Acts — Biblical Theme Map (Hmong Language Package)

§0. Purpose

This document maps the nine assigned doctrines of the Acts curriculum onto their canon-wide theological trajectories — where each theme is rooted in the Old Testament, how Acts develops it as the hinge-book between the Gospels and the Epistles, and where it continues forward into the rest of the New Testament (especially the Romans curriculum already governing this Language Package, and the consummation imagery of Revelation). Every theme entry closes with translation/doctrinal implications that reuse, and never contradict, the fixed renderings already established in translation_memory.json, analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, and analysis/08_core_glossary.md.

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§1. Theme: The Spirit Poured Out — New Creation and New Exodus (Doctrine 1: The Holy Spirit and Pentecost)

Old Testament roots:

• Genesis 1:2 — the Spirit hovering over the waters at creation.
• Numbers 11:29 — Moses’ wish that the Lord would put his Spirit on all his people, not only chosen leaders.
• Ezekiel 36:26-27; Ezekiel 37:1-14 — new heart, new spirit, and the dry bones raised to life by the Spirit’s breath — Israel’s national restoration figured as resurrection.
• Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 44:3 — the Spirit poured out from on high, transforming wilderness into fruitfulness.
• Joel 2:28-32 — the direct source-text of Acts 2:17-21: the Spirit poured out on “all flesh,” sons and daughters, young and old, slave and free — a democratized, eschatological outpouring.

Development in Acts: Acts 2:1-41 stages the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy on the very feast day (Pentecost/Feast of Weeks, Leviticus 23:15-21) that marked Israel’s harvest and covenant calendar — the Spirit’s arrival is not a rupture from Israel’s story but its climactic next chapter. The wind and fire (Acts 2:2-3) recall Sinai’s theophany; the reversal of many languages into a single intelligible proclamation reverses Babel’s judgment (Genesis 11:1-9) rather than merely repeating ecstatic speech. The Spirit’s filling becomes the book’s structural heartbeat, recurring at every major advance of the gospel (Acts 4:8, 4:31; 6:3, 6:5; 7:55; 9:17; 10:44-46; 11:24; 13:9, 13:52; 19:6) — Luke’s way of showing that the same Spirit who acted at creation and inspired the prophets is now the active agent driving the church’s mission.

Forward connections:

• Romans 8:1-17 — life in the Spirit as the ground of sanctification and adoption; the same Vaj Ntsuj Plig who falls at Pentecost indwells every believer.
• 1 Corinthians 12 — the Spirit’s gifts distributed for the body’s building-up, a further unfolding of Joel’s “all flesh” democratization.
• Ephesians 1:13-14 — the Spirit as the “guarantee” (down payment) of the believer’s inheritance.
• Revelation 22:1-2, 17 — the river of the water of life flowing from God’s throne, the consummation of the Spirit’s outpouring that began at Pentecost.

Translation/doctrinal implications: Every occurrence of the Spirit’s filling/outpouring must use the fixed Vaj Ntsuj Plig collocation and the mandatory puv / puv npo ntawm Vaj Ntsuj Plig filling-formula, never the forbidden nkag (spirit-possession) verb, and the pouring-out verb nchuav must always carry an explicit divine subject. See B4, B5 in analysis/08_core_glossary.md; Critical/High risk throughout, mandatory human theologian review per the inherited Romans-baseline routing rule for Holy Spirit content.

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§2. Theme: From Jerusalem to the Nations — The Gospel to Jew and Gentile (Doctrine 2)

Old Testament roots:

• Genesis 12:3; Genesis 22:18 — God’s covenant promise to Abraham that “all the families/nations of the earth” would be blessed through his offspring.
• Psalm 87; Psalm 96:3 — the nations gathering to worship Israel’s God.
• Isaiah 49:6 — Israel’s Servant appointed as “a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
• Isaiah 56:3-8 — foreigners and eunuchs formally welcomed into God’s house, previously excluded categories now included.
• Jonah 1-4 — the reluctant-prophet narrative dramatizing God’s compassion for Gentile Nineveh, a cautionary counter-model to any ethnocentric resistance to the mission.

Development in Acts: Acts 1:8 lays out the book’s geographic-theological program: Jerusalem → Judea and Samaria → the ends of the earth. This is executed in careful, deliberate stages: the gospel to diaspora Jews at Pentecost (Acts 2), to Samaritans (Acts 8), to a eunuch outsider (Acts 8:26-40), and decisively to uncircumcised Gentiles at Cornelius’s household (Acts 10), ratified at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) using Amos 9:11-12 as scriptural warrant. Peter’s vision of clean and unclean animals (Acts 10:9-16) functions as the hinge: the dismantling of Israel’s ritual food-boundary markers symbolizes and enacts the dismantling of the Jew-Gentile boundary itself (Ephesians 2:11-22).

Forward connections:

• Romans 1:16 — “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek,” the same order Acts dramatizes narratively.
• Romans 9-11 — the extended theological reflection on Israel’s partial hardening, the Gentiles’ grafting-in, and the future restoration of “all Israel,” directly continuous with the trajectory Acts narrates in real time.
• Ephesians 2:11-22 — Jew and Gentile made “one new humanity” through the cross, the doctrinal statement of what Acts shows happening.
• Revelation 7:9 — the consummated vision of a multitude “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” before the throne.

Translation/doctrinal implications: nations_gentiles/lwm Haiv Neeg, jew/cov Yudas, and impartiality_of_god/tsis saib ntsej muag must be reused verbatim from the Romans baseline. The clean_unclean_food (B12, Critical) and god_fearer (B13, Medium) terms are the Acts-specific extensions of this theme and require mandatory human theologian review wherever Acts 10-11 or Acts 15 content is generated.

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§3. Theme: Turning and Washing — Repentance and Baptism as the Doorway of the New Covenant (Doctrine 3)

Old Testament roots:

• Ezekiel 36:25-27 — God sprinkling clean water and giving a new heart and new spirit, the prophetic template behind Christian baptism’s dual water/Spirit symbolism.
• Isaiah 1:16-18 — “wash yourselves… though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” repentance and cleansing held together.
• 2 Kings 5:1-14 — Naaman’s washing in the Jordan, a Gentile healed/cleansed through a specific, divinely-appointed act of obedient washing.
• Genesis 17:9-14 — circumcision as the Abrahamic covenant’s entrance-sign, later reinterpreted typologically (Colossians 2:11-12) as fulfilled in baptism.
• Jonah 3:5-10; Joel 2:12-13 — corporate national repentance turning aside divine judgment.

Development in Acts: Acts 2:38 establishes the programmatic conversion-formula — repent, be baptized in Jesus’ name, receive forgiveness and the Spirit’s gift — repeated with local variation across nearly every subsequent conversion account (Acts 8:12-13, 8:36-38; 9:18; 10:47-48; 16:14-15, 16:31-33; 18:8; 19:5). Acts 19:1-7 supplies the book’s most theologically precise distinction: John’s baptism (repentance-oriented, anticipatory) is explicitly not equivalent to Christian baptism (in Jesus’ name, joined to the Spirit’s reception) — Luke deliberately preserves this two-stage distinction rather than collapsing it.

Forward connections:

• Romans 6:1-11 — baptism as union with Christ’s death and resurrection, the doctrinal depth-explanation of the rite Acts narrates repeatedly at the surface-narrative level.
• Titus 3:5 — “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”
• 1 Peter 3:20-21 — Noah’s flood-waters typologically prefiguring baptism, “not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience.”

Translation/doctrinal implications: baptism/kev cai raus dej and the Doctrine 4 preservation rule from the Romans baseline (never a repeatable purification rite) apply unchanged. Acts adds B1 (repentance_repent, High) and B2 (forgiveness_of_sins, Medium), which must be kept lexically distinct from the Romans-baseline renewal_of_the_mind (post-conversion sanctification, not initial turning) and must never be assimilated to the reparable social/ritual-fault pattern of Hmong txhaum-custom.

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§4. Theme: One New Family — The Church as the True Israel-Community (Doctrine 4)

Old Testament roots:

• Exodus 19:3-6 — Israel constituted as a covenant people, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” at Sinai.
• Deuteronomy 6:4-9 — the shape of covenant community life: shared teaching, shared memory, shared household practice.
• Nehemiah 8-9 — the returned exiles’ communal covenant-renewal assembly, reading the Law together and confessing corporately.
• Leviticus 25 — the Jubilee provisions for economic mutuality within the covenant community, an OT precedent for radical shared-resource ethics.

Development in Acts: Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-35 present the earliest church as a Spirit-formed community marked by teaching, fellowship (koinōnia), the breaking of bread, prayer, and voluntary economic sharing — the narrative fulfillment of the Sinai and Nehemiah community-covenant patterns, now constituted not by ethnic descent but by the Spirit and shared faith in Christ. The institution of the Seven (Acts 6:1-6), the elder/overseer structures (Acts 14:23; 15:2-23; 20:17, 20:28), and the Jerusalem Council’s collaborative decision-making (Acts 15) show this community developing durable, orderly structures without losing its Spirit-formed, cross-ethnic character (Hellenists and Hebrews together, Acts 6:1).

Forward connections:

• Romans 12:3-8 — the body of Christ, each member contributing distinct gifts, the doctrinal elaboration of Acts’ narrated community life.
• 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 — the body metaphor developed at length.
• Ephesians 4:1-16 — the unity of the Spirit maintained through diverse offices and gifts.
• Hebrews 10:24-25 — the exhortation to not neglect meeting together, presupposing the pattern Acts narrates as normative.

Translation/doctrinal implications: church_assembly/pawg ntseeg (B19), fellowship/kev sib raug zoo (B20), breaking_of_bread (B21, Medium-High, must never be assimilated to ancestor-feast offering ritual), holding_all_things_in_common (B22), and elder/cov txwj laus (hauv pawg ntseeg) (B23, mandatory qualifier at every occurrence to distinguish ecclesial from clan/ancestor-ritual eldership) all govern this theme’s Hmong rendering.

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§5. Theme: Signs Following the Word — Apostolic Authority, Miracle, and the Contest with Counterfeit Power (Doctrine 5)

Old Testament roots:

• Exodus 7-12 — Moses and Aaron’s signs contesting directly with Pharaoh’s magicians, establishing the pattern of divine power publicly vindicated against rival supernatural claimants.
• 1 Kings 18:16-40 — Elijah versus the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, the paradigmatic OT contest between true and false supernatural power.
• Daniel 1:17-20; Daniel 2:1-49 — Daniel and his companions’ God-given wisdom and revelation publicly outperforming Babylon’s astrologers and magicians.

Development in Acts: Every major advance of the gospel in Acts is accompanied by “signs and wonders” (Acts 2:19, 2:22, 2:43; 4:30; 5:12; 6:8; 8:13; 14:3; 15:12), consistently anchored to God’s own commissioning of the apostles, never presented as a free-floating power available to any practitioner. The book repeatedly stages the Exodus/Carmel/Daniel contest-pattern in first-century form: Simon Magus’s attempted purchase of the Spirit’s power (Acts 8:9-24), Elymas the sorcerer opposing Paul at Paphos (Acts 13:6-12), the Philippian spirit of divination cast out (Acts 16:16-18), and the sons of Sceva’s disastrous magical misuse of Jesus’ name (Acts 19:13-17) — in every case, the counterfeit power is exposed, judged, or exorcised, never treated as a legitimate rival tradition.

Forward connections:

• 2 Corinthians 12:12 — “signs and wonders and mighty works” as marks confirming genuine apostleship.
• 2 Timothy 3:8-9 — Jannes and Jambres (the Exodus magicians) invoked as a type for end-times opposition to the truth.
• Revelation 13:13-14 — the beast’s counterfeit signs, the final eschatological instance of the same contest-pattern.

Translation/doctrinal implications: hwjchim must always be qualified Vajtswv hwjchim per the Romans baseline; signs_and_wonders (B7, High), sorcery_magic/khawv koob (B9, Critical), and laying_on_of_hands (B10, High) are the load-bearing Acts-specific terms, each requiring mandatory contrast-teaching against the genuine, named Hmong shamanic practices they risk being assimilated to.

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§6. Theme: The Prophetic Pattern of Suffering — Persecution and Bold Witness (Doctrine 6)

Old Testament roots:

• 1 Kings 19:1-14 — Elijah fleeing Jezebel’s persecution, the archetype of the suffering-but-sustained prophet.
• Jeremiah 20:1-2, 37:11-16 — Jeremiah beaten and imprisoned for his prophetic word.
• 2 Chronicles 36:15-16 — the recurring pattern of Israel mocking and persecuting God’s messengers, culminating in judgment.
• Psalm 34; Psalm 118 — the righteous sufferer vindicated by God despite opposition.
• Isaiah 53:7-9 — the Servant’s silent suffering, already established above as directly quoted at Acts 8:32-33.

Development in Acts: The book traces an escalating arc: mockery (Acts 2:13), threats and arrest (Acts 4-5), Stephen’s martyrdom (Acts 7, the decisive point where the baseline “witness”/tus timkhawv term visibly develops toward its later technical sense of “martyr”), Herod’s persecution and James’s death (Acts 12), repeated stonings and expulsions on the missionary journeys (Acts 13:50; 14:5, 14:19; 16:22-24; 17:5-9, 17:13; 18:12-17), and finally Paul’s own extended imprisonment and trials (Acts 21-28). Throughout, boldness (parrēsia, Acts 4:13, 4:29, 4:31) is presented not as reckless defiance but as Spirit-given courage that persists precisely because of, not in spite of, prayer and Spirit-filling.

Forward connections:

• Matthew 5:11-12 — “blessed are you when they persecute you… for so they persecuted the prophets before you,” Jesus’ own framing of this OT-rooted pattern.
• 2 Timothy 3:12 — “everyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” the pattern generalized as normative Christian expectation.
• 1 Peter 4:12-19 — suffering for Christ’s name as participation in Christ’s own sufferings.
• Revelation 6:9-11 — the martyrs “under the altar,” the pattern’s eschatological resolution and vindication.

Translation/doctrinal implications: witness/tus timkhawv remains lexically unchanged from the Romans baseline even as its narrative-semantic weight develops toward “martyr” across Acts 1–7 — a semantic-development note, not a lexical change (per analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md Ch.7). boldness/kev qhia tawv tawv tsis ntshai leej twg and persecution/kev tsim txom (B, minor) round out this theme’s Hmong vocabulary.

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§7. Theme: From Persecutor to Proclaimer — The Conversion of Paul as a Type of Grace (Doctrine 7)

Old Testament roots:

• Exodus 3:1-4:17 — Moses’ dramatic confrontation-and-commissioning at the burning bush, the template genre for sudden divine call-narratives.
• Isaiah 6:1-8 — Isaiah’s overwhelming vision of God’s holiness followed by cleansing and commissioning.
• Jeremiah 1:4-10 — Jeremiah’s call “before you were born,” God’s sovereign initiative preceding the prophet’s own readiness.
• Jonah 1-4 — the rebellious/reluctant figure recommissioned despite initial resistance — an instructive contrast, since Paul (unlike Jonah) responds immediately and without further resistance once confronted.

Development in Acts: Saul’s Damascus-road encounter (Acts 9:1-19) is narrated three times in the book (Acts 9, 22, 26) — a deliberate structural signal of its importance, paralleling the prophetic call-narrative genre while exceeding it: Paul is not merely called despite unworthiness but converted from active, violent opposition to the very message he will proclaim. Acts 9:15’s designation of Paul as a “chosen instrument” (skeuos eklogēs) fuses the book’s election-vocabulary with its missionary-commissioning vocabulary.

Forward connections:

• Romans 5:20 — “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,” the theological principle Paul’s own life dramatizes.
• Galatians 1:11-17 — Paul’s own first-person account of the same event, confirming and supplementing Luke’s narrative.
• 1 Timothy 1:12-16 — Paul explicitly presents himself as “the foremost” example of Christ’s patience, “an example to those who would believe,” turning his own conversion into a paradigm for all future converts.

Translation/doctrinal implications: chosen_instrument_vessel (B17, Medium) must retain the mandatory volitional-choice qualifier from the Romans-baseline election_choose entry (never bare xaiv, never hmoov-family vocabulary). the_way/Txoj Kev (B16, Medium) as the early movement’s self-designation is first introduced in this narrative context (Acts 9:2).

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§8. Theme: Righteousness Apart from the Law — Continuity with the Prophets and Romans (Doctrine 8)

Old Testament roots:

• Genesis 15:6 — “Abraham believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” — the OT’s own forensic-imputation template, already the Romans-baseline anchor for justify_reckon_as_righteous.
• Habakkuk 2:4 — “the righteous shall live by his faith,” the direct source-text of Romans 1:17, thematically continuous with Acts 13:38-39’s justification statement.
• Psalm 32:1-2 — “blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven… in whose spirit there is no deceit,” the OT’s own celebration of a righteousness not grounded in flawless performance.
• Isaiah 53:11 — “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, justify many,” the Suffering Servant himself as the agent of others’ justification.

Development in Acts: Paul’s synagogue sermon at Antioch (Acts 13:16-41) climaxes precisely at this doctrine: “by him everyone who believes is justified from everything from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38-39). This is Acts’ single clearest anchor-verse for Doctrine 8, deploying the identical forensic-accounting logic already established for Genesis 15:6 and Habakkuk 2:4, now explicitly applied in antithesis to the Law’s inability to justify. The tension this creates alongside Paul’s own continued participation in Jewish ceremonial practice (e.g., the Nazirite-style vow of Acts 21:23-26) requires careful teaching: voluntary cultural/ceremonial accommodation is not doctrinal compromise on the Law’s inability to justify.

Forward connections:

• Romans 3:21-26; Romans 4:1-8 — the fullest doctrinal exposition of exactly the claim Acts 13:38-39 states in summary form.
• Galatians 2:16 — “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ,” Paul’s own later, sharper restatement of the Acts 13 sermon’s claim.
• Galatians 3:6-14 — Abraham (Genesis 15:6) as the paradigm case, explicitly connecting Law, promise, and faith.
• Philippians 3:9 — Paul’s personal testimony of exchanging “a righteousness of my own that comes from the law” for “the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

Translation/doctrinal implications: This theme requires the Romans-baseline justify_reckon_as_righteous (ua kom ncaj ncees / raug suav tias ncaj ncees) and law_mosaic_divine (Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes)) entries used together in explicit antithesis, exactly as documented in analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md Ch.13 — Critical, inheriting both source entries’ risk tiers and mandatory human theologian review.

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§9. Theme: To the Ends of the Earth — The Great Commission Fulfilled (Doctrine 9)

Old Testament roots:

• Psalm 22:27; Psalm 67; Psalm 96:3 — the nations summoned to worship Israel’s God.
• Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-3 — the eschatological vision of all nations streaming to God’s mountain.
• Isaiah 49:6; Isaiah 66:18-21 — the Servant as light to the nations; the nations themselves becoming missionaries who bring scattered Israelites home and are gathered to see God’s glory.
• Habakkuk 2:14 — “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.”
• Daniel 7:13-14 — the Son of Man given a kingdom over “all peoples, nations, and languages,” the ultimate horizon toward which the Great Commission moves.

Development in Acts: The book is bookended by this theme with striking deliberateness: it opens with the risen Christ’s commissioning promise, “you will be my witnesses… to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8), and closes with Paul under house arrest in Rome, “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:30-31) — the gospel having reached Rome, “the end of the earth” as the Roman world then understood it, and continuing unhindered even from a place of captivity. Every intervening chapter advances this trajectory geographically (Jerusalem → Samaria → Antioch → Asia Minor → Greece → Rome) and theologically (Jew → Samaritan → God-fearer → Gentile → Rome’s own imperial center).

Forward connections:

• Matthew 28:18-20 — the Great Commission’s original formulation, which Acts narrates being carried out in real historical time.
• Romans 15:19-24 — Paul’s own retrospective account of his missionary itinerary and forward-looking plan to reach Spain, the literal continuation of the “ends of the earth” trajectory beyond Acts’ own narrated ending.
• Revelation 5:9; Revelation 7:9 — the consummated harvest: a redeemed multitude “from every tribe and language and people and nation,” the final fulfillment of every OT nations-theme cited above.
• Revelation 21:24-26 — the nations bringing their glory and honor into the New Jerusalem, the eschatological completion of Isaiah 60’s and Micah 4’s visions.

Translation/doctrinal implications: ends_of_the_earth (B36, Low) and proclaiming_without_hindrance (B37, Low-Medium) form the deliberate bookend-pair anchoring this theme; both reuse kingdom_of_god/lub Nceeg Vaj ntawm Vajtswv and nations_gentiles/lwm Haiv Neeg from the Romans baseline without modification.

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§10. Synthesis: How the Nine Themes Interlock

The nine doctrines are not nine separate strands but a single narrative-theological arc: Spirit-empowerment (§1) produces bold witness under persecution (§6), which carries the gospel across the Jew-Gentile boundary (§2) through the doorway of repentance and baptism (§3), forming a Spirit-shaped community (§4) whose message is authenticated by apostolic signs contesting counterfeit power (§5). This entire movement is embodied paradigmatically in Paul’s own conversion from persecutor to proclaimer (§7), whose theological articulation of the gospel supplies the doctrine that undergirds the whole mission — justification by faith apart from the Law (§8) — as the message travels, stage by stage, to the ends of the earth (§9), fulfilling the Abrahamic promise (Genesis 12:3), the prophetic hope (Isaiah 49:6), and anticipating the consummated multitude of Revelation 7:9. Acts is thus the narrative hinge connecting the Gospels’ account of what Christ did to the Epistles’ account (especially Romans) of what it means — and every theme mapped above must be translated in a way that preserves, rather than severs, that connection.

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§11. Governing Note

This theme map must be read together with analysis/09_cross_reference_analysis.md’s verse-level citations and rendering-consistency rules, and with the Romans-baseline doctrine risk registry’s routing rules. No rendering proposed or implied in this document overrides any fixed TM entry; where this document’s canonical connections touch a Critical or High risk term, the term’s existing mandatory qualifier and teaching-note requirements remain fully in force.