Linguistic Gap Analysis — James (Jakobusbrief)

Curriculum: James | Language pair: English–German | Phase 1, Step 8 Generated: 2026-07-03 | Depends on: 08_core_glossary.md, assets/bible_term_registry.json, baseline translation_memory.json Scope: Full-book coverage, James 1–5, with James 2:14–26 as theological anchor (Faith and Works). Every chapter reviewed; chapters contributing no new gap-analysis findings beyond those already logged are noted explicitly in §1.

Purpose: This document identifies where standard German theological vocabulary is insufficient, ambiguous, over-crowded, or actively misleading for the nine doctrines of this curriculum, and recommends a translation strategy for each gap before Phase 2 segment translation begins. It extends, and must not contradict, the baseline Romans Language Package.

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0. Method and Governing Principle

James poses a distinctive linguistic-gap profile compared to the Romans/Galatians/Ephesians/Colossians/Gospel packages already established in this pipeline: its central theological vocabulary (Glaube, Werke, Gerechtigkeit, Rechtfertigung, Freiheit, Gesetz, Gnade) is not new — it is entirely inherited from the baseline — but James deploys this inherited vocabulary in a different argumentative direction than Paul. The chief linguistic-gap risk in this letter is therefore not lexical (missing words) but referential and connotative: the same German words, already fixed by Reformation-era translation history and by this pipeline’s own prior Romans/Galatians packages, must now carry a second, complementary sense without German readers perceiving a doctrinal collision. Luther’s own historical verdict on this letter (“stroherne Epistel,” an “epistle of straw,” recorded in his 1522 New Testament preface and later softened but never fully retracted in subsequent editions) means this collision risk is not hypothetical for German audiences — it is a documented, centuries-old reception-history fact that any German translation of James must actively manage.

A secondary, smaller class of gaps is genuinely lexical: German lacks a single clean word for a few of James’s compact Greek constructions (δίψυχος, σοφία ἄνωθεν as a fixed doctrinal phrase, the πειρασμός/πειράζω word-play).

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

Doctrine	Key Terms	Available German Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
Faith and Works (core, Jak 2,14–26)	faith, works, dead faith, justification, faith alone	Glaube; Werke; toter Glaube; rechtfertigen/gerechtfertigt werden; aus Glauben allein	(1) “Glaube” and “rechtfertigen” are the exact words already fixed by the Romans baseline in their forensic sense; James requires the same words in a demonstrative/evidentiary sense, with no distinct German lexeme available to mark the shift. (2) “aus Glauben allein” collides directly, letter-for-letter, with Luther’s own “sola fide” formula — the single most theologically fraught overlap in the entire pipeline to date. (3) Bare “Werke” risks passive assimilation to “Werke des Gesetzes” for readers who have completed the Galatians package.	Reuse baseline terms exactly (no new coinage — inventing a separate word for James’s “Rechtfertigung” would itself misrepresent the text, since James does use the same verb Paul uses). Compensate entirely through mandatory reconciling doctrine notes at every occurrence rather than through lexical substitution. Never let “Werke” stand adjacent to “des Gesetzes.”
Trials and the Testing of Faith	trial, temptation, endurance, perfect/mature	Prüfung / Anfechtung; Versuchung; Ausdauer / Standhaftigkeit; vollkommen	(1) πειρασμός covers both “trial” (1,2–4.12) and “temptation” (1,13–14) from one Greek root; German has no single word doing the same double duty, so the wordplay James exploits (the same test that produces endurance also discloses the heart’s desire) is invisible unless flagged. (2) “vollkommen” carries a stronger sinless-perfection connotation in German devotional register than τέλειος requires. (3) “Anfechtung” is theologically richer (Luther’s own term for spiritual assault) but risks importing a heavier, specifically Reformation-biographical connotation (Luther’s own documented struggles) not present in James’s plainer sense.	Use two distinct German words (Prüfung / Versuchung) rather than one, WITH a mandatory translator note on the shared Greek root at first occurrence of each, so the disambiguation is visible as a deliberate translation choice rather than an invisible loss. Flag “Anfechtung” for reviewer discretion only in devotional (not core-doctrine) material. Gloss “vollkommen” as ”(= reif/vollständig)” at every occurrence.
Wisdom from Above	wisdom, wisdom from above, double-minded, earthly/soulish/demonic	Weisheit; Weisheit von oben; wankelmütig/zwiespältig; irdisch/seelisch/dämonisch	(1) “Weisheit von oben” risks a passive echo of German Idealism’s own philosophical vocabulary of “höhere Weisheit/Erkenntnis” (Kant, Hegel, and popularly, Gnostic-adjacent New Age usage of “höheres Wissen”), suggesting an attainable esoteric insight rather than a received gift. (2) “seelisch” (for ψυχική) is a false friend: contemporary German defaults it to “emotional/psychological” (seelische Gesundheit), the opposite of James’s sense of “unaided by God’s Spirit.”	Cross-reference “von oben” explicitly to this pipeline’s existing John 3 (ἄνωθεν) vocabulary so the phrase reads as a fixed doctrinal echo, not a philosophical claim. Mandatory first-occurrence gloss on “seelisch” (”= nicht vom Geist Gottes bestimmt, nicht: emotional”).
Favoritism and the Poor	favoritism, poor, royal law, neighbor	Parteilichkeit / Ansehen der Person; Arme(r); königliches Gesetz; Nächster	”Ansehen der Person” (Luther’s calque) is now largely opaque to biblically-uninitiated readers, including much of the growing konfessionslos population documented in the baseline; it risks being read as neutral (“regard for the person”) rather than as the condemned partiality James intends.	Primary rendering “Parteilichkeit” (transparent to contemporary readers); retain “Ansehen der Person” as a bracketed traditional gloss for readers of the classic Luther idiom, matching this pipeline’s established dual-register practice (cf. Paraclete: Tröster).
Taming the Tongue	tongue, teacher, Gehenna, image of God	Zunge; Lehrer; Gehenna; Gottes Ebenbild	”Gehenna” has no live German cultural referent (unlike the English/American “hell” register); a bare transliteration will read as an opaque proper noun to most readers.	Transliterate (“Gehenna”) with mandatory bracketed gloss (“die Hölle”) at first occurrence, preserving the place-name-turned-eschatological-term background rather than flattening to generic “Hölle” throughout.
Worldliness versus Friendship with God	world, adulteresses, friendship with the world, grace, submission	Welt; Ehebrecherinnen; Freundschaft mit der Welt/Feindschaft mit Gott; Gnade; sich unterordnen	”Welt” is doctrinally under-marked in German: it covers both the neutral created-order sense and James’s negative Johannine-adjacent value-system sense with no morphological signal distinguishing them (unlike, e.g., κόσμος’s more specialized negative register in Greek). “Ehebrecherinnen” risks being read as a literal accusation of marital infidelity rather than a covenant metaphor, since the OT Israel-as-unfaithful-spouse background (Hosea, Ezekiel 16) is not part of everyday German religious vocabulary.	Require explicit contextual signaling (“die Welt in ihrer Gott-feindlichen Ausrichtung”) at 4,1–10 to mark the negative sense. Mandatory metaphor-background note at every occurrence of “Ehebrecherinnen,” cross-referencing Hosea/Ezekiel 16.
Prayer and Healing	anoint with oil, elders, prayer of faith, healing/salvation	mit Öl salben; Älteste (der Gemeinde); das Gebet des Glaubens; retten/heilen	(1) “salben” alone, without qualification, invites automatic Catholic-sacramental framing (Krankensalbung) for Catholic readers and automatic non-sacramental-pastoral framing for Protestant readers — the German word itself does not disambiguate; both readings are live and mutually exclusive at the level of sacramental theology. (2) “Älteste” avoids “Priester” but must also avoid unintentionally reading as the specific Reformed/Presbyterian church-office title “Presbyter,” which carries its own polity-specific connotation in German Reformed communities. (3) “retten/heilen” (σῴζω at 5,15) must be kept visibly distinct from 2,14’s soteriological “retten,” a distinction the shared German verb root does not make automatically.	Present both historic (Catholic/Protestant) readings side by side in accompanying teaching material without adjudicating, per the baseline’s existing “saints” and “submission” flagging precedent. Use “Älteste (der Gemeinde)” consistently, never bare “Presbyter” or “Priester.” Add explicit disambiguating gloss at 5,15 (“hier: körperliche Genesung, nicht die endgültige Rettung wie in 2,14”).
Patience and the Lord’s Return	patience, endurance, Parousia, blessed	Geduld (haben/üben); Ausdauer; Wiederkunft/Parusie; selig	”Wiederkunft” and “Parusie” are both established but not used consistently across this pipeline’s other packages (some prior Gospel material may lean toward one or the other depending on context); James is the letter with the highest concentration of this term outside the Gospels, making internal consistency here especially important.	Fix a single primary rendering (“Wiederkunft”) for narrative/devotional register throughout the James package, with “Parusie” available only as a technical-teaching-material gloss, and record this choice in translation memory to bind all future curriculum documents.
Confession and Restoration	confess to one another, cover a multitude of sins, turn back/restore	bekennen; eine Vielzahl von Sünden bedecken; abirren/zurückführen	”bekennen” alone (without “einander,” “zueinander,” or explicit horizontal-community framing) risks drifting toward the same automatic sacramental-confession association as “beichten” for Catholic readers primed by liturgical habit, even though “bekennen” itself is the correct lexical choice.	Never render 5,16 with “bekennen” standing alone without the explicit mutual/horizontal marker (“einander,” “voreinander”) present in the same clause, reinforcing the lay/mutual sense the Greek ἀλλήλοις requires.

Chapters reviewed contributing no additional gap-analysis findings beyond those logged above or in the core glossary: James 1:1 (epistolary opening/self-designation, Knecht/Diaspora — low risk, standard rendering, see glossary §1–2); James 3:1–2 (teacher/stricter judgment — low risk, standard rendering); James 4:11–12 (judging a brother/law — reuses Gesetz/Nächster vocabulary already fenced above, no new gap); James 4:13–17 (business-planning presumption — reuses “So der Herr will” idiom, already logged); James 5:1–6 (woe to the rich — reuses Arme(r)/Herr Zebaoth vocabulary already fenced above, no new gap); James 5:9 (judge at the door — reuses Herr/Wiederkunft vocabulary already fenced above, no new gap); James 5:12 (oath-taking — standard Matthew 5 cross-reference, no James-specific gap beyond that already documented in the Matthew package).

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no adequate single German equivalent exists)

Concept	Gap	Resolution
δίψυχος (double-minded, 1,8; 4,8)	No single German word captures the internal, two-souled division as compactly as the Greek compound.	Accept periphrasis: “wankelmütig” (wavering) or “zwiespältig” (internally divided); neither alone carries the “two souls” image, so teaching material should surface the literal Greek picture once for depth without requiring the German rendering to bear that weight lexically.
πειρασμός’s dual sense (trial/temptation, 1,2–14)	German lexically splits what Greek keeps as one word-family; this is a structural mismatch, not merely a stylistic one.	Deliberate two-word split (Prüfung/Versuchung) plus mandatory shared-root translator note (see §1 above) — treated as a documented, flagged loss rather than silently absorbed.
ἐξ ἔργων συνεργεῖ (2,22, “faith working together with works”)	No German verb precisely captures συνεργέω’s sense of an already-active subject cooperating with its own necessary expression, without importing either (a) a 50/50 partnership connotation or (b) a merely sequential “and then” connotation.	”zusammenwirken (mit)” is the least-bad available option; mandatory teaching note clarifying the imperfect tense’s ongoing-cooperation sense and that this does not describe two independent contributing causes of justification.
σοφία ἄνωθεν as a fixed doctrinal phrase (3,13–17)	German has “Weisheit” and “von oben” separately but no established fixed theological compound comparable to, e.g., “Gottesfurcht” — the phrase must be built rather than retrieved.	Fix “Weisheit von oben” as a coined but now-standardized doctrine-title term for this curriculum (already proposed in the core glossary); record in translation memory as a NEW entry so all Phase 2 documents use it identically.

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (too many competing senses on one German word; require fencing)

These are words this letter shares with already-established pipeline vocabulary, where James’s specific sense must be actively fenced off from senses fixed by prior Romans/Galatians/Ephesians/Colossians/Gospel packages, to prevent cross-contamination in either direction.

1. Gerechtigkeit / rechtfertigen — Occupied by the Romans baseline’s forensic, imputed sense (Critical). James 2:14–26 requires the same words in a demonstrative/evidentiary sense. Fence: mandatory reconciling doctrine note at every James 2 occurrence (see §0); never let the two senses appear in the same teaching unit without the note.
2. Freiheit — Occupied by the Galatians package’s law-and-sin-liberation sense (Critical) and by secular/political post-1989 German associations (per baseline). James’s “vollkommenes Gesetz der Freiheit” (1,25; 2,12) doubles the crowding by also re-engaging Gesetz, occupied by the Mosaic-Torah sense. Fence: every occurrence must carry enough surrounding context that “Freiheit” reads as Christ-empowered obedience, not license, and “Gesetz” reads as the unified love-ethic, not renewed Torah-legalism.
3. Herr — Already flagged Critical in the baseline for the “Herr Müller” flattening risk; James’s unusually high frequency (11+ occurrences across only 5 chapters) makes this the most repetition-fatigued term in the letter. Fence: vary surrounding syntax to keep the exalted sense perceptually live; do not allow rapid successive occurrences (e.g., 5,7–11) to read as routine repetition.
4. Geist — Crowded between (a) the baseline’s Heiliger Geist (Critical, Trinitarian), and (b) James 2:26’s ordinary human life-breath sense. Fence: never capitalize or Trinitarian-frame 2:26’s “Geist”; explicit gloss required (“der Geist, der den Leib lebendig macht”).
5. bekennen / bekennen — bei der Beichte — Crowded between James 5:16’s mutual/lay sense and the live sacramental-liturgical field around “beichten” (Catholic Penance). Not the same word, but close enough in the reader’s associative field that “bekennen” alone risks drifting toward the sacramental register by proximity. Fence: never let 5:16 stand without an explicit horizontal marker (“einander”).
6. selig — Crowded between the baseline’s general beatitude sense and the narrower Catholic Seligsprechung (beatification) sense, already flagged in the Matthew package; James’s three occurrences (1,12.25; 5,11) reactivate this same crowding. Fence: apply the existing baseline caution without modification; no new James-specific risk beyond what is already documented.
7. Weisheit (von oben) — Crowded by German Idealism’s philosophical “höhere Weisheit/Erkenntnis” register and (more distantly) by New Age/esoteric popular usage of “höheres Wissen.” Fence: anchor explicitly to the John 3 “von oben” cross-reference rather than to any philosophical-tradition vocabulary.
8. Ansehen der Person — Crowded by the fact that, read cold, “Ansehen” (regard, respect, reputation) sounds neutral or even positive in contemporary German, inverting James’s condemnatory sense. Fence: never use as the sole rendering; pair with “Parteilichkeit” as primary term.

2.3 Words Requiring No Special Fencing (confirmed low-risk despite surface similarity)

For completeness: “Arme(r)” (poor), “Nächster” (neighbor), “Gnade” (grace, 4:6), and “Sünde” (sin) reuse already-fenced baseline/prior-package senses with no additional James-specific crowding — James’s usage is fully continuous with, not in tension with, the established meaning. No new fencing action required beyond the existing baseline documentation.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Παρουσία (Parousia)	Paraphrase primary (Wiederkunft), technical gloss secondary (Parusie)	“Wiederkunft” is Luther’s own established, warmly devotional term already carrying centuries of German liturgical and hymnic usage; “Parusie” is available for technical/academic teaching notes but should not be the primary reader-facing rendering, to keep register consistent with this curriculum’s “serious newspaper feature” reading-level target.
Γέεννα (Gehenna)	Transliterate with mandatory gloss	No live German cultural referent equivalent to English “hell-as-Gehenna” usage exists; transliteration preserves the historical place-name-turned-eschatological-term background that a flat “Hölle” would erase, consistent with this pipeline’s existing “Legion” (Mark 5:9) transliteration-with-concreteness precedent.
Κύριος Σαβαώθ (Lord of Hosts/Sabaoth)	Transliterate, with reviewer choice between two established registers	”Herr Zebaoth” carries direct liturgical currency via the German Sanctus (“Heilig, heilig, heilig ist der Herr Zebaoth”); “der Herr der Heerscharen” is the more transparent modern paraphrase. Both are legitimate; flag for reviewer sign-off rather than fixing one, since this is a register decision rather than a doctrinal one.
Ἀββά (Abba, referenced by cross-continuity, though not itself occurring in James)	N/A for this letter — confirmed absent	James does not use this term; noted here only to confirm no transliteration decision is required despite thematic adjacency to the letter’s Father-language (1:17, 27; 3:9).
πρεσβύτεροι (elders)	Translate, not transliterate (“Älteste”), explicitly avoiding “Presbyter”	Transliterating or half-transliterating to “Presbyter” would import the specific polity-title register of German Reformed/Presbyterian church governance (Presbyterium, Presbyter as an ordained office), a denominationally narrower claim than James’s general “older, respected leaders” sense. “Älteste (der Gemeinde)” stays maximally denomination-neutral, consistent with the baseline’s “Gemeinde” preference over “Kirche.”
διασπορά (diaspora)	Transliterate/translate dual option, low stakes	”Zerstreuung” (translation) and “Diaspora” (transliteration, now a naturalized German loanword) are both acceptable; low doctrinal risk either way, reviewer discretion permitted without escalation.
δίψυχος (double-minded)	Paraphrase only, no transliteration attempted	No transliteration would communicate meaning to a general reader; the compound must be unpacked in German regardless of register choice.
ἐξομολογέομαι (confess)	Translate (“bekennen”), explicitly reject transliteration or near-neighbor substitution (“beichten”)	Transliteration is not applicable to this verb; the live risk is lexical substitution toward the sacramentally-loaded neighbor word “beichten,” which this analysis and the core glossary both forbid outright.
δαιμονιώδης / δαιμόνια (demonic / demons)	Translate (“dämonisch” / “Dämonen”), no transliteration needed	Stable, fully naturalized German theological vocabulary; no competing German folk-concept requiring transliteration or special fencing, confirming the term registry’s existing “Low” risk rating.

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4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in James

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal weight × likelihood of reader misconstrual given documented German reception history) and mapped to the doctrine each affects.

1. “aus Glauben allein” (2:24) vs. Luther’s “sola fide.” Doctrine: Faith and Works. The single highest risk in the entire package: the German phrase is close enough to the Reformation’s own rallying formula that, absent the mandatory reconciling note, German readers will perceive James as directly refuting Luther rather than addressing a different question (evidentiary vindication vs. forensic declaration). Mitigation: mandatory theologian sign-off and doctrine note at every occurrence; never presented in isolation from 2:19’s “even the demons believe” context.

2. “gerechtfertigt werden” (2:21, 24, 25) read against the Romans baseline’s forensic sense. Doctrine: Faith and Works. Same German verb, two distinct theological senses (declared-righteous-before-God vs. shown-to-be-righteous-before-observers), with no morphological signal distinguishing them. Mitigation: reconciling frame required at every occurrence; treat as the package’s second-highest theologian flag alongside #1.

3. “Werke” drifting toward “Werke des Gesetzes.” Doctrine: Faith and Works. A silent one-word substitution or careless adjacency would manufacture a false direct contradiction between James and Galatians for any reader who has completed both packages in this pipeline. Mitigation: explicit forbidden-substitution rule (already logged in the glossary); automated validation check recommended at Phase 2 QA.

4. “mit Öl salben” / “Älteste” (5:14) and the live Catholic/Protestant sacramental fault line. Doctrine: Prayer and Healing. Unlike most Critical flags in this pipeline (which concern a single tradition’s misreading), this term is structurally dual-contested: any single confident framing will read as doctrinally partisan to roughly half of Germany’s historically confessional population. Mitigation: mandatory both-traditions presentation, no adjudication, theologian AND denominational-sensitivity review.

5. “bekennen” (5:16) drifting toward “beichten.” Doctrine: Confession and Restoration. A single wrong word choice (not even a wrong concept — a lexically adjacent but doctrinally loaded neighbor) would import an entire sacramental structure (priestly mediation, formal absolution) absent from the Greek. Mitigation: forbidden-substitution rule plus mandatory horizontal-marker requirement (“einander”) in the same clause.

6. σῴζω’s dual sense across 2:14 and 5:15. Doctrine: Faith and Works / Prayer and Healing. The same German verb root (“retten”) covers final salvation and physical healing with no inherent disambiguation; conflating them risks either trivializing salvation or over-promising healing. Mitigation: explicit gloss at 5:15 distinguishing the referent from 2:14.

7. πειρασμός’s split into Prüfung/Versuchung (1:2–14). Doctrine: Trials and the Testing of Faith. Losing the shared root risks obscuring James’s own wordplay; worse, an undifferentiated single-word rendering risks implying God is the source of enticement to sin (explicitly denied at 1:13). Mitigation: two-word split plus mandatory shared-root translator note.

8. “Ehebrecherinnen” / “Freundschaft mit der Welt” (4:4). Doctrine: Worldliness versus Friendship with God. Risk of the covenant-marital metaphor being read as a literal, isolated accusation, or alternatively softened by translators uncomfortable with its bluntness into a generic “Untreue,” which would erase the OT background entirely. Mitigation: forbidden-substitution rule; mandatory Hosea/Ezekiel 16 cross-reference note.

9. “seelisch” for ψυχική (3:15). Doctrine: Wisdom from Above. A genuine false-friend risk: the natural contemporary reading (“emotional/psychological,” as in seelische Gesundheit) is close to the opposite of James’s intended sense (unaided by God’s Spirit). Mitigation: mandatory first-occurrence gloss.

10. “vollkommen” for τέλειος (1:4, 17, 25; 3:2). Doctrine: Trials and the Testing of Faith / Wisdom from Above. Risk of a sinless-perfectionism misreading that would sit in tension with James 3:2’s own admission (“we all stumble”). Mitigation: maturity/wholeness gloss at every occurrence.

11. “Ansehen der Person” read as neutral rather than condemnatory (2:1, 9). Doctrine: Favoritism and the Poor. Cold reading risk of the archaic calque losing its negative force for less biblically literate readers. Mitigation: pair with “Parteilichkeit” as primary rendering.

12. “Weisheit von oben” echoing German Idealist or esoteric “höhere Weisheit” (3:13–17). Doctrine: Wisdom from Above. Lower-probability but real risk of a philosophical or New Age misreading given Germany’s strong cultural association of “höhere Weisheit” with attainable enlightenment rather than a received divine gift. Mitigation: explicit John 3 (ἄνωθεν) cross-reference.

13. “Herr” repetition fatigue across 5:7–11. Doctrine: Patience and the Lord’s Return. Lower doctrinal stakes than #1–4 but a real risk of perceptual flattening through sheer repetition density unique to this letter compared to other pipeline books. Mitigation: syntactic variation; reviewer awareness note.

14. “Wiederkunft” vs. “Parusie” inconsistency risk across future curriculum documents. Doctrine: Patience and the Lord’s Return. Not a mistranslation risk per se, but a cross-document consistency risk if left unfixed. Mitigation: fix “Wiederkunft” as primary in translation memory now, before Phase 2 begins.

15. “Knecht” (1:1) vs. the Ephesians/Colossians “Sklaven/Herren” household-code register. Doctrine: (background, Faith and Works framing). Lower risk, but worth flagging so James’s own honored, voluntary self-designation as “Knecht” is not read through the lens of the household-code slavery discussions’ historical-distancing framing, which addresses a different institutional referent entirely. Mitigation: brief register-distinguishing note at 1:1.

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5. Summary Recommendation for Phase 2 Hand-off

James requires no wholesale new theological vocabulary beyond the items logged as NEW in the core glossary (§2 there) — the letter’s dominant linguistic-gap challenge is referential discipline within already-fixed baseline vocabulary, not lexical invention. Phase 2 segment translation should therefore prioritize:

1. Loading the reconciling doctrine-note requirement as a structural (not optional) accompaniment to every Faith and Works core-passage segment, not merely a stylistic enhancement.
2. Treating the Prayer and Healing (5:14) and Confession and Restoration (5:16) segments with the same dual-tradition, non-adjudicating discipline already established for the baseline’s “saints” and the Ephesians package’s “submission” entries.
3. Fixing register choices now (Wiederkunft over Parusie as primary; Parteilichkeit over Ansehen der Person as primary; Älteste never Presbyter/Priester) in translation memory before parallel Phase 2 workers begin, to avoid inconsistent worker-to-worker drift on register decisions that are legitimate but must be applied uniformly.