Executive Summary — 1 Corinthians (English → Fulfulde)

Why it matters

1 Corinthians is being prepared for Fulfulde-speaking communities whose Bible-translation tradition is thinner and more dialect-fragmented than almost any other language in this pipeline, and whose readers carry an unusually deep, historically prestigious Islamic scholarly formation (Sokoto Caliphate-era Tawhid-reformism) that directly and explicitly contests this letter’s core claims — the crucifixion (Quran 4:157), the deity of Christ, and the very possibility of a “foolish” or blood-shedding God (Quran 5:3). This curriculum’s theological anchor, 15:1-11, is precisely the passage where that contest is sharpest: Paul’s own eyewitness-testimony creed for Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection is the exact claim mainstream Sunni interpretation denies occurred at all. Beyond that anchor, this book introduces a third, book-specific risk axis absent from the Romans baseline: Fulani hereditary caste-status vocabulary (rimɓe/maccuɓe), which collides directly with Paul’s repeated slavery/purchase/freedom metaphors (6:20; 7:21-23; 9:19; 12:13). Getting this book wrong risks not only doctrinal distortion but reinforcement of a live, sensitive social hierarchy.

Key findings

• 97 total glossary terms identified across the full 16-chapter analysis; 32 are inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline, 65 are new to this curriculum and must be added to translation memory before Phase 2 begins.
• 13 term-level Critical-risk concepts and 34 High-risk concepts (per 08_core_glossary.md’s risk summary), spanning grace, salvation, Christ, cross, foolishness-of-God, love, resurrection, body/blood of the Supper, and the slave/free metaphor.
• 8 Critical-risk doctrines and 14 High-risk doctrines (per doctrine_risk_registry.json’s risk summary) require mandatory human theologian review — 22 doctrines total routed to theologian review, 7 to native-speaker review, 3 to automated review only.
• A new caste-vocabulary risk axis (rimɓe/maccuɓe) — not present in the Romans baseline — was identified as this book’s most severe standing risk after the resurrection doctrine itself; it requires a bespoke, jointly-confirmed compound rendering with no acceptable off-the-shelf Fulfulde term, at 6:20, 7:21-23, 7:23, 9:19, and 12:13.
• The love chapter (13) carries a Critical risk purely from everyday-speech collision: giggol, the standard Fulfulde word for love, defaults to a romantic/marital register in daily use and sits immediately after the marriage discussion of chapter 7 — a serious risk that this letter’s ethical climax will be misheard as being “about marriage.”
• No confirmed YouVersion version ID exists yet for a Fulfulde/Pular edition matching this package’s baseline-attested proper-name forms (Yeesu, not Iisa); a selection-and-confirmation procedure is documented but not yet executed.

Risks

• Critical: Resurrection of Christ and believers (15:3-8, 12-58) — undermined at the root by Quran 4:157’s crucifixion denial before the doctrine can even be engaged.
• Critical: Slave/free and bought-with-a-price metaphors (6:20; 7:21-23; 9:19; 12:13) — no existing Fulfulde vocabulary is free of live hereditary caste association; a hard translation block is now in force pending bespoke joint confirmation.
• Critical: The Lord’s Supper’s body/blood language (11:23-26) — compounds Quran 5:3’s blood-consumption prohibition with the crucifixion-denial risk simultaneously.
• Critical: “Foolishness of God” (1:25) — even meant ironically, risks being heard as literal blasphemy against Tawhid-guarded divine perfection absent explicit contrastive framing.
• Critical: Love/giggol (ch. 13) — risk of romantic-register misreading given daily-speech dominance and proximity to ch. 7.
• High: Church discipline (5:1-13) — “hand over to Satan” risks conflation with real regional jinn-curse/marabout-curse folk practice; “sexual immorality” (jina) risks importing Sharia hudud-punishment framing.
• High: Headship and women’s-role instructions (11:2-16; 14:34-35) — intersect with an already strongly patriarchal Fulani family structure and an in-text canonical tension (11:5 vs. 14:34-35) that must not be resolved by translation choice alone.
• High: Spiritual gifts and body-of-Christ metaphor (ch. 12) — no cultural precedent in descent-organized Fulani social structure; discerning-of-spirits and tongues sit adjacent to folk-spiritist and barke-associated categories.

Opportunities

• Positive cultural bridges identified and worth deliberate use: self-control/munyal (9:24-27, Pulaaku’s patient-endurance value), the trumpet/waamde (15:52, an existing pastoralist signaling-horn instrument), and the collection for the saints/hoɓɓal jawdi (16:1-4, existing mutual-aid customs) all offer genuine, low-risk points of contact that can be leveraged pastorally rather than merely defended against.
• The shared “idols are nothing” starting point (8:4, sanamu) gives real common ground with Islamic idol-condemnation, from which the letter’s deeper ch. 10 claim can be built explicitly rather than assumed.
• The dual jinn-vocabulary rule (permitted for demons at 10:20-21 only, forever forbidden for the Holy Spirit) is now explicitly documented and enforceable — a clear, teachable distinction rather than a standing ambiguity.

Recommended actions

1. Lock the caste-vocabulary bespoke compound for slave/free and bought-with-a-price via joint theologian + native-speaker review before any Phase 2 translation touches 6:20, 7:21-23, 7:23, 9:19, or 12:13 — treat this as a hard blocker, not a soft flag.
2. Confirm the giggol/agapē first-use gloss for chapter 13 with both a theologian and a native speaker before that chapter is finalized in any document.
3. Route all 22 theologian-required doctrines (per doctrine_risk_registry.json) through human review before deployment; do not allow Critical/High-risk segments to pass on automated or native-speaker review alone.
4. Execute the YouVersion edition-confirmation procedure in 05_translation_landscape.md §5 before finalizing citation/hyperlink tooling for Phase 2.
5. Add all 65 new terms to translation_memory.json (already delivered as Step 9 of this package) before any Phase 2 segment translation of 1 Corinthians begins, per the versioning procedure in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.