Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — 2 Timothy (English → French)
Purpose and Method
This analysis identifies where French lacks precise vocabulary for 2 Timothy’s doctrine set, where French vocabulary is crowded by competing senses that require active fencing, and which terms should be transliterated versus paraphrased. It extends — and must never contradict — the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json. Every reused term below carries forward its baseline French rendering exactly. New terms specific to 2 Timothy are drawn from 08_core_glossary.md and the updated bible_term_registry.json produced for this curriculum.
Coverage is full-book: 2 Timothy 1–4. The core passage (3:14–4:5) is the theological anchor of the letter and of this analysis, not its scope boundary — every chapter is reviewed below, including chapters or sub-sections that contribute no new terminology, which are noted explicitly rather than omitted.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the seven curriculum doctrines: the available French term(s), their structural weaknesses in the destination language/culture, and the recommended mitigation strategy.
1.1 Inspiration and Sufficiency of Scripture (3:14–17)
| Available French terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| inspirée de Dieu (θεόπνευστος) | No single French word coins “God-breathed”; “inspirée” alone is used loosely of poets, artists, and political speeches (“un discours inspiré”), diluting the unique, one-time divine-authorship claim. | Retain “inspirée de Dieu” (not bare “inspirée”) as a fixed compound, never abbreviated. Gloss on first teaching occurrence: “littéralement ‘soufflée par Dieu’.“ |
| l’Écriture (γραφή) | France’s Catholic/Protestant history makes “l’Écriture” the live site of the sola scriptura vs. Scripture-and-Tradition debate (cf. baseline’s “justification” flashpoint). Catholic Dei Verbum affirms Scripture and Tradition as a single deposit under Magisterial interpretation; Reformed/evangelical French readers hold Scripture alone as the sufficient rule. | Never insert “et la Tradition” or any co-authority gloss beside “l’Écriture” in 3:15–17 teaching material. Flag every sufficiency-adjacent occurrence (3:15, 3:16, 3:17) for theologian review, matching baseline’s justification-tier handling. |
| les saintes Écritures (ἱερὰ γράμματα, 3:15) | Distinct Greek term from graphē (3:16); French translation tradition (Segond’s older “les saintes lettres”) risks silently treating both as identical, erasing a textual nuance Paul may intend (Timothy’s childhood OT formation vs. Scripture’s canonical authority). | Preserve as “les saintes Écritures,” footnote the distinct underlying Greek for reviewers so the two are not conflated in curriculum commentary. |
| accompli (ἄρτιος, 3:17) | French “parfait” (the obvious literal choice) imports a moral-perfectionism sense (“sans défaut”) foreign to the functional-adequacy sense intended (“fully equipped for the task”). | Use “accompli” and gloss explicitly: “apte, pleinement capable — non ‘sans péché’.“ |
| parfaitement équipé / propre à toute bonne œuvre (ἐξηρτισμένος, 3:17) | This is the letter’s sharpest sufficiency claim: Scripture alone, unaided, equips fully. A Catholic-formed reader’s instinct is to mentally supply “et par les sacrements / le Magistère” as an implicit co-equipper. | Render without qualification or softening; do not add an explanatory clause that reintroduces a co-source. Flag for theologian review identically to 3:16. |
Gap identified: French has no native compound for “God-breathed”; the doctrine depends entirely on a periphrastic rendering (“inspirée de Dieu”) holding its full doctrinal weight unaided. This is the single largest lexical gap in the letter (see §4, Ranked Ambiguities, #1).
1.2 Perseverance under Suffering (1:8, 2:3–6, 2:10–12, 3:10–12, 4:5–8)
| Available French terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| souffrir / endurer la souffrance (κακοπαθέω) | Ordinary French “souffrir” is available and strong, but colloquial use (“je souffre” of minor inconvenience — a delayed train, a headache) can flatten the martyrdom-adjacent weight the letter carries (Paul writing from prison, expecting execution, 4:6). | Anchor with concrete co-text (“souffrir pour l’Évangile,” “endurer la souffrance comme un bon soldat”) rather than the bare verb; avoid isolating “souffrir” without an object. |
| persévérer / endurer (ὑπομένω) | No competing false concept, but “persévérer” alone can register as a secular self-help virtue (perseverance/grit culture, “la résilience”) divorced from hope in Christ’s return. | Pair explicitly with the letter’s eschatological horizon (4:8’s “avènement”) in teaching text so perseverance is not reduced to stoic willpower. |
| (j’ai) combattu le bon combat / achevé la course (ἀγών/δρόμος, 4:7) | These are well-established, low-risk idiomatic French phrases (sports/athletic register is culturally live in France — the Olympic and Tour de France imagination aids comprehension). | No fencing needed; retain as-is. Low risk confirmed. |
| je suis (déjà) comme une libation versée (σπένδομαι, 4:6) | The sacrificial-libation image has no live cultural referent in contemporary France (no equivalent ritual memory); a literal rendering risks sounding merely fatalistic (“je suis fini”) rather than a willing, worshipful offering. | Retain the image but require a teaching gloss explaining the OT drink-offering background; do not substitute a modern metaphor that loses the sacrificial frame. |
Gap identified: No missing vocabulary per se, but a tone gap — French readers may culturally default to stoic/self-help register for “perseverance” language unless explicitly re-anchored in hope and divine reward.
1.3 Guarding Sound Doctrine (1:13–14, 2:2, 2:14–18, 4:3)
| Available French terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| la saine doctrine / les paroles saines (ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία) | The medical “health” metaphor survives (“saine” = healthy), but secular laïque French discourse treats “doctrine” as a pejorative marker of rigid ideology (political or cultic), the opposite of the passage’s positive, life-giving sense. | Always retain the “saine/santé” pairing to keep the medical (not ideological) frame active; never let “doctrine” stand completely bare without “saine” or explicit positive context. |
| dépôt (παραθήκη, 1:14) | Modern French “dépôt” is overwhelmingly a banking/storage term (dépôt bancaire, dépôt de garantie). This actually matches the ancient trustee image reasonably well, but readers will process it through a financial frame first rather than a sacred-trust frame. | Gloss on first occurrence: “un dépôt précieux confié, comme on confie un trésor à un dépositaire de confiance.” Do not leave unglossed in reader-facing material. |
| dispenser droitement (la parole de vérité) (ὀρθοτομέω, 2:15) | The Greek’s vivid “cut straight” image (road-building/craftsman metaphor) has no equivalent surviving idiom in French; “dispenser droitement” conveys moral-interpretive correctness but loses the cutting/craftsman visual entirely. | Provide an explanatory teaching note recovering the original image (a road cut straight, or a craftsman’s precise cut) rather than relying on the French phrase alone to carry it. |
| gangrène (γάγγραινα, 2:17) | Direct cognate; vivid and immediately comprehensible. | No fencing needed. Low risk confirmed. |
Gap identified: French has adequate vocabulary but is missing the visual/idiomatic freight of two Greek images (health-vs-disease and cutting-straight); both require supplementary teaching glosses rather than lexical substitution.
1.4 Faithful Transmission of the Gospel (1:5, 1:13–14, 2:2, 4:7)
| Available French terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| confier (παρατίθημι, 2:2) | Adequate and precise; ordinary French “confier” already carries a trustee/safekeeping sense (confier un enfant, confier un secret). | Low risk. No fencing needed beyond consistency with “dépôt” above. |
| garder (τηρέω / φυλάσσω, 1:14, 4:7) | A single French verb (“garder”) must carry two related but distinguishable Greek verbs (φυλάσσω = active sentry-guarding of a possession; τηρέω = ongoing preservation of a state/content). French collapses the distinction. | Accept the collapse as unavoidable, but flag in teaching notes that “garder” at 4:7 (“j’ai gardé la foi”) means preserved apostolic teaching intact — not “I remained a believer” in a vague sense — versus “garder” at 1:14, which is the active-sentry sense. |
| hommes fidèles (2:2, “faithful men”) | No lexical gap; “fidèle” is stable and unambiguous here. | Low risk. |
Gap identified: No missing vocabulary; the risk is a French lexical collapse of two distinct Greek verbs into one verb (“garder”), addressed by contextual glossing rather than by inventing a new term.
1.5 The Charge to Preach the Word (4:1–5)
| Available French terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| prêcher (κηρύσσω, 4:2) | Stable in French Christian register across traditions, but secular French has drifted the idiom toward “prêcher dans le désert” (to preach uselessly to no one who listens) — a mildly deflating, ineffectual connotation directly opposed to the passage’s authoritative-herald sense. | Retain “prêcher” (it is the only viable option and matches all French Bible traditions) but pair with the solemn-charge framing of 4:1 so the authoritative-herald sense is reinforced, not left to the idiom’s undertow. |
| ministère (διακονία, 4:5) | Ordinary French “ministère” is first and overwhelmingly a government department (“le ministère de l’Éducation nationale”). This is a direct structural collision, parallel in kind to the baseline’s “élection” note (political-institutional vocabulary colliding with theological vocabulary). | Gloss on first occurrence: “ministère (service chrétien).” Never let “ministère” stand alone in a title or heading without this qualifier in learner-facing material. |
| évangéliste (εὑαγγελιστής, 4:5) | In French Christian culture, “les évangélistes” primarily and near-automatically denotes the four Gospel-writers (Matthieu, Marc, Luc, Jean) — a completely different referent from the NT ministry office/function Paul names here. | Require an explicit teaching gloss distinguishing “l’évangéliste” (office/function: gospel-proclaimer) from “les quatre évangélistes” (the Gospel authors) at first occurrence. This is a genuine same-word/different-referent collision, not merely a nuance. |
| je te charge solennellement (διαμαρτύρομαι, 4:1) | Segond’s traditional “je t’adjure” is archaic register, forbidden under this curriculum’s tone rules (avoid 17th-century turns of phrase). | Use “je te charge solennellement” consistently; retain legal-witness solemnity without archaism. |
| à temps et à contretemps (εὐκαίρως ἀκαίρως, 4:2) | The paradox (urgency regardless of social reception) risks being softened into “quand c’est opportun,” which would erase the deliberate oxymoron and undercut its relevance to France’s laïcité climate, where public gospel proclamation can feel socially “inopportune” by design. | Retain the full paradoxical pairing; do not resolve or soften it in any teaching paraphrase. |
Gap identified: Two same-word/different-referent collisions (“ministère,” “évangéliste”) requiring mandatory first-occurrence glosses — these are the doctrine’s highest-priority fencing items.
1.6 Apostasy and False Teachers in the Last Days (2:17–18, 3:1–9, 3:13, 4:3–4, 4:10, 4:14)
| Available French terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| imposteurs (γόητες, 3:13) | The literal cognate-adjacent word “séducteurs” is FORBIDDEN: modern French “séducteur/séductrice” denotes a romantically charming or seductive person — a positive-to-neutral, entirely unrelated concept. This is a false-friend trap, not a nuance issue. | Use “imposteurs” exclusively. Add this to the forbidden-substitution list in the AI translation requirements (parallel to the baseline’s “élection” and “vocation” entries). |
| piété (εὐσέβεια, 3:5) | French “piété” leans toward externally visible, image-based devotion (images de piété, objets de piété — a recognizable category in popular Catholic material culture) — which is precisely the counterfeit the passage critiques (“a form of godliness… denying its power”). | Do not avoid “piété” — use it deliberately as a teaching point: the passage’s critique of appearance-without-power maps naturally onto this exact cultural association, making it a rare case where the crowded semantic neighborhood helps rather than hinders. |
| réprouvé(s) / disqualifié(s) (ἀδόκιμος, 3:8) | “Réprouvé” carries heavy Jansenist/predestinarian historical freight in French religious history (a person judged eternally condemned by unconditional decree) — a much stronger and theologically loaded claim than the immediate “failed the test” sense of ἀδόκιμος. | Prefer “disqualifié” as the primary rendering in general curriculum material; retain “réprouvé” only as a secondary gloss with an explicit caution against importing Jansenist predestinarian freight. |
| fables (alt. mythes) (μῦθοι, 4:4) | “Fables” matches Segond-tradition register but carries a softer, Aesop’s-fables/children’s-morality-tale connotation; “mythes” better conveys pseudo-religious speculative systems for a secular-academic readership but risks sounding too intellectually neutral (no built-in negative charge). | Flag for reviewer choice per passage audience; recommend “fables” for general/devotional material, “mythes” for apologetics-oriented or academically-literate material — but never silently alternate within a single document. |
| avides d’entendre des choses agréables (κνηθόμενοι τὴν ἀκοήν, “itching ears,” 4:3) | No French idiom of “itchy ears” exists; a literal “oreilles qui les chatouillent” is comprehensible but sounds odd/comic, undercutting the passage’s serious warning tone. | Use the meaning-preserving paraphrase already adopted; do not attempt a literal ear-image translation. |
| les derniers jours (ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις, 3:1) | No competing eschatological worldview in French culture (unlike, e.g., a cyclical-time culture), but the “already begun, not only future” nuance is not self-evident and risks being read as purely futuristic/apocalyptic. | Require explicit teaching note that the last days are inaugurated, ongoing, not solely predictive of a future era. |
Gap identified: One forbidden false-friend (“séducteurs”), one historically-loaded overtranslation risk (“réprouvé”), and one genuinely helpful crowded neighborhood (“piété”) that should be exploited pedagogically rather than fenced away.
1.7 Assurance of Reward (4:7–8, 4:14, 2:11–13)
| Available French terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| couronne (de justice) (στέφανος, 4:8) | French “couronne” defaults immediately to a royal/monarchical crown image (a king’s crown), not the victor’s athletic wreath (garland awarded at games) that στέφανος denotes. This risks an unintended “crowned as king” reading rather than “awarded as victor in a completed contest.” | Always pair with “couronne de justice” (never bare “couronne”) and provide a teaching gloss recovering the athletic-wreath image (cf. the letter’s own “combattu le bon combat / achevé la course” three verses earlier, which can be cross-referenced to reinforce the correct image). |
| récompense / rendre selon (ἀποδίδωμι, 4:8/4:14) | The identical Greek verb covers both the crown given to Paul (grace-consistent reward) and the just repayment due to Alexander the coppersmith (adversarial retribution). French must use the same verb family for both, risking a reader inferring that Paul’s reward is earned on the same works-basis as Alexander’s punishment. | Mandatory cross-reference to 1:9 (“not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace”) whenever 4:8 or 4:14 is taught, to keep the believer’s reward grace-grounded even while using recompense/desert vocabulary. |
| avènement (ἐπιφάνεια, 4:1, 4:8) | FORBIDDEN SUBSTITUTION: “épiphanie” collides directly with the Catholic liturgical Feast of the Epiphany (6 January, la galette des rois — a widely practiced, non-religiously-exclusive French cultural event). Using “épiphanie” would import a completely unrelated festive/culinary association. | ”Avènement” only, with zero exceptions, across all four occurrences in the letter (1:10 is a different sense — see note below — but 4:1 and 4:8 must be identical and consistent). |
| fidèle… infidèle (πιστός / ἀπιστέω, 2:11–13) | This quatrain balances assurance (“if we are faithless, he remains faithful”) against warning (“if we deny him, he will also deny us”) — different French theological traditions resolve this tension differently (perseverance-of-the-saints readings vs. conditional-security readings). | Flag every occurrence of this passage for mandatory theologian review; do not let translation choice implicitly resolve the tension in either direction. |
Gap identified: No missing vocabulary, but three high-stakes fencing requirements (crown image, reward/grace boundary, avènement/épiphanie collision) all concentrated in a fifteen-verse span (4:1–14) — the highest doctrinal-density stretch in the letter for this doctrine.
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 True Lexical Gaps (no adequate single French word exists)
| Concept | Greek | Gap type | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| God-breathed (θεόπνευστος) | unique NT coinage | No French compound word; must periphrase | ”inspirée de Dieu” (fixed compound, never abbreviated) |
| Cutting straight (ὀρθοτομέω) | dead metaphor in French | No surviving idiom | ”dispenser droitement” + mandatory image-recovery gloss |
| Itching ears (κνήθομαι) | idiom untranslatable literally | No French itching-ears idiom | Meaning-preserving paraphrase, not literal image |
| Poured out as a libation (σπένδομαι) | no live ritual referent in French culture | Cultural gap, not lexical | Retain image + explanatory teaching gloss |
| Victor’s wreath vs. royal crown (στέφανος) | French “couronne” default sense is wrong | Semantic-field mismatch | Qualify every occurrence; cross-reference athletic imagery |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (French has a word, but it is already occupied by a stronger competing sense)
| French term | Competing occupant of the semantic space | Doctrine affected | Fencing strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| ministère | Government department (le ministère de l’Intérieur) | The Charge to Preach the Word | Mandatory first-occurrence gloss “(service chrétien)“ |
| évangéliste | The four Gospel-writers | The Charge to Preach the Word; Faithful Transmission | Explicit office-vs-author distinction taught at first occurrence |
| épiphanie (forbidden) | Catholic liturgical Feast of the Epiphany / galette des rois | Assurance of Reward | Absolute forbidden substitution; use “avènement” only |
| séducteurs (forbidden) | Romantically charming/seductive person | Apostasy and False Teachers | Absolute forbidden substitution; use “imposteurs” only |
| piété | Popular Catholic devotional material culture (images de piété) | Apostasy and False Teachers | Exploit deliberately as teaching point, not fenced away |
| réprouvé | Jansenist/predestinarian unconditional-condemnation freight | Apostasy and False Teachers | Prefer “disqualifié” as primary rendering |
| dépôt | Banking/storage (dépôt bancaire) | Faithful Transmission of the Gospel | Mandatory trustee-image gloss at first occurrence |
| couronne | Royal/monarchical crown | Assurance of Reward | Always qualify “de justice”; cross-reference athletic imagery |
| doctrine | Rigid ideology (political/cultic) in secular laïque discourse | Guarding Sound Doctrine | Always pair with “saine” to retain the health metaphor |
| foi | Generic religiosity / institutional “la religion” | Faithful Transmission; Faith throughout | Baseline rule reused: always anchor to personal trust in Christ / preserved apostolic content |
| appel / appelé | Catholic vocation-to-priesthood narrowing (reserved word: “vocation”) | (Adjacent to Divine Calling, background to 1:9) | Baseline rule reused: never substitute “vocation” for the general believer’s calling |
| garder | Collapses two distinct Greek verbs (φυλάσσω/τηρέω) into one French verb | Guarding Sound Doctrine; Faithful Transmission | Context-sensitive teaching notes distinguishing sentry-guarding from content-preservation senses |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| θεόπνευστος (theopneustos) | Paraphrase (“inspirée de Dieu”) | No French transliteration tradition exists (unlike “Abba,” “Alléluia,” “Amen”); a compound is required and is already established in French Bible tradition (Segond, TOB both use “inspirée de Dieu” or close variants). |
| ἐπιφάνεια (epiphaneia) | Paraphrase, NOT transliteration (“avènement”, never “épiphanie”) | This is the single most important transliteration-avoidance decision in the letter. The transliterated form exists and is tempting (cognate-obvious), but is directly pre-empted by an unrelated, deeply entrenched French cultural/liturgical referent. Reject transliteration outright. |
| παραθήκη (parathēkē) | Paraphrase (“dépôt,” glossed) | No transliteration tradition; French “dépôt” is imperfect but workable once glossed — inventing a neologism would create an unfamiliar term with zero comprehension advantage. |
| Proper names (Loïs, Eunice, Onésiphore, Hyménée, Philète, Jannès, Jambrès, Démas, Crescens, Tite, Luc, Marc, Alexandre, Prisca/Priscille, Aquila, Éraste, Trophime, Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia) | Transliteration (standard French Bible forms) | All follow established French Bible-translation conventions per baseline transliteration rules; no paraphrase needed or appropriate for proper names. |
| ἀγών / δρόμος (agōn/dromos, athletic imagery) | Paraphrase via established idiom (“combattu le bon combat,” “achevé la course”) | These are not transliterated; French already possesses natural equivalent idioms from its own sport-culture register, making paraphrase strictly superior to any borrowed term. |
| ἀνάλυσις (analysis, “departure/unmooring,” 4:6) | Paraphrase, simplified (“mon départ”) | Full nautical-embarkation image cannot be preserved lexically without an obscure archaism; simple paraphrase accepts some image-loss, recovered contextually by surrounding resurrection/reward language rather than by inventing an unfamiliar transliterated or calque term. |
| ὀρθοτομέω (orthotomeō, “cut straight,” 2:15) | Paraphrase, image-loss accepted (“dispenser droitement”) | No workable transliteration exists for a compound verb; paraphrase is the only option, with the accepted image-loss compensated by mandatory teaching notes rather than by lexical invention. |
| Abba (already established, background to Romans, not present in 2 Timothy) | N/A | Not present in this letter; noted for completeness only, consistent with the “David”/“Israel” completeness entries in the core glossary. |
General principle applied: transliteration is reserved for terms with an existing, stable French Bible transliteration tradition (proper names, established liturgical exclamations). Every new theological-technical term introduced by 2 Timothy is resolved by paraphrase, because none of them has a pre-existing transliteration precedent in French Bible history — unlike, e.g., “Abba” in Romans 8:15, which had precedent to preserve. Where a transliteration-adjacent form exists but is pre-empted by a competing cultural referent (epiphaneia → épiphanie), transliteration is explicitly rejected and flagged forbidden.
4. Ranked List of This Letter’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × probability of misreading) and cross-referenced to the applicable curriculum doctrine.
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θεόπνευστος / “inspirée de Dieu” (3:16) — Inspiration and Sufficiency of Scripture. Highest risk in the letter. This is the curriculum’s structural equivalent of the baseline’s “justification”: a single compact doctrinal claim sitting exactly on the historic Catholic/Reformed fault line (Scripture alone vs. Scripture-and-Tradition). Ambiguity probability is high because ordinary French “inspirée” is used loosely of any inspired human work, inviting collapse of a unique metaphysical claim into a merely literary compliment. Mandatory theologian review, every occurrence.
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ἐξηρτισμένος / “parfaitement équipé…à toute bonne œuvre” (3:17) — Inspiration and Sufficiency of Scripture. The letter’s sharpest sufficiency claim; risk is a silent, culturally instinctive insertion of an implied co-equipping source (Tradition/Magisterium) by Catholic-formed readers, even without any change to the French wording itself — an ambiguity of reception, not of lexical choice. Mandatory theologian review.
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ἐπιφάνεια / “avènement” vs. forbidden “épiphanie” (4:1, 4:8) — Assurance of Reward; The Charge to Preach the Word. Not an ambiguity in meaning but a live substitution trap: a translator or reviewer unfamiliar with this curriculum’s forbidden-term list could easily reach for the cognate “épiphanie,” instantly importing an unrelated festive/liturgical association (Epiphany, galette des rois) into an eschatological warning passage. Automated forbidden-term validation required on every occurrence, in addition to human review.
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κύριος / “Seigneur” paired with judgment language (4:1, 4:8) — Lordship of Christ (adjacent doctrine, carried from baseline). “Seigneur” retains its baseline feudal-historical resonance risk, compounded here by proximity to “the righteous Judge” — risk that the confession reads as a distant historical honorific rather than a present, reigning Judge who will assess Paul’s and every reader’s life. Human theologian review, consistent with baseline routing for Lordship of Christ.
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ἀρνέομαι/πιστός quatrain (2:11–13) — Assurance of Reward. Combines a High-risk assurance claim with a High-risk warning claim in four tightly parallel lines; French theological traditions resolve the tension differently, and any translation choice that smooths the parallelism risks silently resolving a genuine interpretive tension the source text holds open. Mandatory theologian review.
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ἀνάστασις / “résurrection” used both orthodoxly (2:8) and by false teachers (2:18) — Perseverance under Suffering / Apostasy (crosses two doctrines). Same correct French word carries both the letter’s anchoring truth claim and a named heresy (“the resurrection is already past”) within eleven verses of each other — a rare case where lexical accuracy is not sufficient to prevent doctrinal confusion; only surrounding context and explicit teaching notes disambiguate. Human theologian review at both occurrences, cross-flagged to each other.
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στέφανος / “couronne (de justice)” (4:8) — Assurance of Reward. French readers’ default royal-crown image actively works against the intended victor’s-wreath sense; unlike most entries on this list, the risk is not doctrinal collision between traditions but a plain image mismatch likely to occur even among doctrinally careful readers. Native speaker review with mandatory cross-reference to 4:7’s athletic imagery.
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εὑαγγελιστής / “évangéliste” (4:5) — The Charge to Preach the Word. Same French word, two entirely different referents (NT ministry office vs. the four Gospel-writers) in the same cultural memory; the risk is a reader assuming Paul is telling Timothy to “do the work of writing a Gospel,” a total referent failure rather than a nuance loss. Native speaker review; mandatory first-occurrence gloss.
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ἀποδίδωμι / “récompense…selon ses œuvres” (4:8 vs. 4:14) — Assurance of Reward. Same verb, positive reward and adversarial retribution seven verses apart; risk that reward language for the believer is read as works-merited, contradicting 1:9. Native speaker review with mandatory cross-reference to 1:9.
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διακονία / “ministère” (4:5) — The Charge to Preach the Word. Lower doctrinal stakes than items 1–9 but very high frequency risk: “ministère” is one of the most common words in ordinary French civic vocabulary, making the collision practically certain absent a gloss, even though the theological content at stake (Timothy’s pastoral task, not a state function) is comparatively contained. Native speaker review; mandatory first-occurrence gloss.
5. Full-Chapter Coverage Confirmation
- Chapter 1 (1:1–18): Reviewed in full. Contributes: apostleship/calling background (reused from baseline), grace/purpose theology (1:9, feeding Assurance of Reward’s grace-boundary requirement), the Spirit/power/love/self-control triad (1:7), the good deposit (1:14), Onesiphorus/Lois/Eunice as named models of Faithful Transmission. No terms beyond those catalogued above.
- Chapter 2 (2:1–26): Reviewed in full. Contributes: the chain-of-custody transmission model (2:2), the athletic/agricultural/military metaphor cluster (2:3–6, feeding Perseverance), the resurrection-corruption case study (2:8, 2:18), rightly-dividing (2:15), Hymenaeus/Philetus (2:17), the faithful/faithless quatrain (2:11–13), vessels of honor/dishonor (2:20–21, sanctification-adjacent), repentance (2:25), the snare of the devil (2:26). Fully catalogued above; no residual gaps.
- Chapter 3 (3:1–17): Reviewed in full. Contributes the core passage’s doctrinal center: last days and the vice list (3:1–9), Jannes/Jambres (3:8), godliness’s counterfeit form (3:5), Paul’s own suffering as a teaching model (3:10–12), the seducers/impostors warning (3:13), and the Inspiration and Sufficiency of Scripture cluster (3:14–17), the single highest-risk stretch in the letter.
- Chapter 4 (4:1–22): Reviewed in full. Contributes the core passage’s continuation and climax: the solemn charge to preach (4:1–5), the fables/itching-ears warning (4:3–4), Paul’s summary testimony (4:6–8, feeding Assurance of Reward), and the closing personal/greetings material (4:9–21: Demas’s defection, Crescens/Titus/Luke/Mark, Alexander the coppersmith, Prisca/Aquila, Erastus/Trophimus, Eubulus/Pudens/Linus/Claudia) plus the closing doxology and benediction (4:18, 4:22). All named individuals are catalogued in the Core Glossary Table 3; no additional doctrinal vocabulary gaps beyond those already listed.
No chapter or sub-section of 2 Timothy has been silently omitted from this analysis.
This document feeds Phase 1 Step 9 (Doctrine Risk Registry update) and the Phase 1 Step 12 AI Translation Requirements forbidden-substitution list. All fencing decisions above are binding on Phase 2 segment translation and may not be altered without a corresponding update to this file and to translation_memory.json.