Executive Summary — 1 Corinthians (Greek Destination Language Package)

Why it matters: 1 Corinthians is being translated into the one language in this entire pipeline that is not really a “foreign” target — Modern Greek is the direct descendant of the letter’s own Koine Greek. That collapses the usual translation problem (finding the right foreign word) and replaces it with a harder one: two thousand years of the same words drifting in two opposite directions — toward rich Orthodox sacramental/patristic meaning, and toward flattened secular meaning. Get this wrong and a Greek reader either imports theology Paul never states (the Lord’s Supper passage absorbed entirely into Eucharistic doctrine) or reads scripture’s own vocabulary as bureaucratic or mundane (κλήση as “phone call,” κέντρο as “center” at the resurrection chapter’s climax).

Key findings:

• 96 terms are now formally tracked in this book’s translation memory (49 inherited from the Romans/Galatians baseline, 47 newly introduced by 1 Corinthians) — of which 27 are Critical-risk and 20 are High-risk (47 total) requiring mandatory human theologian review on every occurrence.
• The doctrine risk registry logs 29 distinct doctrines across all 16 chapters; 12 are Critical and 9 are High (21 total, 72% of all doctrines) requiring theologian routing — an unusually high concentration, driven by chapter 15 (the core passage) alone carrying 7 doctrines, 6 of them Critical or High.
• Three collisions are unique in severity to this book and this language: Πάσχα at 5:7 (Paul’s somber Exodus-lamb sacrifice vs. the reader’s joyful Easter association), κεφαλή at 11:3 (gender-sensitive headship vs. modern political “head of state”), and κέντρον at 15:55 (the sting of death, correctly preserved only in an annual liturgical chant, vs. “center” in every other modern use).
• The Lord’s Supper cluster (11:17-34) is the single highest-stakes passage in the book: Paul’s own words are recited nearly verbatim in the Divine Liturgy every week, which is an asset for recognition but a real risk that Paul’s actual argument — unity, self-examination, rebuke of excluding the poor — gets silently replaced by sacramental theology alone.
• No doctrine in this curriculum requires apologetic argument against a rival non-Christian religious system in Greek culture; risk is overwhelmingly intra-Christian (Orthodox theological richness) and intra-linguistic (secular drift), consistent with the Romans/Galatians baseline’s established profile.

Risks:

• Forbidden-substitution traps carried and newly introduced: κέντρο ≠ “center,” Πάσχα (5:7) ≠ generic Easter reference, εἰκῆ (15:2) ≠ δωρεάν, ψυχικός άνθρωπος ≠ “emotionally rich,” σταυρός ≠ “torture stake” (documented Jehovah’s Witness rendering), πνευματικό σώμα ≠ non-bodily resurrection (also a documented JW reading), Κύριος ≠ “Ιεχωβά.”
• Doctrinally contested passage requiring balance, not resolution: κεφαλή (11:2-16) — the translation must not silently settle the complementarian/egalitarian debate through word choice.
• Internal lexical fences that must not collapse: σχίσμα (negative) vs. διαίρεση (positive) in chs. 1/11/12; εξουσία (personal right) vs. ελευθερία (freedom) in chs. 8–9; ψυχικός vs. πνευματικός in ch. 2.
• Romantic-sense bleed: ἀγάπη (ch. 13) is Modern Greek’s single all-purpose word for love, including full romantic force — the reverse of English’s problem and the book’s single most pedagogically important term to get right.

Opportunities:

• Greek’s Koine continuity supplies genuine, pipeline-unique assets: the perfect-tense ἐγήγερται (15:4) and the repeated ὤφθη appearance-verb (15:5-8) are directly legible; ἐκοιμήθησαν (15:6) is still living Orthodox funeral-liturgy language; and Greek’s own classical vocabulary (ἔρως, φιλία, στοργή) offers a built-in contrast set for teaching ἀγάπη’s specific meaning that no other language in this pipeline possesses natively.
• The recommended reference translation (Today’s Greek Version, TGV) and a fixed YouVersion hyperlink convention (1CO.{chapter}.{verse}.TGV) are now established and binding for all future Greek-language curricula, closing a gap the Romans/Galatians baseline left open.

Recommended actions:

1. Load both the baseline (v2) and 1 Corinthians (v1) translation_memory.json files before any Phase 2 segment work; enforce the higher risk tier wherever a term appears in both (e.g., “called,” elevated to Critical for this book).
2. Route all of chapter 15, all of the 11:2-16 headship passage, and all of the 11:17-34 Lord’s Supper passage to human theologian review as a standing rule, not case-by-case judgment.
3. Attach the mandatory explanatory notes (μυστήριο, Πάσχα, ψυχικός άνθρωπος, κέντρον, κεφαλή, εικόνα, ναός, αγάπη, εἰκῆ) at first occurrence in every lesson, per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
4. Cross-check every back-translation against the documented Jehovah’s Witness, Latter-day Saint, and Christadelphian renderings catalogued in 05_translation_landscape.md §4 before release.
5. Carry the σχίσμα/διαίρεση and εξουσία/ελευθερία lexical fences into Phase 2 Step 17’s automated validation rules as structural checks, parallel to the existing Κύριος/κλήση/εκλογή/διαθήκη checks inherited from the baseline.