Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — Ephesians 1–6 (English → Hebrew)
Purpose and Method
This document identifies where Modern Hebrew’s existing theological vocabulary is insufficient, absent, or dangerously overloaded for the nine doctrines assigned to the Ephesians curriculum, and prescribes a translation strategy for each gap before Phase 2 segment translation begins. It extends, and never contradicts, the baseline Romans Language Package. Every term already locked in the baseline translation_memory.json is treated as fixed; this analysis only evaluates (a) how those locked terms perform under Ephesians’ specific doctrinal load, and (b) the terms newly required by Ephesians (per 08_core_glossary.md Table 2 and bible_term_registry.json).
Two distinct failure modes are tracked separately, per the PRD mandate:
- Missing vocabulary — a doctrine or concept for which Hebrew has no ready native term at all, requiring a constructed compound or careful coinage.
- Crowded semantic neighborhoods — a doctrine or concept for which Hebrew has too many competing native terms, each carrying an existing sense that could mislead; these require explicit fencing (a locked choice plus a forbidden-alternatives list) rather than invention.
Coverage is full-book (Ephesians 1–6); the core passage (2:1-10) receives the deepest treatment because it is the theological anchor of the curriculum and the site of its single highest-density doctrinal cluster (grace, faith, works, salvation, election-adjacent language, spiritual deadness, new creation).
Part A — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the nine assigned doctrines: available Hebrew terms, their weaknesses, and the recommended strategy. “Available terms” includes both baseline-locked terms and Ephesians-new candidate terms from 08_core_glossary.md.
1. Salvation by Grace through Faith
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| חסד (chesed) — grace [LOCKED] | Does not, by itself, exclude covenant/Torah obligation in ordinary Jewish usage | Retain locked term; every Ephesians occurrence (esp. 2:5,7-8) must appear with explicit “apart from works” framing in surrounding text, not left to stand alone |
| אמונה (emunah) — faith [LOCKED] | Praxis-oriented in Jewish usage (faithfulness through mitzvot) rather than propositional trust | Retain locked term; anchor object of faith explicitly to Messiah in every Eph 2:8 rendering |
| ישועה (yeshu’ah) — salvation [LOCKED] | Defaults toward corporate/national deliverance | Retain locked term; Eph 2:5,8 is the thesis-statement occurrence for this curriculum — lock the exact clause wording across all lesson documents |
| מעשים (ma’asim) — works [NEW] | מעשים טובים (good deeds) is a deeply prized positive category (mitzvot); “not of works” risks reading as devaluing Torah-observant ethical life entirely | Scope explicitly: works excluded ONLY as ground/basis of salvation (v.9), never as devaluation of the ethical life; teach v.9-10 as one ground/fruit unit |
| מתנת האלוהים (matnat ha-Elohim) — gift of salvation [NEW] | Must not be confused with מתנות רוחניות (spiritual gifts, different referent) | Keep the two phrases visually and lexically distinct; never substitute one for the other |
| מתים (metim) — spiritually dead [NEW] | Collides with mainstream Jewish anthropology’s yetzer hatov/yetzer hara framework and real free will (Deut 30:19) | Always pair with the “but God” (v.4) reversal in surrounding material; flag every occurrence for theologian review |
Gap type: Crowded neighborhood (chesed/emunah/yeshu’ah all carry rich but differently-shaped OT senses) requiring fencing, not missing vocabulary. The one genuine gap is a stark doctrine of total spiritual inability, for which מתים is adequate lexically but doctrinally unprepared-for; teaching scaffolding, not new vocabulary, closes this gap.
2. Election and Predestination in Christ
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| בחירה (bechirah) — election [LOCKED] | Defaults to Israel’s corporate chosenness (‘am hanivchar) | Retain locked term; Eph 1:4’s “before the foundation of the world” timing must be taught as individual-and-corporate, sharper than the automatic corporate default |
| יעוד מראש (ye’ud me-rosh) — predestined [NEW] | Directly collides with Pirkei Avot 3:15 (“all is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given”) and Rambam’s Hilchot Teshuvah 5 | No better native alternative exists; compound coinage is necessary. Must always be taught alongside Ephesians’ own ethical exhortations (chs. 4-6) as proof the doctrine is not fatalistic |
| הכין מראש (hechin me-rosh) — prepared beforehand [NEW] | Lower risk than יעוד מראש but must be cross-referenced to it (2:10 echoes 1:5,11) | Use consistently; do not vary the “me-rosh” (beforehand) construction between the two terms |
| אימוץ (imutz) — adoption [LOCKED] | Israel’s sonship is by birth-covenant (Deut 14:1), not adoption | Retain locked term; Eph 1:5 places it in the same clause as predestination, compounding the collision — teach both together, not adoption alone |
Gap type: Missing vocabulary for the specific “predestined” concept — Hebrew has no single native word carrying Paul’s exact forensic-and-temporal sense; the compound יעוד מראש is a constructed solution requiring sustained teaching support rather than lexical refinement.
3. The Church as the Body of Christ
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| קהילה (kehilah) — church [LOCKED] | Risk of supersessionist reading if not paired with grafting-in framing | Retain locked term; Ephesians’ unusually dense metaphor cluster (body/head/fullness/temple/bride) all attach to it — reinforce Romans 11 framing at every occurrence |
| גוף (guf) — body [NEW] | Anatomical/literal primary sense in Modern Hebrew | Must always appear in explicit metaphorical/corporate framing; never stand alone without קהילה or “of the Messiah” qualifier nearby |
| ראש (rosh) — head [NEW] | Same word must serve BOTH Christ’s cosmic headship (1:22, 4:15) AND the husband’s relational headship (5:23) | Fence by scope: teaching material must state explicitly which “head” sense is active at each occurrence; never let the marital sense bleed into the cosmic sense or vice versa |
| מלוא (melo) — fullness [NEW] | Abstract; risk of vague or diluted rendering if not fixed | Lock one fixed rendering across all four occurrences (1:23; 3:19; 4:13; 5:18) |
| היכל (heichal) — temple [NEW] | Intersects with the live Jewish hope for a rebuilt physical Third Temple | Teach as genuine metaphorical extension, explicitly not a spiritualizing-away of that hope |
| משכן (mishkan) — dwelling place [NEW] | Strong positive resonance (Tabernacle); low risk if taught as continuity | Retain; reinforce as continuity with, not replacement of, the wilderness Tabernacle motif |
Gap type: No missing vocabulary — this is entirely a crowded/scope-collision problem (ראש especially) requiring fencing across metaphor domains within a single letter.
4. Unity of Jews and Gentiles in One New Humanity
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| גויים (goyim) — Gentiles [LOCKED] | Mildly-to-strongly pejorative colloquial shade in everyday Hebrew | Retain locked term; surrounding text must actively counteract the everyday connotation, especially at 2:11-3:6 where this term is the direct subject of the unity argument |
| אדם חדש אחד (adam chadash echad) — one new man (corporate) [NEW, Critical] | Near-identical phrasing to ch.4’s individual old-self/new-self language risks scope conflation | Must be explicitly distinguished in every teaching document from האדם הישן/החדש (4:22,24); flag both terms side-by-side with a scope note whenever either appears |
| מחיצה (mechitzah) — dividing wall [NEW, Critical] | Ordinary word for the synagogue’s gender-separation partition; NEVER כותל (Western Wall) | Lock מחיצה with explicit note that the referent is the Temple’s soreg (Gentile-exclusion barrier), not synagogue mechitzah practice generally |
| ביטל (bittel) — abolish [NEW] | Carries real halachic “nullification” weight; risk of implying Torah itself is abolished | Scope strictly to the wall/enmity of 2:14-15; the baseline’s non-anti-Torah framing for נומוס/תורה governs here without exception |
| שותפים בנחלה/בגוף/בהבטחה — fellow heirs [NEW] | Compounds the נחלה (land-inheritance) risk; sharpest single equality claim in the book | Requires the most careful theological framing of any phrase in Ephesians — full, not partial, Gentile inclusion in Israel’s own promised inheritance |
| ישראל (Yisra’el) [LOCKED, Critical] | Eph 2:12’s “commonwealth of Israel” names a real historical exclusion | Handle with the same care as Romans 9-11; never let “commonwealth of Israel” be read as merely rhetorical |
Gap type: No missing vocabulary; this doctrine is entirely a fencing problem — Hebrew’s existing vocabulary is doctrinally rich but politically and religiously live in ways no other language pair in this curriculum matches, requiring the tightest scope-control of any doctrine in this analysis.
5. The Mystery of Christ Revealed
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| סוד (sod) — mystery [NEW, Critical] | Fourth/innermost layer of the Kabbalistic PaRDeS scheme; invites an esoteric-mystical reading | Primary term, but EVERY occurrence (1:9; 3:3-9; 5:32; 6:19) requires a translator note distinguishing Paul’s sense (a real historical plan, now publicly disclosed) from Kabbalistic sod |
| רז (raz) — alternative candidate | Daniel’s own Aramaic term for a God-revealed royal-court secret; lower mystical-collision risk but far less common in Modern Hebrew, reads as archaic/foreign | Retained as a documented alternative for translator notes and footnotes only, not as the primary running text rendering, to avoid inconsistency across documents |
Gap type: Missing vocabulary in the strict sense — no Modern Hebrew word carries Paul’s exact “hidden-then-publicly-revealed” sense without also carrying a competing native connotation. This is the single hardest term-level decision in the curriculum (see ranked list below).
6. Spiritual Warfare and the Armor of God
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| שרים ושלטונות / שולטי העולם הזה של החושך / כוחות רוחניים של הרשעה [NEW, Critical] | Real Talmudic angelology/demonology categories are an asset, but modern secular readers may dismiss as superstition while readers steeped in folk practice (amulets, ayin ha-ra) may import a magical dualist frame | Teach as real but entirely subordinate to Christ’s cosmic headship (Eph 1); never let the plural “powers” language stand without that subordination anchor nearby |
| כלי נשק האלוהים (kelei nesheq ha-Elohim) — armor of God [NEW] | Isaiah 11:5/59:17 Divine Warrior imagery is a genuine asset, reducing but not eliminating risk | Teach the full doctrine of real cosmic conflict, not mere metaphorical self-improvement |
| השטן (ha-satan) — devil [NEW] | Direct OT term, correctly subordinate in Job/Zechariah | Reinforce OT subordination-to-God motif explicitly; never frame as an independent cosmic rival |
| Individual armor-piece nouns (חגורה, שריון, נעליים, מגן, כובע, חרב) | Ordinary secular military vocabulary | Low risk in themselves — the risk is entirely in the attached theological nouns (צדק, אמונה, ישועה, הבשורה, שלום, רוח הקודש), which are already locked Critical/High baseline terms and must never be substituted, even inside the armor metaphor |
Gap type: No missing vocabulary; primarily a fencing problem for the “powers” vocabulary (multiple registers competing: Talmudic-legitimate, folk-magical, secular-dismissive) and a doctrine-completeness problem (armor imagery itself translates easily; the underlying claim of real spiritual conflict must be taught explicitly).
7. Household Codes and Christ-Centered Relationships
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| להיכנע (le-hikana) — submit [NEW, High] | כניעה carries a military-surrender/capitulation register in Hebrew | Foreground 5:21’s mutual submission and 5:25’s parallel call to husbands’ sacrificial love in every occurrence before presenting wife-specific instruction |
| עבדים / אדונים (avadim/adonim) — bondservants/masters [NEW, High] | עבדים carries both OT legal-slavery resonance and painful modern historical echoes; אדונים shares its root with the Critical divine title אדון | Preserve, do not smooth away, Paul’s own 6:9 pun (“you also have a Master in heaven”) — this wordplay is a teaching asset that must be explicitly surfaced |
| ראש (rosh) — head (marital sense) [NEW] | See Doctrine 3 above — scope collision with cosmic headship | Same fencing rule applies here in reverse direction |
| כבד את אביך ואת אמך — honor parents [NEW] | None; direct Torah quotation | Genuine asset — use as explicit evidence that the household codes are Torah-continuous, not novel ethics |
Gap type: No missing vocabulary; entirely a framing/fencing problem around submission and slavery vocabulary that already exists richly in Hebrew but carries loaded modern registers.
8. Gifts for Building Up the Church
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| מתנות רוחניות (matanot ruchaniyot) — spiritual gifts [LOCKED] | Ephesians 4 uses δόματα/δωρεά (gift-offices), distinct Greek vocabulary from Romans’ χαρίσματα, for the same underlying doctrine | Retain the locked doctrinal category term for teaching continuity; render the four/five offices with their own dedicated terms (below), not by reusing matanot ruchaniyot for each office name |
| שליח (shaliach) — apostle [LOCKED] | Modern secular overlay (Jewish Agency emissary) | Retain locked term; context must mark the NT ecclesial sense |
| נביא (navi) — prophet [LOCKED] | Low risk | Retain locked term |
| מבשר (mevaser) — evangelist [NEW] | None significant; shares root with besorah (gospel) | Positive etymological asset — no fencing needed |
| רועה (ro’eh) — pastor [NEW] | Literal-shepherding primary sense | Elevate explicitly to the office sense in context |
| מורה (moreh) — teacher [NEW] | Ordinary secular-teacher word | Context must mark the Spirit-given office, not a school-teacher vocation |
| בניין (binyan) — building up [NEW] | Low risk; consistent with baseline mutual-edification vocabulary | No fencing needed |
Gap type: No missing vocabulary or crowded neighborhoods beyond normal office-term register clarification; low overall linguistic risk for this doctrine relative to others in the letter.
9. Walking in Newness of Life
| Available Hebrew Terms | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| התהלך (hit’halech) — walk (ethical conduct) [NEW] | None significant; echoes Genesis 5:24, 17:1 | Fixed verb form required across all seven occurrences (2:2,10; 4:1,17; 5:2,8,15) for pedagogical continuity, including the death-to-good-works inclusio between 2:2 and 2:10 |
| האדם הישן / האדם החדש — old self/new self (individual) [NEW, High] | Near-identical phrasing to 2:15’s corporate “one new man” | See Doctrine 4 fencing note; explicit side-by-side scope distinction required every time either phrase appears |
| להתחדש (le-hitchadesh) — renewed [NEW] | Positive Rosh Chodesh/Days-of-Awe liturgical resonance | No fencing needed; genuine asset |
| להעציב (le-ha’atziv) — grieve the Spirit [NEW] | None; reinforces Spirit’s personhood | Positive doctrinal asset against the Rabbinic impersonal-influence default (Yoma 9b) |
| בני אור (benei or) — children of light [NEW] | Historical DSS “Sons of Light” parallel — interesting, not risky | No fencing needed |
Gap type: No missing vocabulary; one scope-collision fencing item (old/new self vs. one new man) shared with Doctrine 4.
Part B — Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
B.1 Genuine Lexical Gaps (no adequate native Hebrew term exists)
These require constructed compounds rather than a single native word, and each compound must be locked identically across every Ephesians document once approved.
| Concept | Constructed Hebrew | Why No Native Term Exists |
|---|---|---|
| Predestination (as distinct from general election) | יעוד מראש | Hebrew’s theological vocabulary for divine planning (bechirah, hashgachah pratit) addresses corporate choice and general providence, not this specific forensic-temporal category; Jewish thought’s dominant free-will emphasis (Pirkei Avot 3:15) left no positive native term to borrow |
| Believers’ positional co-resurrection/co-enthronement with Christ (2:5-6) | החיה/הקים אותנו יחד עם המשיח | No existing word distinguishes this present, positional, “already” reality from full bodily תחיית המתים (“not yet”); the compound must be constructed to preserve, not blur, that distinction |
| Incarnation (already flagged Critical in the baseline; recurs implicitly in Ephesians’ “in Christ” language and 2:14-16’s flesh/cross argument) | התגלמות (reused from baseline) | No continuous native-Hebrew Christian theological tradition existed between the apostolic era and Hebrew’s modern revival to have coined and settled this term; Ephesians inherits, rather than newly creates, this gap |
| ”The Mystery” in Paul’s specific sense (hidden-then-publicly-disclosed redemptive plan) | סוד (with mandatory disambiguating note) or רז (footnote alternative) | Every native candidate carries a pre-existing, competing sense (Kabbalistic esotericism for sod; archaic foreignness for raz); this is a gap in the sense that no term is unencumbered, not that no term exists at all |
B.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing (multiple viable native terms, collision risk)
These require an explicit locked choice plus a forbidden-alternatives list, since the danger is too much available vocabulary pulling toward the wrong sense, not too little.
| Neighborhood | Competing Terms | Fencing Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Righteousness | צדק vs. צדקה | Never צדקה outside a direct Genesis 15:6 quotation (baseline rule); Ephesians extends this to 4:24, 5:9, and 6:14’s breastplate — all must use צדק |
| Redemption / Salvation | גאולה vs. ישועה | Keep strictly separate per baseline: גאולה for redemption (1:7, already-accomplished-in-blood sense), ישועה for salvation (2:5,8, the curriculum’s thesis term); never interchange |
| Headship | ראש (cosmic, 1:22/4:15) vs. ראש (marital, 5:23) | Same word, two scopes — fence by explicit scope-labeling in every teaching note, not by choosing a different word for either sense (none exists that would not itself introduce a new risk) |
| Mystery | סוד vs. רז | Lock סוד as the running-text default with mandatory disambiguation note; רז reserved for footnotes/translator commentary only |
| Power | כוח vs. גבורה | Never גבורה (Kabbalistic sefirah); כוח throughout, per baseline, including all four Ephesians occurrences (1:19, 3:7,16,20, 6:10) |
| Submission / Household order | להיכנע vs. more neutral alternatives (e.g., לקבל מרות) | Baseline candidate le-hikana retained despite its surrender-register risk because alternatives are either too weak (losing the volitional force) or equally loaded; fence through surrounding 5:21/5:25 framing rather than lexical substitution |
| Dividing wall / partition | מחיצה vs. כותל | כותל absolutely forbidden (Western Wall exclusivity); מחיצה retained with explicit Temple-soreg scope note distinguishing it from synagogue-partition usage |
| Servant/master vocabulary | עבדים/אדונים vs. euphemistic alternatives (e.g., “workers/employers”) | Retain the historically loaded terms rather than euphemize, because Paul’s own 6:9 wordplay on אדון depends on the shared root; euphemism would destroy a deliberate textual feature |
| Old self/new self vs. one new man | האדם הישן/החדש (individual, ch.4) vs. אדם חדש אחד (corporate, 2:15) | Structurally near-identical Hebrew phrasing for two doctrinally distinct scopes (individual sanctification vs. corporate Jew-Gentile unity); fence by mandatory side-by-side scope note wherever either appears, never by altering either phrase’s wording |
| Inheritance | נחלה (land-allotment resonance) applied to the NT’s shared heavenly inheritance | Not a competing-term problem but a scope-expansion problem: must teach explicitly as expansion, not erasure, of the land promises, especially where compounded with שותפים בנחלה (3:6) |
Part C — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Mystery (μυστήριον) | Paraphrase (סוד, footnoted) — NOT transliteration | A transliterated מיסטריון would be intelligible but theologically inert, sounding like a loanword for “mystery novel/puzzle” in Modern Hebrew rather than engaging any native theological register at all; paraphrase with disambiguation is preferable to a semantically empty loan |
| Baptism (βάπτισμα) | Paraphrase (טבילה) — NOT transliteration | Existing Jewish immersion vocabulary (mikveh-adjacent) is a genuine asset once properly scoped; a transliteration would forfeit that resonance entirely for no compensating clarity gain |
| Messiah / Christ (Χριστός) | Transliteration (משיח), per baseline | Already the unavoidable and correct native term — this is not actually a transliteration decision but confirmation of the baseline’s existing choice; no paraphrase alternative exists or is needed |
| Jesus (Ἰησοῦς) | Transliteration (ישוע), per baseline | Proper name; must retain the established Hebrew NT form with final ayin, never the truncated slur-adjacent ישו |
| Predestined (προορίζω) | Paraphrase (compound: יעוד מראש) — NOT transliteration | A Greek-derived loanword here would be entirely unintelligible to the target readership and would forfeit any engagement with the existing (if contrastive) Jewish free-will discourse the doctrine must be taught against |
| Armor of God (πανοπλία τοῦ Θεοῦ) | Paraphrase (כלי נשק האלוהים) plus native equipment nouns for each piece | Ordinary military vocabulary already exists and carries the Isaiah Divine-Warrior resonance; no transliteration is warranted or would help |
| Principalities and powers (ἀρχαί, ἐξουσίαι, κοσμοκράτορες) | Paraphrase using existing Hebrew angelology/political vocabulary (שרים ושלטונות, etc.) | Talmudic categories exist and are a genuine asset; transliterating Greek terms would sever that connection and could not be taught against without it |
| Abba (Ἀββά) | Retain as-is (already ordinary Hebrew אבא), per baseline | Not a transliteration decision in the usual sense — the word is native Hebrew vocabulary for “Dad”; the pedagogical task is building theological weight around an unremarkable word, not choosing its form |
| Amen, Halleluyah | Retain native Hebrew forms (already Hebrew-origin), per baseline | These are not foreign loans requiring a decision; they return to their own source language |
| Cross (σταυρός) | Paraphrase (הצלב) — no transliteration alternative considered | No viable substitute exists in either direction; the decision is entirely about surrounding sensitivity framing (Crusades/forced-conversion history), not lexical form |
General rule derived: across this curriculum, transliteration is reserved essentially only for proper nouns and terms already fully naturalized into Hebrew (Messiah, Yeshua, Amen, Halleluyah). Every doctrinal-concept term is better served by paraphrase using existing Hebrew theological, liturgical, or legal vocabulary — because Hebrew’s problem in this Language Package is almost never absence of resonant vocabulary but rather the wrong resonance (crowded neighborhoods), which transliteration cannot fix and paraphrase-with-fencing can.
Part D — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities for Ephesians
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision probability × review burden). All entries below require human theologian review per the escalation rules already established in the baseline 12_ai_translation_requirements.md; this ranking determines review priority order within that tier.
- מטבענו / by nature, children of wrath (2:3) — The single sharpest anti-yetzer-hara-framework phrase in the entire curriculum; asserts inborn guilt prior to any act, directly contradicting the mainstream Jewish view of moral condition as the product of ongoing choice. Highest risk because it sits inside the core passage (2:1-10) itself.
- מתים / spiritually dead (2:1,5) — Total spiritual incapacity claim, sharper than Romans 5’s federal-headship argument; core-passage location compounds the risk. Must never appear without the v.4 “but God” reversal in the same teaching unit.
- סוד / mystery — No unencumbered native term exists (see Part B.1); every occurrence (1:9; 3:3-9; 5:32; 6:19) risks a Kabbalistic PaRDeS misreading that would relocate Paul’s historical-disclosure claim into esoteric mysticism.
- מחיצה / dividing wall (2:14) — Highest-consequence single-word error risk in the book: substituting כותל would be not merely wrong but explosively offensive; even the correct מחיצה requires a scope note to prevent conflation with synagogue partition practice.
- ראש / head — dual scope collision (1:22/4:15 vs. 5:23) — Same Hebrew word carrying two doctrinally unrelated scopes (cosmic headship of Christ over all things vs. relational headship in marriage) within a single letter; any teaching material that fails to separate them risks a serious Christological-to-domestic category error in either direction.
- אדם חדש אחד vs. האדם הישן/החדש — corporate vs. individual “new man” (2:15 vs. 4:22-24) — Near-identical Hebrew phrasing for two distinct doctrines (Jew-Gentile corporate unity vs. individual sanctification); conflation would either shrink the unity doctrine to an individual-piety matter or inflate individual sanctification into ethnic-corporate categories.
- יעוד מראש / predestined (1:5,11) — Collides directly with Pirkei Avot 3:15’s canonical free-will affirmation; constructed compound term with no settled precedent, requiring the heaviest teaching scaffolding of any Election-doctrine term in the book.
- שרים ושלטונות וכו’ / principalities and powers (1:21, 2:2, 3:10, 6:12) — Bifurcated risk: secular dismissal as superstition on one side, magical/folk-practice importation (amulets, ayin ha-ra) on the other; must be threaded as real-but-subordinate across four separate chapter occurrences.
- עבדים / אדונים / bondservants and masters (6:5-9) — Compounds painful historical slavery resonance with the Critical divine-title root shared by אדון (Christ’s Lordship); Paul’s intentional 6:9 pun must be surfaced, not smoothed away, without letting the pun read as trivializing either the historical institution or Christ’s Lordship.
- להיכנע / submit (5:21-24) — כניעה’s military-surrender register risks a domination reading of household order that the text’s own mutuality (5:21) and sacrificial-love parallel (5:25) are meant to prevent; sequencing of teaching material (mutuality first) is itself a translation-adjacent risk-mitigation, not just a lexical one.
- נחלה-compounds / שותפים בנחלה — fellow heirs (3:6) — The single sharpest full-equality claim in the unity doctrine, compounding the land-allotment resonance of נחלה with an explicit statement of shared possession; requires the most careful framing of any inheritance-related phrase in the curriculum.
- בחירה + יעוד מראש + אימוץ compounding (1:4-5) — Three High-risk election/predestination/adoption terms co-occurring in two consecutive verses; individually manageable, but their density in this single clause multiplies review burden and cross-reference obligation beyond any of them in isolation.
Summary
Ephesians does not introduce genuinely new categories of risk beyond what the baseline Romans Language Package already anticipates (grace/Torah, Israel/Church, Messiah’s identity), but it concentrates several of those risks with unusual density — especially in the core passage (2:1-10) and the unity section (2:11-3:6) — and adds two doctrine-specific new pressure points the baseline did not need to address: the corporate/individual “new man” phrasing collision, and the dual-scope headship metaphor. No genuinely unfillable lexical gap exists in this curriculum; every identified gap is addressable through constructed compounds (predestination, positional co-resurrection) or fenced paraphrase (mystery, dividing wall, headship). The translation strategy throughout should favor locked native paraphrase with mandatory scope/disambiguation notes over transliteration, which this analysis found useful only for proper nouns already settled by the baseline.
This analysis must be read alongside 07_semantic_analysis.md (verse-level detail) and 08_core_glossary.md (full term table) and precedes the merge of new Ephesians terms into translation_memory.json.