Linguistic Gap Analysis — Matthew 1–28 (English → French)

Curriculum: Matthew 1–28 Core passage (theological anchor): Matthew 5:1–12 (the Beatitudes) Doctrines in scope: The Kingdom of Heaven; Jesus as the Promised Messiah and Son of David; Fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecy; The Authority of Jesus’ Teaching; Righteousness Exceeding the Pharisees; The Church and Church Discipline; The Great Commission; Judgment and the End of the Age; Discipleship and the Cost of Following Jesus.

This artifact extends, and never contradicts, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json and the Matthew 08_core_glossary.md and Matthew bible_term_registry.json already produced for this curriculum. It answers a narrower question than the glossary: where does French itself lack, crowd, or mis-map the vocabulary this book needs, and what structural strategy (not just a single word choice) should Phase 2 apply.

Note on terminology: Matthew is a Gospel narrative, not an epistle like Romans; several baseline conventions written for “the letter” (e.g., consistency rules for a thesis-statement verse) are here reapplied to Matthew’s narrative structure — the Beatitudes (5:1–12) function as this curriculum’s programmatic/thesis unit in the same way Romans 1:16–17 functions for Romans.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each doctrine: the French terms available, their specific weaknesses in the destination language/culture, and the recommended handling strategy (lexical choice + structural apparatus, not lexical choice alone).

1.1 The Kingdom of Heaven

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Royaume des cieux	”le ciel” is heard by secular and lapsed-Catholic readers primarily as an afterlife destination (“aller au ciel”), risking reduction of ~32 Matthean occurrences to a future-only, individual-salvation referent	Retain “Royaume des cieux” as the fixed rendering (per glossary); mandatory recurring teaching note at first occurrence (3:2) and at the Beatitudes (5:3,10) establishing the kingdom as God’s present-and-future reign breaking into history, not a destination
Royaume de Dieu	Baseline-reused; rarer Matthean form (12:28; 19:24; 21:31,43)	Keep lexically distinct from “Royaume des cieux” but teach both as referring to the identical reality — anchor with 19:23-24’s back-to-back interchangeable use
Royaume (bare)	Loses “of heaven/of God” qualifier; too generic, risks a political/territorial reading	Never use bare “Royaume” for the technical doctrine; always qualify

Gap: French has no single word carrying “God’s dynamic, in-breaking reign” without the qualifying phrase; the doctrine is entirely apparatus-dependent, not lexicon-dependent.

1.2 Jesus as the Promised Messiah and Son of David

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Messie	Baseline-reused; stable but risks flattening into “a wise teacher” for biblically unchurched readers absent 2 Sam 7/Isaiah cross-references	Reuse exactly; pair every occurrence in ch. 1–2, 16, 22, 26 with brief OT-fulfillment cross-reference apparatus
Fils de David	New combined title (Sec. B, 08_core_glossary); risk of a merely genealogical (“just an ancestor”) reading	Always gloss at first occurrence (1:1) with the Davidic covenant promise (2 Sam 7:12-16); never let the title stand as bare genealogy
Christ (as name component)	“Jésus-Christ” is so lexicalized as a compound proper name in ordinary French that “Christ” as a title (the Anointed One) can go unnoticed	Occasionally unpack “Christ” = “Messie” explicitly in teaching text, especially at 1:1, 16:16, 26:63

Gap: No French vocabulary gap per se; the gap is background-knowledge, not lexical — French readers overwhelmingly lack the OT covenant literacy needed to receive “Fils de David” as anything but a family-tree note.

1.3 Fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecy

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
afin que s’accomplisse / accomplir	Lexically stable across all French Bible traditions	No lexical change needed
prophète / prophétie	Baseline-reused, low risk	Reuse exactly

Gap: Identical to 1.2 — this is Matthew’s single largest comprehension gap (not translation gap): every fulfillment-formula citation (1:22; 2:15,17,23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:56; 27:9) requires a footnoted OT citation and brief context, because the destination culture, not the destination language, lacks the referential background. Flag as a structural (footnoting) requirement for Phase 2, not a glossary entry.

1.4 The Authority of Jesus’ Teaching

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
autorité	In a strongly laïque public culture with acute post-Vatican II sensitivity to institutional clerical-authority abuse, “autorité” risks an institutional/organizational-power hearing rather than Jesus’ self-authenticating, intrinsic authority	Reuse exactly per glossary; systematically pair with contrastive language (“non comme les scribes,” 7:29) to keep the source of the authority (his own person, not an office) in view
puissance	Baseline “puissance de Dieu” available but denotes capability/might, not the right-to-act sense of ἐξουσία	Do not substitute for “autorité”; keep the two French words mapped to two distinct Greek words (δύναμις vs ἐξουσία)

Gap: French “autorité” covers both “the right to act” and “an institution wielding power” in a single word where the underlying culture supplies strong, negative associations for the second sense; this is a crowded neighborhood, not a missing-word gap (see Section 2).

1.5 Righteousness Exceeding the Pharisees

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
justice	Single French word must carry both Romans’ forensic-declared-status sense AND Matthew’s lived-ethical-conduct sense (5:6,10,20; 6:33) — the baseline itself flags this Critical	Do not create a second French word (would break cross-curriculum consistency); carry the distinction entirely through teaching-note apparatus at each Matthean occurrence
justice imputée	Baseline Romans term; must NOT be silently imported into Matthew’s ethical-conduct texts	Reserve strictly for Romans-doctrine cross-references; never gloss Matthew 5:20 with this phrase
hypocrite / pharisien / scribe	Idiom “faire le pharisien” flattens historical Pharisees into cartoon villains	Teaching note recovering Pharisees as sincere, respected legal experts, sharpening rather than softening Jesus’ critique

Gap: No missing vocabulary; the risk is entirely a single-word-two-doctrines collision internal to this curriculum’s own cross-referencing with Romans.

1.6 The Church and Church Discipline

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Église	Ordinary French usage denotes chiefly the institutional Catholic Church; French Protestants reserve “église” for the congregation and “temple” for the building	Reuse exactly (baseline); explicit disambiguating note at 16:18 and 18:17 distinguishing the gathered-body sense from the institutional/building senses
lier / délier	Direct collision with the historic Catholic doctrine of priestly/episcopal absolution (“le pouvoir de lier et de délier”)	Render literally; present as the congregation’s corporate authority (18:18’s plural, gathered-community context); mandatory theologian review, no doctrinal resolution in the glossary
clés du Royaume [des cieux]	Extremely loaded — crossed papal keys are a live visual/institutional symbol (Vatican coat of arms, “les clés de saint Pierre”)	Render literally; mandatory theologian review; glossary explicitly does not adjudicate the papal-primacy debate
petits / scandale (occasion de chute)	“Scandale” now denotes public/media controversy in ordinary French, losing the interpersonal-sin sense	Prefer “occasion de chute” as the primary gloss with “scandale” retained parenthetically for lexical traceability

Gap: No missing vocabulary; three separate crowded neighborhoods converge in this single doctrine (Église, lier/délier, clés), making it the single highest institutional-collision doctrine in the curriculum.

1.7 The Great Commission

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
faites… des disciples	No single French verb corresponds to μαθητεύσατε; a bare “évangélisez” would thin the total-life-formation sense	Render as a full clause per glossary; never collapse to a single verb
toutes les nations	Context-conditioned counterpart to baseline “païens” — here inclusive of Israel, must not use “païens”	Reuse exactly; explicit note distinguishing this occurrence from the exclusive-sense “païens” elsewhere in Matthew
mission	France’s colonial missionary history carries live postcolonial critique in contemporary French theological and academic discourse	Frame consistently as gospel proclamation and disciple-formation, never cultural conquest/assimilation, per baseline caution sharpened here
au nom du Père, et du Fils, et du Saint-Esprit	Singular “nom,” three Persons, fixed order — precision-critical	Preserve exactly; mandatory theologian review

Gap: “make disciples” is Matthew’s clearest true missing-vocabulary gap: French has no single transitive verb meaning “cause someone to become a total-life disciple.” This must be handled structurally (a clause), not lexically.

1.8 Judgment and the End of the Age

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
avènement / venue (parousia)	Secular “avènement” drifts toward “the dawning of an era”; Greek’s own secondary “presence” sense creates live interpretive stakes	Render as visible, personal, future coming; theologian review every occurrence (24:3,27,37,39)
châtiment éternel / vie éternelle	Must preserve the identical adjective “éternel” for both outcomes (25:46); risk of softening toward purgatorial or annihilationist readings	Render literally and symmetrically; theologian review every occurrence
génération	Contested referent (preterist/futurist) across theological traditions	Do not resolve exegetically in translation; flag for theologian framing
talents	Circular collision: French “avoir du talent” (natural ability) derives historically from this very parable	Retain “talents” (no better option exists) but mandatory teaching note distinguishing entrusted stewardship from innate aptitude; never conflate with baseline “dons spirituels”
l’abomination de la désolation	Stable lexically; severe comprehension risk absent Daniel background	Substantial cross-referencing required, not a lexical change

Gap: No missing vocabulary; several established French words are etymologically downstream of the very texts they must translate (talents, avènement), producing anachronistic-meaning contamination unique to this doctrine.

1.9 Discipleship and the Cost of Following Jesus

Available French terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
disciple / suivre	Comfortable loanword and common verb; familiarity itself is the risk — readers under-notice the term’s actual costliness	Reinforce cost through narrative co-text (4:18-22; 8:18-22; 10:37-39), not through lexical substitution
prendre sa croix / porter sa croix	French idiom has drifted (identically to English) into a secular idiom for any life burden	Teaching note recovering the concrete, violent, first-century referent; do not substitute a “safer” paraphrase that loses the cross-image entirely
esclave / serviteur	France’s own historical reckoning with the transatlantic/colonial slave trade (2001 Taubira law) gives “esclave” unusually heavy national-memory resonance	Retain “esclave” for lexical accuracy (needed for Jesus’ rhetorical escalation, 20:26-28); mandatory culturally sensitive teaching note distinguishing voluntary self-giving from coercive chattel slavery
récompense (reward)	Direct grace-versus-merit collision already flagged Critical/High at the doctrine level	Never allow “récompense” sayings (5:12; 6:1-18; 10:41-42; 20:1-16; 25:14-30) to stand unglossed as earned wages; reinforce gracious-response framing every time
vie (ψυχή)	“Âme” would import a later Greek body-soul dualism	Reuse “vie” per glossary; retain whole-person sense

Gap: No missing vocabulary; risk is entirely idiom domestication (cross) and doctrine-collision (reward) rather than lexical absence.

1.10 Core-Passage-Specific Vocabulary (Matthew 5:1–12, the Beatitudes)

Because the core passage anchors this entire curriculum, its vocabulary is analyzed with the same rigor as full doctrines:

Term	Available French rendering	Weakness	Strategy
μακάριος (blessed)	heureux (NOT béni, which is reserved for εὐλογέω)	Secular “heureux” = subjective happiness/contentment; risks collapsing an objective, conferred, eschatological status into a self-help emotional promise	Fix “heureux” per established French Bible tradition (Segond/TOB/BJ); mandatory teaching note: this is a declared state, not a feeling
poor in spirit	pauvres en esprit	Risk of purely economic (social-justice) OR purely psychological (low self-esteem) misreading	Anchor to spiritual bankruptcy/dependence on God
meek	doux	French “doux” alone connotes a mild personality trait, losing “strength under restraint” (used of Moses, and of Jesus himself, 11:29; 21:5)	Gloss as “force maîtrisée, non faiblesse” in teaching apparatus
merciful	miséricordieux	Contemporary French Catholic devotional culture (Divine Mercy devotion, Ste Faustine, “Dimanche de la Miséricorde Divine”) orients “miséricorde” inward (receiving mercy); 5:7 is outward-facing (extending mercy)	Explicit note reversing the devotional default direction
pure in heart	purs de cœur	Low OT ritual-purity literacy among French readers obscures the deliberate external-to-internal relocation Jesus performs (anticipating ch. 15)	Cross-reference ch. 15’s defilement teaching
persecuted	persécutés	Risk of generalizing to any hardship, losing the qualifier “for righteousness’ sake / because of me”	Never detach the qualifying clause in teaching or excerpting

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

Two structurally distinct problem types recur throughout this curriculum and require different remedies.

2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no adequate single French word exists)

Concept	Why French has no direct equivalent	Remedy
μαθητεύσατε (make disciples, imperative, transitive)	French “discipliner” means “to discipline/punish,” a false cognate trap; no verb means “cause X to become a disciple”	Render as a clause: “faites… des disciples”; never a single verb
υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου as a title distinct from ordinary “a human being"	"Fils de l’homme” reads in French as either poetic archaism or a statement about mere humanity; France has no living cultural memory of Daniel 7’s throne-room authority-figure sense	Mandatory recurring gloss connecting the title to Daniel 7:13-14, every occurrence
βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν as present, in-breaking reign (not afterlife)	French “royaume” is available but “des cieux” pulls toward the afterlife-destination frame that dominates ordinary French religious speech (“aller au ciel”)	Sustained teaching apparatus rather than a lexical fix; no better single phrase exists
ζυγός (yoke) as a lived agrarian image	Contemporary urban French readers, unlike first-century audiences, have no working relationship to draft-animal yokes	Retain “joug”; supply an explanatory image/teaching note, not a different word
σκάνδαλον in its original interpersonal-sin sense	Modern French has fully repurposed “scandale” for public/media controversy; there is no live French word retaining the “trap-trigger causing another to stumble” sense	Use “occasion de chute” as the primary teaching term, with “scandale” only as a lexical cross-reference

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (French word exists but is already occupied by strong competing associations)

These require fencing — explicit, repeated boundary-marking in teaching apparatus — rather than a different word, since a different word would break cross-curriculum/baseline consistency.

French word	Competing occupant of the semantic space	Fencing required
Église	Institutional Catholic Church (buildings, hierarchy, the Magisterium)	Distinguish gathered-body sense every time the doctrinal referent is the New Testament community, not the institution (16:18; 18:17)
les saints	Canonized intercessors (feast days, statues, patronage)	Baseline already flags High; Matthew’s single occurrence (27:52) still carries the same risk if taught devotionally
lier / délier	Sacramental priestly/episcopal absolution	Present as corporate congregational authority (18:18); never resolve the sacramental-authority question
clés du Royaume	Papal insignia; “les clés de saint Pierre” (Vatican coat of arms)	Explicitly note the glossary does not adjudicate papal primacy; theologian review every time
tradition / la Tradition	Catholic capital-T Tradition as co-authoritative revelation alongside Scripture	Distinguish Matthew 15’s specific first-century Pharisaic target from the broader Catholic theological category
mystère	Catholic liturgical “mystère de la foi,” the Rosary’s “mystères”	Distinguish 13:11’s present-hidden/future-revealed kingdom sense from sacramental-participation categories
repentir	The sacrement de la Pénitence (formal confession)	Distinguish the prior, inward reorientation Matthew describes from the rite that expresses it
miséricordieux / miséricorde	The Divine Mercy devotion’s inward-receiving orientation	Reverse to the outward-giving orientation at 5:7
dettes (Notre Père)	The memorized Catholic liturgical “nos offenses”	Flag the liturgical variant explicitly; do not silently override what readers have prayed since childhood without a note
le Mauvais / le mal (6:13)	Genuine Greek ambiguity, now overlaid by the 2017 French ecumenical liturgical choice	Follow “le Mauvais” for consistency with what French speakers already pray; flag the abstract alternative for reviewers
élection / élu	Political/democratic elections (a competitive, merit-adjacent process)	Reinforce sovereign, gracious, non-competitive choice every occurrence (22:14; 24:22,24,31)
autorité	Institutional/clerical power, freighted by post-Vatican II abuse-crisis sensitivity	Reinforce Jesus’ intrinsic, self-authenticating authority contrasted with derivative scribal authority (7:29)
esclave	France’s specific national memory of the transatlantic/colonial slave trade	Retain for lexical accuracy but always pair with a culturally sensitive note (20:26-28)
mage(s)	Occult/fortune-telling associations (tarot, “mage noir” in fantasy fiction)	Brief clarifying note: respected Gentile scholar-astronomers, not occult practitioners
talents	Modern French “avoir du talent” (innate ability), etymologically downstream of this very parable	Teaching note recovering stewardship-of-entrusted-resource sense; do not conflate with “dons spirituels”
avènement (parousia)	Secular “l’avènement d’une nouvelle ère” (dawning of an era)	Anchor to a visible, personal, future return; theologian review every occurrence
gloire	Secular military/celebrity glory (self-achieved triumph)	Anchor to God’s own radiant presence and honor, not human achievement
récompense	Merit-based wage-earning (a legal claim on God)	Reinforce gracious response to faith-produced obedience, never earned wages
porter sa croix	Secular idiom for any life burden	Recover the concrete, violent, public, potentially fatal first-century referent
scandale	Media/political scandal	See 2.1 above; primary term should be “occasion de chute”

Structural observation: Of the twenty-one crowded neighborhoods identified, thirteen collide specifically with French Catholic institutional or devotional culture (Église, saints, lier/délier, clés, tradition, mystère, repentir, miséricorde, dettes), confirming the baseline’s own observation that Catholic sacramental/institutional framing is the single largest recurring collision category for this language pair. Two collide with French secular/political culture (élection, autorité), one with French national historical memory (esclave), and the remainder with general semantic drift (scandale, talents, avènement, gloire, récompense, porter sa croix, mage).

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Hosanna	Transliterate, untranslated	Follows the established Amen/Alléluia/Abba convention (baseline); a royal-messianic acclamation, not a translatable statement
Emmanuel	Transliterate + in-text gloss (“Dieu avec nous”)	Matthew supplies his own gloss (1:23); preserve both forms, forming the 28:20 inclusio
Abba	Transliterate + “Père” (baseline convention, though Matthew itself does not use this word — retained here for cross-curriculum consistency only)	Not present in Matthew’s Greek text; noted for completeness, no action required
Éli, Éli, lema sabachthani	Transliterate + Matthew’s own in-text Greek gloss reproduced in French (“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, pourquoi m’as-tu abandonné?”)	Same convention as Emmanuel; Matthew himself translates it for his readers, so the French must do the same
Mamon	Transliterate (“Mamon”), NOT paraphrase to “l’argent”	Preserves the personification of wealth as a rival master; a flat translation loses the stark either/or of 6:24
Messie / Christ	Established loanword (functional transliteration of a title), not literal paraphrase	”L’Oint” (a literal paraphrase) is never used in French Bible tradition; “Messie”/“Christ” are themselves the correct register
Fils de l’homme	Paraphrase (literal translation), NOT transliteration	A translatable Semitic idiom, not a proper name; heavy glossing required instead of transliteration
Fils de David	Paraphrase (literal translation)	Same reasoning; requires OT covenant cross-reference, not phonetic preservation
Royaume des cieux / Royaume de Dieu	Paraphrase, fixed dual rendering	No transliteration option exists or would help; the risk is entirely interpretive, handled by teaching apparatus
clés du Royaume [des cieux]	Paraphrase (literal translation)	Transliteration is not applicable (it is an image, not a proper noun); literalness itself, not obscurity, is the safest choice given the doctrinal sensitivity
lier / délier	Paraphrase (literal translation)	Same reasoning; a paraphrase that tried to “explain” the idiom would risk resolving the sacramental-authority debate the glossary must leave open
Ceci est mon corps… mon sang de l’alliance	Paraphrase, maximally literal	Any interpretive paraphrase (“représente,” “symbolise”) would resolve the transubstantiation/memorial debate; literalness is the only neutral option
Amen (closing formulas)	Transliterate, per baseline	No paraphrase needed; fully naturalized in French liturgical and everyday Bible-reading register
Talents (parable)	Retain established loanword, NOT paraphrase to a “safer” word like “somme d’argent”	A paraphrase would remove the term’s traceability to the parable and its now-idiomatic afterlife in French (“avoir du talent”), which is precisely what the teaching note must address; better to keep the collision visible and manage it than hide it
avènement / venue (parousia)	Paraphrase, with the pairing intentionally left open (“avènement/venue”) rather than fixed to one word	Preserves the live, theologian-reviewed interpretive stakes rather than silently resolving them via a single fixed French word

General rule derived: transliteration is reserved for (a) established liturgical exclamations already naturalized in French Bible tradition (Amen, Alléluia, Hosanna), and (b) instances where Matthew’s own Greek text supplies an in-text gloss (Emmanuel, Eli Eli lema sabachthani). Everywhere else — including every doctrinally contested phrase (bind/loose, keys, words of institution) — maximal literal paraphrase, not interpretive paraphrase, is the required strategy, precisely so the French rendering resolves nothing that the glossary and doctrine registry have flagged as denominationally contested.

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4. Ranked List of This Curriculum’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by a composite of (a) doctrinal centrality to the nine stated doctrines and the core passage, (b) severity of collision with an established French religious/secular frame, (c) frequency of occurrence, and (d) audience vulnerability (low OT literacy, mixed Catholic/Protestant/secular readership).

1. Fils de l’homme vs. Fils de Dieu conflation (Critical) — the single most consequential ambiguity: French readers routinely and plausibly misread “Fils de l’homme” as underscoring only Jesus’ humility/humanity, entirely missing the Daniel 7 authority-and-judgment claim, and may blur it with the unrelated Critical title “Fils de Dieu.” Governs Christology throughout the book (8:20; 9:6; 12:8; 16:13; 24:30; 26:64).

2. Clés du Royaume / lier-délier vs. Catholic institutional authority (Critical) — the deepest denominational collision in the curriculum; French Catholic visual and institutional culture (papal insignia, sacramental absolution) makes neutral, non-adjudicating teaching exceptionally difficult (16:19; 18:18).

3. Ceci est mon corps… mon sang de l’alliance (Critical) — the Eucharistic words of institution; the single most theologically contested verse-set for this book’s mixed audience (26:26-28).

4. Royaume des cieux read as afterlife-only (High) — a pervasive, low-visibility risk recurring roughly 32 times across the whole Gospel; because it is diffuse rather than a single verse, it is easy to under-flag in Phase 2 segment-by-segment review despite its doctrinal centrality.

5. Justice (Matthean ethical sense) silently absorbing Romans’ forensic sense, or vice versa (Critical, per baseline) — same French word serving two distinct doctrinal registers across two curricula studied by the same learners (5:6,10,20; 6:33).

6. Élection/élu read as political/democratic choice (High) — sharpened in Matthew by the wedding-feast parable (22:1-14), which without careful framing reads as a merit-based selection among equally qualified guests rather than sovereign grace.

7. Église read as the institutional Catholic Church (High) — acute at both load-bearing occurrences (16:18; 18:17), where the doctrinal referent is a gathered, accountable local body, not a hierarchical institution.

8. Blasphème contre l’Esprit over-broadened to ordinary doubt/sin (Critical, pastoral) — a text with documented power to generate acute, unwarranted spiritual anxiety in already-vulnerable readers (12:31-32).

9. Talents parable reflexively read as natural ability (High) — a rare case where the destination language’s own etymological history actively works against correct comprehension (25:14-30).

10. Avènement (parousia) drifting to “a new era” or a bare “presence” (Critical) — compounds a French secular-drift risk with a genuine, live, unresolved Greek lexical ambiguity (24:3,27,37,39).

11. Châtiment éternel softened toward purgatorial or annihilationist readings (Critical) — the symmetry between “châtiment éternel” and “vie éternelle” is doctrinally load-bearing and easily lost in loose paraphrase (25:46).

12. Les saints (27:52) read through the canonized-intercessor lens (High) — lower-frequency in Matthew than in Romans but the same underlying French cultural risk.

13. Tradition / la Tradition collision with Catholic revelatory category (High) — risk runs in both directions: either wrongly implicating the Catholic theological category, or wrongly dismissing Catholic Tradition wholesale by loose analogy to Matthew 15’s specific target (15:1-9).

14. Dettes vs. offenses in the Lord’s Prayer (High) — a rare case where a correct, literal translation actively conflicts with text millions of French readers have memorized since childhood (6:12; 18:21-35).

15. Prendre sa croix domesticated to “any life burden” (High) — idiom drift identical to English but with no less doctrinal cost; risks stripping 16:24 of its costly, public, potentially fatal referent.

16. Esclave triggering France’s specific colonial/transatlantic memory rather than the first-century image Jesus intends (High) — a uniquely French-specific resonance not present to the same degree in English-language reception (20:26-28).

17. Miséricordieux read through the inward-receiving Divine Mercy devotional frame rather than 5:7’s outward-giving sense (Medium-High) — directly implicates the core passage.

18. Autorité read as institutional/clerical power amid abuse-crisis sensitivity, rather than Jesus’ intrinsic authority (High) — recurs at every authority pericope (7:29; 8:9; 9:6,8; 21:23-27; 28:18).

19. Heureux (blessed) collapsed into subjective happiness/self-help sentiment (Medium, but core-passage-critical) — directly governs the reception of every one of the nine Beatitudes (5:3-11), the curriculum’s theological anchor.

20. Mage(s) read through an occult/fantasy lens (Medium) — lower doctrinal stakes but high potential for narrative misreading at a prominent, frequently taught passage (2:1-12).

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This analysis must be read alongside 08_core_glossary.md (term-by-term renderings) and the Matthew edition of bible_term_registry.json (per-term registry entries) before Phase 2 segment translation begins. It supplies the why and structural remedy behind those artifacts’ lexical choices and should inform footnoting/teaching-apparatus requirements in Phase 2 Step 16 and reviewer routing in Phase 2 Step 17.