Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — Exodus | English → French
Purpose and Method
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Exodus curriculum. It builds directly on 07_semantic_analysis.md (full-book term inventory) and 08_core_glossary.md (proposed renderings), and it must be read alongside the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json, which remain the language authority wherever a term is marked [BASELINE — REUSE EXACTLY].
Four tasks are executed below:
- A doctrine vocabulary matrix for the curriculum’s eight doctrines — what French vocabulary is available, where it is weak, and what strategy to apply.
- Missing vocabulary vs. crowded semantic neighborhoods — Hebrew concepts French has no word for, and French words already carrying strong competing associations that must be fenced off.
- Transliteration vs. paraphrase decisions — a term-by-term ruling with rationale, since Exodus (unlike the Romans NT baseline) introduces a large stock of Hebrew proper names, technical cultic terms, and the divine name itself, none of which had baseline precedent.
- A ranked list of this book’s highest-risk ambiguities, ordering the Critical/High items by combined doctrinal weight, collision severity, and frequency, to guide Phase 2 review-routing priority.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
1.1 The Character and Name of God (I AM)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | Dieu (baseline, Elohim); Seigneur (baseline, NT kyrios); le SEIGNEUR (new, small-caps YHWH convention); l’Éternel (Segond alternative); Je suis celui qui suis (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh); le Dieu Tout-Puissant (El Shaddai); gloire (baseline, kavod); jaloux (qanna); amour fidèle (chesed); vérité/fidélité (emet); connaître (yada) |
| Weaknesses | (a) French possesses no single word carrying chesed’s fusion of covenant-loyalty + active kindness; every candidate (grâce, fidélité, bonté, amour) captures only one facet. (b) “Seigneur” is already fixed by the baseline for NT kyrios; using it unqualified for YHWH erases the OT/NT distinction the curriculum needs to teach. (c) “Jaloux” in ordinary French denotes petty personal insecurity, the near-opposite connotation of covenant-exclusive zeal. (d) “Élection”-style political-choice vocabulary is not used here, but the same French cultural reflex (competitive/procedural reading) threatens “choisir/choix” language wherever God’s initiative is described. |
| Recommended strategy | Fix “le SEIGNEUR” (small caps) as the standing YHWH convention, with a mandatory verbal gloss for any audio/video output (“le SEIGNEUR, c’est-à-dire le nom propre de Dieu, l’Éternel”). Fix “Je suis celui qui suis” verbatim, never varied, coordinated with any future John’s Gospel material. Treat chesed as its own dedicated, glossed term (“amour fidèle”) rather than folding it into baseline “grâce”; always pair with “vérité/fidélité” when the Hebrew pairs chesed ve-emet. Always attach a one-line gloss to “jaloux” on first occurrence per lesson. |
1.2 The Exodus as Redemption
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | racheter/rédemption (ga’al, padah); rançon/prix du rachat (kofer); salut (baseline, yeshuah); bras étendu (idiom); premier-né (bekhor); crier/gémir (tsa’aq/na’aq); esclavage/servitude vs. service (avodah wordplay) |
| Weaknesses | French has exactly one common verb, “racheter,” for two theologically distinct Hebrew redemption-roots (ga’al’s kinsman-obligation sense and padah’s commercial-substitution sense), and a third related noun, “rançon” (kofer), for the ransom-price concept. All three collapse toward the same semantic field in French, risking a flattened, generically transactional “buying back” that loses the covenant-family warmth of ga’al specifically. The avodah bondage/worship pun (Pharaoh’s forced avodah vs. Israel’s true avodah owed to YHWH) is structurally invisible in French, which requires two unrelated words (“esclavage” vs. “service”). |
| Recommended strategy | Retain “racheter” as the default verb for all three roots but require a standing translator’s note the first time two of the three co-occur in the same lesson, naming the distinct Hebrew term each time. For avodah, insert an explicit exposition note wherever “Let my people go, that they may serve me” (Exodus 4-10) appears, making the wordplay visible rather than attempting an artificial French pun. |
1.3 Passover and Substitutionary Atonement
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | la Pâque (juive) (Pesach); passer au-dessus (de) (pasach); agneau (seh); sans défaut (tamim); sang (dam); pain sans levain (matzot); herbes amères (merorim); signe (ot); mémorial (zikkaron); ordonnance perpétuelle (chuqqat olam); le propitiatoire (kapporet); expier/faire l’expiation (kipper); argent de l’expiation (kesef ha-kippurim); le sang de l’alliance (dam ha-berit) |
| Weaknesses | This is the doctrine with the highest concentration of crowded semantic neighborhoods in the entire curriculum. “La Pâque” is a near-homograph of “Pâques” (Easter). “Expier/expiation” is the same word French Catholic penitential theology uses for the believer’s own works of satisfaction — the opposite theological direction from the OT’s God-provided substitute. “Mémorial” is a fixed liturgical term for the Catholic Eucharistic “mémorial de la Cène.” “Le propitiatoire” is lexically precise but almost unknown to ordinary readers, so doctrinal precision is bought at the cost of comprehension. |
| Recommended strategy | Mandatory disambiguating apposition on every first occurrence per document: “la Pâque (juive),” never bare “la Pâque.” Every occurrence of “expier/expiation” must carry an explicit directionality note (God provides and accepts the substitute; the sinner does not generate merit). “Mémorial” may be used but must be flagged for native-speaker review as a structural-parallel-only analogy, never doctrinal equivalence. “Le propitiatoire” requires an explanatory in-line phrase every time (“le propitiatoire, le couvercle d’or de l’arche où le sang était répandu”), and its French rendering must be locked for coordination with any future Romans 3:25 lesson. |
1.4 The Mosaic Covenant and Law
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | alliance (baseline, berit); loi/la Loi (baseline, torah); lois/ordonnances (mishpatim); les dix paroles/les Dix Commandements (aseret ha-devarim); œil pour œil, dent pour dent (idiom); idole/image taillée (pesel); étranger (ger); un royaume de prêtres et une nation sainte (mamlekhet kohanim); peuple précieux (segullah) |
| Weaknesses | ”Prêtres” inside the corporate designation “royaume de prêtres” raises the same Catholic ordained-clergy association that dogs “kohen” elsewhere, even though this occurrence is explicitly corporate/non-professional. “Étranger” (ger) must be kept distinct from baseline “païens” (gentiles), a distinction easy to blur in casual exposition since both describe non-Israelites. |
| Recommended strategy | For “royaume de prêtres,” add a standing clarifying phrase distinguishing this whole-nation designation from the later professional Aaronic priesthood (chs. 28-29) at first occurrence (Exodus 19:6). Maintain a firm rule that “étranger” (ger, covenant-incorporated resident) is never substituted with “païens” (ethnic outsider generally), and vice versa. |
1.5 The Tabernacle and God’s Presence
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | tabernacle (mishkan); l’arche de l’alliance (aron ha-berit); chérubins (keruvim); autel (mizbeach); le voile (parokhet); le Saint des Saints (qodesh ha-qodashim); prêtre(s)/le grand prêtre (kohen/kohen ha-gadol); onction/oindre (mashach); consécration/ordination (milu’im); encens (qetoret); la gloire du SEIGNEUR remplit le tabernacle (kevod-YHWH male); la nuée (anan); colonne de nuée/de feu (ammud anan/esh); sanctuaire (miqdash) |
| Weaknesses | The single highest-collision term in the whole curriculum: French “le tabernacle” denotes, in ordinary Catholic usage, the small cabinet housing the reserved consecrated Host — an intensely devotionally central object. “Prêtre” and “grand prêtre” carry the same live ordained-clergy association flagged under 1.4, here compounded because it is now describing an actual professional office. “Onction” additionally names the Catholic sacrament of “l’onction des malades.” |
| Recommended strategy | Mandatory clarifying gloss on every occurrence of “tabernacle” in every lesson (not just first use, given the doctrinal centrality of this collision): “le tabernacle, la tente-sanctuaire portable où Dieu habitait au milieu de son peuple durant la traversée du désert” or equivalent. Frame “prêtre(s)/le grand prêtre” explicitly as a historical Aaronic/Levitical office distinct from — and not directly validating or invalidating — any contemporary church’s ordained ministry. Draw the “onction”→“Messie” etymological bridge explicitly in exposition while distinguishing it from the sacrament of anointing the sick. |
1.6 Deliverance from Bondage to Sin
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | esclavage/servitude (avodah/eved, bondage sense); péché (baseline, chattaah); iniquité (avon); transgression (pesha); endurcir le cœur (kaved lev/chizzek lev) |
| Weaknesses | Colloquial French “péché” can trivialize sin (“péché mignon” = guilty pleasure), a risk already flagged in the baseline for Romans and equally live here. Exodus 34:7 stacks three distinct Hebrew sin-terms (chattaah, avon, pesha) in one verse; if all three are rendered “péché,” the enumerated richness of God’s self-proclaimed character formula collapses into a single flattened word. “Harden the heart” must preserve — not resolve — the deliberate ambiguity of both divine and human grammatical agency across chs. 4-10. |
| Recommended strategy | Render the three Exodus 34:7 sin-terms with three distinct French words (péché / iniquité / transgression) rather than collapsing any pair. For “endurcir le cœur,” always match the grammatical subject of the Hebrew verb exactly (God as subject in 4:21, Pharaoh as subject in 8:15) without softening God’s agency into permissive language; flag every occurrence for theologian review given the Romans 9:17-18 cross-curriculum bridge already established in the baseline. |
1.7 Moses as Mediator and Deliverer
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | l’ange de l’Éternel/du SEIGNEUR (malakh YHWH); intercession (baseline, extended caution); signes et prodiges (otot u-moftim); connaître (yada); ils virent le Dieu d’Israël (theophany statement); assemblée/communauté d’Israël (edah) |
| Weaknesses | ”Intercession” is already established by the baseline for Romans 8:26-27, 34 (Spirit’s/Christ’s heavenly intercession) and Romans’ broader caution against conflating it with saint/Marian intercession. Reusing it for Moses’ plea in Exodus 32 risks an unflagged doctrinal equivalence between Moses’ genuine-but-rejected self-offering and Christ’s accepted substitutionary intercession, unless explicitly distinguished each time. “Edah” must not drift toward “Église,” an anachronistic institutional import the baseline itself reserves for the NT body-of-Christ sense. |
| Recommended strategy | Every occurrence of “intercession” applied to Moses (Exodus 32:11-14, 31-32) must carry an explicit note that this is a real but limited, non-salvific type — God does not accept Moses’ self-substitution (“blot me out of your book”), unlike Christ’s accepted substitution. Render edah as “assemblée/communauté d’Israël,” never “Église.” |
1.8 Holiness and the Fear of the Lord
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available French terms | saint (baseline, qadosh); terre sainte (admat qodesh); consacrer/sanctifier (baseline, qadash); craindre/la crainte de Dieu (yare); sabbat (shabbat); manne (man); peuple à la tête dure/rebelle (am-qesheh-oref); veau d’or (egel massekah); ma Présence (panim); bonté (tuv) |
| Weaknesses | French sharply distinguishes “crainte” (reverence) from “peur” (terror) — an advantage over English “fear,” which must consistently exploit this distinction rather than default to a single ambiguous word. “Sabbat” carries a strong secular/folk-occult association (“le sabbat des sorcières”) entirely foreign to the biblical institution, and must also be kept distinct from “dimanche” (the Christian day of worship in French culture). “Manne” risks trivialization via the idiom “tomber du ciel comme la manne” (an unexpected windfall). |
| Recommended strategy | Always render yare as “craindre/la crainte,” never “peur,” and make explicit the Exodus 20:18-20 contrast between the people’s terror and the reverent fear God intends. Always introduce “sabbat” with contextualizing language (“le sabbat, le jour de repos institué par Dieu”) and distinguish explicitly from “dimanche.” Anchor “manne” to its specific narrative (Exodus 16) before any pedagogical forward-reference to John 6’s “bread of life,” to prevent the idiom from pre-empting the theological content. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (French has no precise equivalent)
| Hebrew concept | Gap | Consequence if unaddressed | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| chesed | No French word combines “covenant-bound loyalty” with “warm, active kindness” in one lexeme. | Collapsing into baseline “grâce” imports a strictly-unmerited-favor sense that erases the covenant-obligation dimension; collapsing into “fidélité” alone loses the warmth. | Dedicated compound rendering “amour fidèle” (or “bonté et fidélité” per context), never substituted with bare “grâce.” Mandatory theologian review at every recurrence given frequency and doctrinal weight. |
| ga’al vs. padah vs. kofer | Three distinct Hebrew redemption-roots (kinsman-obligation; commercial-substitution; ransom-price) collapse into one French verb family (“racheter/rançon”). | The kinsman-redeemer warmth of ga’al is invisible without a note; readers may assume a single flat “buy-back” transaction throughout. | Standing translator’s note distinguishing the active Hebrew root wherever two or more co-occur in the same lesson (chs. 6, 13, 15, 21, 30). |
| avodah (bondage/worship pun) | One Hebrew root spans both “forced labor” and “cultic service/worship”; French requires two unrelated words. | The rhetorical force of “let my people go, that they may serve/worship me” (Exodus 4-10) — a contrast between two avodahs — is silently lost. | Explicit exposition note at each occurrence of the “let my people go…serve” formula, naming the underlying wordplay. |
| pasach (verbal pun with Pesach) | The verb “to pass over” and the noun “Passover” share a root in Hebrew; French “passer au-dessus” and “la Pâque” share no root. | The name-giving wordplay of Exodus 12 (why the festival is called what it is) is invisible without comment. | Translator’s note at Exodus 12:13,23,27 explaining the underlying Hebrew pun rather than forcing an artificial French pun. |
| chattaah / avon / pesha (three sin-terms) | French “péché” alone cannot carry all three distinct nuances (missing-the-mark; guilt/crookedness; willful rebellion) simultaneously present in Exodus 34:7. | God’s self-proclaimed character formula loses its enumerated richness if flattened to one word. | Render as three distinct French words: péché / iniquité / transgression, never merged. |
| panim as “Face” idiom | Hebrew’s relational-nearness idiom (“my Face will go with you”) has no natural literal French equivalent without an odd, overly anthropomorphic register. | A literal “ma Face” reads as strange or grotesque in running French text. | Use “ma Présence” in running text; reserve a literal “Face” gloss for footnoted etymological explanation only. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
| French term | Competing association | Fencing required |
|---|---|---|
| tabernacle | Catholic Eucharistic tabernacle (cabinet housing the reserved Host) — an intensely devotionally central object for a large share of the audience. | Mandatory clarifying gloss on every occurrence, not merely first use, given doctrinal centrality; never allow “tabernacle” to stand unglossed. |
| la Pâque | Near-homograph “Pâques” (Easter). | Mandatory apposition “la Pâque (juive)” or “la Pâque (l’Exode)” on every first use per document. |
| expier / expiation | Catholic penitential theology’s anthropocentric “expiation” (the believer’s own suffering/works offered to satisfy for sin). | Every occurrence must state the reverse directionality: God provides and accepts a substitute; the worshiper does not generate merit. |
| prêtre(s) / grand prêtre | Roman Catholic ordained ministerial priesthood — the dominant contemporary association of the word in French. | Explicit framing as a distinct historical Aaronic/Levitical institution at first occurrence in every lesson block (chs. 19, 28-29). |
| onction | Catholic sacrament “l’onction des malades” (Anointing of the Sick). | Distinguish the OT ordination-anointing from the sacrament while actively drawing the “onction → Messie” etymological bridge. |
| mémorial | Catholic Eucharistic “mémorial de la Cène.” | Flag as structural-parallel-only; never present as doctrinal equivalence. |
| jaloux / jalousie | Everyday petty, insecure human emotion. | Gloss every occurrence as covenant-exclusive zeal, not emotional insecurity. |
| sabbat | Secular/folk-occult “sabbat des sorcières” (witches’ sabbath). | Contextualize on every occurrence; distinguish explicitly from “dimanche.” |
| manne | Secular idiom “tomber du ciel comme la manne” (windfall). | Anchor to the Exodus 16 narrative before any forward pedagogical reference. |
| Seigneur (unqualified) | Baseline NT rendering of kyrios; using it for YHWH without the small-caps convention erases the OT/NT terminological distinction the curriculum must teach. | Reserve unqualified “Seigneur” for kyrios contexts (per baseline); always use small-caps “le SEIGNEUR” for YHWH, with verbal glossing in audio output. |
| élection / choix language (adjacent risk) | Baseline already flags “élection” as colliding with French political-electoral vocabulary; the same reflex threatens any language of God “choosing” Israel (segullah, mamlekhet kohanim contexts) even without the word “élection” itself appearing. | Prefer “peuple précieux,” “choisi par grâce” framings that keep the sovereign, non-competitive sense visible; avoid bare “élire/élection” in Exodus exposition unless directly cross-referencing the baseline Romans doctrine. |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
Unlike the Romans baseline (almost entirely NT Greek vocabulary with a stable French Bible-translation tradition), Exodus introduces the Hebrew divine name, a large stock of cultic technical terms, and one direct Hebrew self-naming formula (Exodus 3:14). Each required an explicit ruling.
| Term | Options considered | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| YHWH | (a) Transliterate as “Yahvé”; (b) Segond’s “l’Éternel”; (c) ecumenical small-caps “le SEIGNEUR” | (c) le SEIGNEUR (small caps), verbally glossed in audio | Matches TOB/Bible de Jérusalem convention and keeps lexical continuity with baseline NT “Seigneur” while still typographically distinguishing the personal covenant name; “Yahvé” is liturgically discouraged in French Catholic use since a 2008 Vatican directive and would read as a break from received francophone Bible tradition. |
| Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh | (a) Transliterate; (b) paraphrase per Segond’s classic rendering | (b) Je suis celui qui suis | No francophone Bible tradition transliterates this phrase; the Segond paraphrase is already the fixed cultural-liturgical form and is the necessary lexical bridge to NT “ego eimi” sayings. |
| El Shaddai | (a) Transliterate “El Shaddaï”; (b) paraphrase “le Dieu Tout-Puissant” | (b) le Dieu Tout-Puissant, with “El Shaddai” noted parenthetically at first occurrence for reviewers | Established French rendering; a bare transliteration would be unrecognizable to the target readership without added explanation, while the paraphrase is already doctrinally precise. |
| Pesach / Passover | (a) Transliterate “Pessah” (used in French-Jewish contexts); (b) established Christian-Bible “la Pâque” | (b) la Pâque (juive), with mandatory apposition | ”Pessah” would be unfamiliar and register as an outside-tradition borrowing for this curriculum’s mixed Catholic/Protestant/secular audience; “la Pâque” is the standard francophone Christian Bible term, provided the homograph risk with “Pâques” is fenced. |
| Mishkan / Tabernacle | (a) Transliterate “michkan”; (b) established French Bible “tabernacle” | (b) tabernacle, with mandatory recurring gloss | ”Tabernacle” is the fixed francophone Bible-translation term (Segond, TOB, Bible de Jérusalem all use it); a transliteration would abandon established tradition without reducing the real collision risk, which must instead be managed by glossing. |
| Kapporet | (a) Transliterate “kapporet”; (b) LXX-derived technical French “le propitiatoire” | (b) le propitiatoire, with mandatory explanatory phrase each occurrence | ”Le propitiatoire” is the established French technical Bible term and preserves the direct lexical bridge to Romans 3:25’s hilastērion; a Hebrew transliteration would sever that NT bridge entirely. |
| Kipper / atone | (a) Transliterate “kippour”-style; (b) paraphrase “expier/faire l’expiation” | (b) expier/faire l’expiation, with mandatory directionality note | No transliteration tradition exists for the verb itself (only for the noun-derived festival name “Yom Kippour,” not in view here); paraphrase is unavoidable, so the collision with Catholic penitential “expiation” must be fenced by note instead. |
| Chesed | (a) Transliterate “hessed” (used in some French theological literature); (b) paraphrase “amour fidèle” | (b) amour fidèle as the primary running-text rendering; “hessed” may be retained in footnoted technical/reviewer material only | A running Bible-study text should not carry an unglossed Hebrew technical term for so frequent and central a word; reserve the transliteration for specialist appendices, keep “amour fidèle” (or “bonté et fidélité”) as the teaching term. |
| Shabbat | (a) Transliterate/loanword “sabbat” (already the standard French word); (b) alternative paraphrase “jour de repos” | (a) sabbat, always with contextualizing gloss | ”Sabbat” is already the established French Bible word, effectively a naturalized loanword; replacing it with a paraphrase would break with tradition, so the folk-occult collision must be fenced by gloss instead. |
| Abba / Amen / Alléluia (cross-reference only) | N/A — governed by baseline | [BASELINE — REUSE EXACTLY] | No Exodus-specific ruling needed; these transliterations are already fixed by the baseline and unaffected by Exodus content. |
| Aseret ha-devarim | (a) Transliterate; (b) established “les Dix Commandements”; (c) literal “les dix paroles” | (b) as primary, (c) as supplementary exposition note | ”Les Dix Commandements” is universally recognized; “les dix paroles” should be surfaced in teaching material to recover the relational “spoken word” framing without displacing the familiar primary term. |
General principle governing all decisions above: where an established francophone Bible-translation tradition (Segond / TOB / Bible de Jérusalem) already has a fixed rendering, that rendering is retained and the collision risk is managed by mandatory glossing rather than by introducing a novel transliteration. Transliteration is reserved only for terms with no workable French equivalent at all (none arose in this analysis beyond already-baseline-fixed items) or for footnoted specialist/reviewer reference (chesed/hessed).
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined doctrinal weight, collision severity with dominant French religious culture (chiefly Catholic sacramental/devotional practice, secondarily secular/folk associations), and frequency of occurrence across the book. This ranking should govern Phase 2 review-routing priority within the Critical/High tier.
| Rank | Term/Issue | Risk Tier | Why it ranks here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mishkan/tabernacle — Eucharistic-tabernacle collision | Critical | Highest-frequency Critical term (chs. 25-40, ~16 chapters), colliding with the single most devotionally central object in ordinary French Catholic practice; occurs in nearly every Tabernacle-doctrine lesson. |
| 2 | Kipper/expier, faire l’expiation — Tridentine penitential-direction collision | Critical | Governs the entire sacrificial-substitution logic underlying Passover and the whole atonement doctrine; misdirection here inverts the gospel’s God-provides-the-substitute logic into human self-satisfaction. |
| 3 | Kapporet/le propitiatoire — Romans 3:25 coordination | Critical | Single most concentrated OT atonement symbol and the direct lexical ancestor of Paul’s Christological claim; a rendering mismatch here breaks the intended cross-curriculum typological payoff. |
| 4 | Pesach/la Pâque — homograph with Pâques | Critical | Core passage of the entire curriculum (Exodus 12:1-14); a single missed apposition anywhere in Phase 2 output creates a visible, embarrassing confusion with Easter. |
| 5 | YHWH/le SEIGNEUR — typographic convention invisible in audio | Critical | Appears dozens of times per chapter across the whole book; the OT/NT lordship distinction the curriculum is built to teach depends entirely on this convention being applied without exception. |
| 6 | Mashach/onction — Messie bridge plus sacramental collision | Critical | Carries simultaneously the most important forward-looking etymological payoff (Messiah) and a live Catholic sacramental collision (anointing of the sick); a double-duty term requiring double vigilance. |
| 7 | Kaved lev/endurcir le cœur — divine/human agency tension | Critical | Directly quoted in Romans 9:17-18, already Critical/High in the baseline’s election doctrine; softening the grammatical subject here would silently resolve a tension Scripture deliberately leaves open. |
| 8 | Chesed/amour fidèle — no French equivalent | Critical | Central to the entire Character-and-Name-of-God doctrine (Exodus 34:6-7 climax); every occurrence risks collapsing into baseline “grâce” and losing the covenant-loyalty dimension entirely. |
| 9 | Dam ha-berit/le sang de l’alliance — Matthew 26:28 coordination | Critical | Direct verbal ancestor of the Words of Institution; any future NT curriculum’s rendering must match exactly, making this a binding cross-curriculum commitment now. |
| 10 | Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh/Je suis celui qui suis — John’s Gospel bridge | Critical | Anchors the entire “I AM” doctrine and the future ego eimi bridge; deviation anywhere breaks a planned cross-curriculum theological argument. |
| 11 | Kohen/prêtre, grand prêtre — Catholic clergy collision | High | Extremely high frequency (chs. 28-29, 35-39) in a curriculum with a mixed Catholic/Protestant/secular audience; risk of readers unconsciously validating or rejecting contemporary clergy structures based on the OT text. |
| 12 | Qanna/jaloux — petty-emotion misread | High | Appears in the Ten Commandments and the character-formula passages (chs. 20, 34), among the most memorized/quoted portions of the book; an unglossed reading actively damages the doctrine of God. |
| 13 | Ga’al vs. padah vs. kofer — redemption-family collapse | High | Spans five chapters (6, 13, 15, 21, 30) and underlies the entire Redemption doctrine; repeated collapse into one French verb across so many occurrences compounds into a significant cumulative loss. |
| 14 | Avodah — bondage/worship wordplay lost | High | Structural to the entire plague narrative’s central rhetorical argument (“let my people go that they may serve me,” chs. 4-10); invisibility in French undermines a key persuasive thread of the Deliverance-from-Bondage doctrine. |
| 15 | Shabbat/sabbat — occult folk collision | High | High frequency (chs. 16, 20, 31) and centrality to Holiness doctrine; the witches’-sabbath association, while lower-severity than the Eucharistic-tabernacle collision, is broadly known across the secular segment of the audience. |
| 16 | Yare/craindre vs. peur — register precision | High | Governs the entire Holiness-and-Fear-of-the-Lord doctrine; French’s clean crainte/peur distinction is an asset only if applied with total consistency — any lapse into “peur” actively teaches the wrong doctrine. |
| 17 | Yada/connaître vs. savoir — relational-knowledge precision | High | Recurring formulaic phrase across the plague narrative (chs. 7-10) and directly quoted in Romans 9:17; a single lapse into “savoir” flattens the relational-covenantal force of the formula. |
| 18 | Malakh YHWH/l’ange de l’Éternel — theophanic ambiguity | High | Exodus 3’s foundational call narrative; flattening to “a mere angel” would erase a deliberate textual ambiguity that anticipates later fuller Trinitarian revelation. |
| 19 | Mamlekhet kohanim/royaume de prêtres — corporate vs. professional priesthood confusion | High | Exodus 19:6’s foundational identity-statement for Israel; conflation with the later professional Aaronic priesthood (chs. 28-29) would blur an important corporate/individual distinction linked to the baseline’s “saints” doctrine. |
| 20 | Zikkaron/mémorial — Eucharistic structural-parallel risk | Medium-High | Lower frequency (ch. 12 only) than the items above, but doctrinally sensitive enough (direct structural analogy to the Eucharist) to warrant native-speaker review flagging on every occurrence, keeping it just below the High-tier cluster. |
Summary and Handoff
This gap analysis confirms that French, unlike some target languages in this pipeline, has no competing-worldview problem (no reincarnation, karma, or polytheistic folk-system collisions comparable to those documented for other languages) — but it has an unusually dense concentration of intra-Christian denominational collision risk, chiefly with French Catholic sacramental and devotional vocabulary (tabernacle, expiation, prêtre, onction, mémorial), plus two secular folk-association risks (sabbat, manne) and one purely orthographic risk (la Pâque / Pâques). The dominant mitigation strategy throughout is therefore mandatory contextual glossing at the point of use, not novel transliteration or vocabulary invention — French Bible-translation tradition (Segond / TOB / Bible de Jérusalem) already supplies precise established terms for nearly every concept; the translation task is disambiguation and fencing, not lexical creation, with the sole genuine lexical gap being chesed.
This analysis feeds directly into 08_core_glossary.md (already produced) and must inform the Exodus-extension of translation_memory.json and doctrine_risk_registry.json prior to Phase 2.