefore easy to miss if reviewers only watch for the familiar risk direction.

Opportunities

• Luke’s own narrative material (the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, Zacchaeus, the repentant criminal) gives the curriculum unusually vivid, story-based teaching vehicles for doctrines that are often taught only propositionally in Romans — translators should lean into these narratives’ didactic power rather than treating them as generic story content.
• The core passage’s Jubilee background (Leviticus 25) is a genuine opportunity to connect Filipino audiences’ lived experience of economic inequality to a concrete biblical announcement of reversal, if the mandatory OT background note is consistently supplied.
• Luke’s low-risk terms (13% of the glossary) — parable, salt, betray, high priest, centurion, witnesses, Sadducees, scribes — carry minimal doctrinal load and can be processed with lighter-touch automated review, freeing theologian review capacity for the Critical/High cluster.

Recommended actions

1. Load the Luke-edition assets/translation_memory.json and 12_ai_translation_requirements.md (this document’s companion) before any Phase 2 segment translation begins; both extend, and never contradict, the Romans baseline.
2. Route all 19 theologian-review doctrines and all Critical/High terms through human theologian review before publication, per the escalation rules fixed in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
3. Apply the fixed corporate/presence reading for Luke 17:20-21 and the fixed immediate-presence comma placement for Luke 23:43 without reopening either decision per-segment.
4. Maintain the three-way fence between Hades, Purgatory, and impiyerno, and the two-way fence between Paradise and Purgatory/Limbo, in every teaching document touching Luke 16 or 23.
5. Cross-reference the aphesis double meaning (4:18 ↔ 1:77/3:3/24:47) explicitly in all core-passage teaching material, since this is the single clearest structural link between the curriculum’s anchor text and its Repentance-and-Forgiveness doctrine.