Leviticus — Phase 1 Step 8: Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package)

0. Purpose and Scope

This document performs the linguistic gap analysis mandated by PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Hmong Leviticus Language Package. It works from the terms already surfaced in analysis/08_core_glossary.md and formally registered in assets/bible_term_registry.json, and from every term inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline assets/translation_memory.json. It does not propose new renderings; renderings remain as already logged (pending Phase 2 TM-revision review). Its task is diagnostic: to (1) map each of the eight assigned doctrines against the actual Hmong lexical resources available, naming weaknesses precisely; (2) distinguish missing vocabulary (no native Hmong lexical resource exists at all) from crowded semantic neighborhoods (a native Hmong word/root already carries a competing, doctrinally dangerous meaning and must be lexically “fenced”); (3) make explicit, reasoned transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions for the book’s hardest proper nouns and technical terms; and (4) rank the letter’s highest-risk ambiguities so Phase 2 generation and human-theologian review can be prioritized correctly.

Coverage is full-book: every chapter of Leviticus (1-27) has been considered; chapters contributing no new gap beyond what is already logged are noted as reviewed, no new gap in §5.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the eight assigned doctrines: the Hmong terms currently available (drawing on both the Romans-baseline TM and the new Leviticus registry), their specific weaknesses, and the recommended mitigation strategy carried forward into Phase 2.

1.1 The Sacrificial System and Atonement

Element	Detail
Available terms	khoom fij kub tag nrho (burnt offering), khoom fij qoob loo (grain offering), khoom fij kev thaj yeeb (peace offering), khoom fij theej txhoj kev txhaum (sin offering), khoom fij them nqi kev txhaum (guilt offering), ua kevcai theej txhoj (rau) (atone), ntshav (blood), all built on the general sacrificial root fij
Weakness	Hmong traditional religion possesses a live, structurally near-identical domain: fij dab — burning/offering pigs, chickens, or paper money to ancestors and household/nature spirits to remove misfortune, sickness, or spirit-anger. Every one of the offering-type terms above shares the fij root with this domain. Because the outward form (an animal or item, offered by fire, to secure divine favor/removal of harm) is genuinely similar, the risk is not comprehension but assimilation: hearers may correctly understand the ritual mechanics and incorrectly import the shamanic transactional logic (payment to a capricious power) wholesale.
Recommended strategy	(a) Never leave any fij-rooted term unqualified — each offering-type term already carries its distinguishing suffix (kub tag nrho, theej txhoj kev txhaum, etc.) and this must never be abbreviated to bare fij in generated content; (b) every lesson introducing an offering type must carry an explicit contrast clause: God Himself initiates and specifies this offering (not a human-managed appeasement of a capricious spirit); (c) preserve the theej txhoj root-family (khoom fij theej txhoj kev txhaum, ua kevcai theej txhoj, lub Npoo Kub Theej Txhoj, and the baseline’s qhov theej txhoj kev txhaum) as a single doctrinally coherent cluster — this is a deliberate strength (it visibly threads Leviticus 16 to Romans 3:25) and must not be fragmented in Phase 2 drafting for stylistic variety.

1.2 The Holiness of God and the Call to Be Holy

Element	Detail
Available terms	dawb huv (holy, adj.), txoj kev dawb huv (holiness, noun), lub Chaw Dawb Huv (Tshaj Plaws) (Most/Holy of Holies)
Weakness	dawb huv is already doing three jobs in the combined Romans+Leviticus package: (1) the baseline’s sanctification (a process — progressive Spirit-wrought transformation, Romans 6); (2) this package’s holy_qadosh (an attribute — God’s own essential nature, and Israel’s identity-defining status, Lev 11, 19-22); (3) dawb huv also survives in Hmong folk usage as ritual/bodily purity from spirit-contamination. Three distinct senses on one lexical item is the single largest structural ambiguity risk in the combined curriculum.
Recommended strategy	Maintain a written disambiguation rule (not a lexical fix, since no alternate word exists without breaking continuity with the Romans baseline): dawb huv used of God’s nature or Israel’s covenant identity (Lev 11:44-45, 19:2, 20:26) is glossed as attribute/status; dawb huv used of a process (the baseline’s kev raug ua kom dawb huv, sanctification) is glossed as ongoing transformation. Every first occurrence within a lesson module must carry the applicable gloss. Teaching content must state plainly that God’s holiness precedes and grounds Israel’s call to holiness (19:2’s “for I … am holy” ordering), preventing a self-generated-purity reading.

1.3 The Priesthood and Mediation

Element	Detail
Available terms	tus povthawj (priest), tus Tuam Pov Thawj (high priest), roj pleev tsa (anointing oil), tus uas raug pleev roj thiab muab cais ua Povthawj (anointed and consecrated)
Weakness	The only functionally comparable religious-mediator role in the Hmong lexicon is the txiv neeb (shaman), who negotiates directly with spirits on a client’s behalf, often through trance, spirit-calling, or animal sacrifice performed at the shaman’s own ritual discretion. Anointing with oil (pleev roj) is likewise a live shamanic/folk-blessing practice (empowering an object or person with ritual potency). Without active fencing, “priest” and “anointing” will be heard as culturally continuous with, rather than categorically distinct from, shamanic mediation.
Recommended strategy	Every introduction of tus povthawj/tus Tuam Pov Thawj must state explicitly: (a) hereditary, rule-governed, Torah-defined office, not personal spiritual gift or trance-derived authority; (b) mediates by Yahweh’s own prescribed procedure, not by negotiating with or placating a spirit; (c) is fulfilled/superseded by Christ’s superior priesthood (typological forward-note, even though Hebrews sits outside this curriculum’s core text, is appropriate as a cross-reference). Anointing (roj pleev tsa) must always be paired with the qualifying clause that this is God’s institution for lawful office, never a transferable ritual-power technique available to any practitioner.

1.4 Clean and Unclean

Element	Detail
Available terms	huv (clean), qias (unclean), kev qias (uncleanness, abstract)
Weakness	This is the single most consequential lexical decision in the entire package (already flagged Critical in the prior registry). Hmong traditional religion has an extensive, structurally parallel purity/pollution system: contact with death and corpses, certain forbidden animals, postpartum confinement (nyob dawm), menstrual restriction, and defilement by broken taboo — all remedied through shamanic cleansing ritual (ua neeb kho, ritual bathing, incense). The semantic grid (permitted/forbidden bodily and ritual states, remediable by prescribed action) maps almost one-to-one onto Leviticus 11-15, 17, 20, 22. This is not a comprehension gap; it is a genuine structural collision risk that could cause Hmong Christians to quietly re-adopt or retain shamanic purity practice under a relabeled Christian vocabulary, or conversely to dismiss Leviticus’s purity laws as “the same as” discredited folk superstition rather than as divinely instituted, typologically purposeful law.
Recommended strategy	Mandatory catechetical framing (modeled on the baseline’s hilastērion/baptism contrast pattern) at every occurrence-cluster: (1) Levitical tahor/tamei is a temporary, pedagogical, divinely instituted boundary-marker (Gal 3:24-25 principle), not a permanent parallel purity system Christians must maintain; (2) it is explicitly not a claim about moral guilt (a non-sinful event — childbirth, a bodily discharge — can render one tamei); (3) it is explicitly not remediable by shamanic ritual technique, but by the specific, time-bound procedures God prescribes; (4) its terminus is Christ (Mark 7:19; Acts 10:9-16), a point that must be taught prospectively even within an OT-book curriculum so hearers are not left assuming the system is still operative. This is flagged for mandatory human theologian review before any Phase 2 content generation touching chapters 11-15, 17, 20, or 22 proceeds.

1.5 The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)

Element	Detail
Available terms	Hnub Theej Txhoj Kev Txhaum (Day of Atonement), lub Npoo Kub Theej Txhoj (mercy seat), daim ntaub thaiv (veil), ib xyoos ib zaug (once a year)
Weakness	The vocabulary itself is well-fenced (built on the coherent theej txhoj root-family, §1.1). The remaining risk is not lexical but structural/theological: the annual repetition (ib xyoos ib zaug) is doctrinally dangerous if presented without its NT resolution, because it risks teaching (by omission) that atonement is inherently repeatable — which then re-primes exactly the shamanic-appeasement assumption (recurring ritual needed to manage an ongoing problem) that the rest of the package works to prevent.
Recommended strategy	ib xyoos ib zaug must never appear in generated content without an explicit adjacent clause contrasting it with Christ’s ib zaug xwb (once for all) sacrifice — this pairing is treated as a single atomic teaching unit, structurally identical to the mandatory-qualifier-pair convention already established for hwjchim/Vajtswv hwjchim in the Romans baseline.

1.6 The Scapegoat and Substitution

Element	Detail
Available terms	Axaxes (Azazel, pending phonological confirmation), nqa (lawv) tej kev txhaum mus (bear iniquity), muab tso mus (sent away), tsa (ob) txhais tes rau saum (taubhau) (laying on of hands)
Weakness	This is the doctrine with the highest concentration of distinct, unrelated collision risks in the package: (1) Azazel — an actual named wilderness-being to whom sin is dispatched — is structurally almost identical to Hmong rites of loading sickness/misfortune onto a substitute animal and driving it away to a spirit-inhabited place (a practice with named ritual precedent in Hmong shamanism); (2) laying on of hands is the literal gesture-pattern of Hmong illness-transfer ritual; (3) “bear iniquity” risks a merely psychological (“get rid of guilt feelings”) reading if not taught as judicial/penal. No single fencing strategy covers all three; each requires its own explicit contrast-teaching.
Recommended strategy	(a) Azazel: mandatory dual-clause teaching note — Scripture nowhere affirms Azazel’s ontological reality or power, and the ritual’s efficacy rests entirely on God’s own institution and its typological fulfillment in Christ, never on a transaction with a wilderness being; this must accompany every occurrence, not just a first-use footnote, given the severity of the collision. (b) Laying on of hands: taught as God’s own instituted symbol of substitutionary identification fulfilled in Christ, explicitly not validated as a generally available guilt-transfer ritual technology usable outside God’s specific institution. (c) Bear iniquity: taught with explicit judicial/penal vocabulary (guilt, penalty, transfer of legal liability), cross-referenced to Isaiah 53 and 1 Peter 2:24, resisting a merely emotional-relief framing.

1.7 Sabbath and Sacred Time

Element	Detail
Available terms	Hnub Xanpataug (Hnub So) (Sabbath, pending confirmation), Xyoo So (Sabbath year), Xyoo Yubili (Xyoo Tso Kom Rov Qab) (Jubilee), lub caij uas Vajtswv teem tseg (appointed times)
Weakness	This is primarily a comprehension gap, not a collision: Hmong traditional time-reckoning is agricultural/lunar (planting and harvest cycles, New Year) and ancestral-ritual (death anniversaries, funeral timing) rather than organized around a sacred weekly rest-day independent of agricultural necessity. There is no competing traditional-religion claim over “Sabbath” that would invert the doctrine — the risk is that the concept of time itself being declared holy by God (rather than by agricultural convenience or ancestral custom) may simply fail to register as significant without explicit unpacking.
Recommended strategy	Teach Sabbath explicitly as creation-rooted (Gen 2:2-3 cross-reference) rather than merely calendar-observant; use the Jubilee’s strong positive resonance with Hmong debt/land-redemption custom as the primary teaching bridge into the whole sacred-time cluster, then extend outward to the harder-to-motivate weekly Sabbath and sabbatical year. Hnub Xanpataug requires native-speaker phonological confirmation (§3) before being treated as locked; until then, content should default to the descriptive gloss Hnub So (rest day) alongside it.

1.8 Love of Neighbor (Leviticus 19:18)

Element	Detail
Available terms	kev hlub (love, TM-inherited), Koj yuav tsum hlub koj tus kwvtij zej zog ib yam li koj hlub koj tus kheej (love your neighbor as yourself)
Weakness	Lexically low-risk (no traditional-religion collision), but there is a genuine scope-boundary gap: the Hebrew rea’ (“neighbor/companion”) in its immediate ch.19 context denotes a fellow covenant-Israelite, and the rendering tus kwvtij zej zog (clan/village companion) carries its own natural Hmong scope-limiting connotation — Hmong social ethics strongly distinguishes obligations owed to clan/lineage members from obligations owed to outsiders. Leaving this rendering untaught risks a narrower application than even the chapter itself intends, since 19:34 explicitly extends the same command to the ger (sojourner/foreigner).
Recommended strategy	Every lesson unit on 19:18 must be paired with 19:34 in the same teaching unit, making the chapter’s own scope-expansion explicit before any NT extension (Good Samaritan, Rom 13:8-10) is introduced; tus kwvtij zej zog should be explicitly glossed as intentionally broad (“one’s fellow person in community”), resisting the narrower clan-bound reading Hmong social custom would otherwise supply by default.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no native Hmong lexical resource; comprehension gap only, resolved by periphrasis/loanword, not by fencing)

These items have no competing traditional-religion claim — the difficulty is purely that the referent is culturally or materially unfamiliar, not that an existing word already carries a dangerous alternate meaning.

Item	Nature of the gap	Resolution strategy
Olive/frankincense/cedar/hyssop and other Levantine flora (levonah, etz erez, ezov)	No native Hmong lexical item; plants unfamiliar to highland Southeast Asian agroecology	Retain periphrastic descriptive rendering (roj ntoos tsw qab, ntoo cedar, tsuas ntsuab hyssop) with an illustrative note; no doctrinal fencing needed, comprehension note only
Most Holy Place / tabernacle architecture (ohel mo'ed, parochet, qodesh haqqodashim)	No native nomadic-shrine or curtained-sanctuary analogue in Hmong material culture	Retain descriptive compound renderings already logged (Tsev Ntaub Sib Ntsib, daim ntaub thaiv, lub Chaw Dawb Huv Tshaj Plaws); supply a diagram/illustrative note in curriculum materials rather than seeking a “closer” native term that does not exist
Tsara’at as a broader category than modern leprosy	The existing word mob ruas is narrower than the Hebrew referent (skin, fabric, and wall conditions)	Explicit teaching-note expansion of the word’s scope beyond its everyday medical meaning; not a collision, a definitional-range gap
Casting lots as God’s determination-mechanism (goral)	No native Hmong sacred-lot-casting practice functionally identical to this; nearest cultural analogue (divination, ntaus khawv koob-adjacent practices) is explicitly a fate/spirit-consultation practice and must be avoided as a model, not adopted as a bridge	Render descriptively (ntaus ntawv rho) and explicitly deny any link to impersonal fate (hmoov, already permanently forbidden in the Romans baseline for election_choose); this item sits at the boundary between “missing vocabulary” and “crowded neighborhood” — logged here because the positive resolution is a genuine gap-fill, but the negative fencing duty (§2.2 below) still applies
Sabbath as a creation-rooted (not merely agricultural-calendar) rest-day	No independent Hmong concept of a sacred day of rest untethered from agricultural or funerary necessity	Periphrastic teaching bridge via creation account cross-reference (Gen 2:2-3); comprehension gap, not collision

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Active Fencing

These are Hmong words/roots that already carry a specific, live, competing meaning in traditional religion, such that using the word correctly still risks the wrong association unless actively fenced in every occurrence.

Hmong root	Doctrinally required sense(s) in this package	Competing traditional-religion sense	Fencing requirement
fij (sacrifice/offer)	Burnt/grain/peace/sin/guilt offerings; living sacrifice (baseline); Christ’s atonement	fij dab — appeasement offerings to ancestors/spirits to remove misfortune	Never bare; always the full compound term with its distinguishing qualifier (§1.1)
dawb huv (holy/pure)	God’s attribute; Israel’s holiness-identity; sanctification-process (baseline)	ritual/bodily purity from spirit-contamination in folk practice	Explicit attribute-vs-process disambiguation note at first occurrence per lesson module (§1.2)
huv / qias (clean/unclean)	Ceremonial permissibility grid, Lev 11-15, 17, 20, 22	Structurally parallel Hmong ritual-pollution/cleansing grid	Mandatory catechetical framing, Critical-tier, human theologian review before generation (§1.4)
pleev roj (anoint)	Priestly/royal/Messianic consecration	Shamanic ritual empowerment of persons/objects via oil, water, or other substances	Always paired with “God’s institution for lawful office,” never presented as transferable ritual power (§1.3)
tsa (ob) txhais tes rau saum (lay hands on)	Sacrificial identification; ordination	Illness/misfortune-transfer gesture in shamanic healing ritual	Always taught as God’s own instituted, non-repeatable-outside-this-system symbol, never validated as generic technique (§1.6)
hwjchim (power) [baseline-inherited]	God’s power; delegated civil authority	Shaman’s (txiv neeb) ritual power	Baseline qualifier rule (Vajtswv hwjchim) continues to apply wherever this term recurs in Levitical contexts (e.g., descriptions of God’s power at Sinai/the sanctuary)
ntsuj plig / Vaj Ntsuj Plig [baseline-inherited]	Human spirit vs. Holy Spirit	Animistic multi-soul concept	Baseline “Vaj”-prefix rule continues to apply; Leviticus additionally introduces nephesh (txoj sia), which must be kept distinct from both ntsuj plig senses (§ below)
txoj sia (life, for nephesh)	Animal life-force in blood (17:11)	Risk of collapsing into the animistic idea that blood houses a soul/spirit that can be ritually managed	Must never be rendered ntsuj plig; kept as txoj sia and taught as “life,” not “soul” in the multi-soul sense, to prevent import of animistic blood-soul theology
dab mlom / idolatry vocabulary [baseline-inherited]	Idols; Molek	Actual objects of ongoing or historical Hmong-adjacent regional folk veneration	No new fencing needed beyond baseline; Molek (§3) adds a proper-noun transliteration decision on top of the existing correct rendering
ntaus ntawv rho (cast lots)	God’s own determined outcome (Lev 16:8)	Divinatory/fate-consultation practices	Explicit denial of link to hmoov (fate); reinforce that lots here execute a specific, already-determined divine will, not impersonal chance (cross-referenced to §2.1 above)

Governing principle: every item in this table represents a case where the correct translation choice was already made in the prior registry — the gap being logged here is not lexical but procedural: Phase 2 generation must never allow these words to appear without their fencing clause, since the underlying Hmong word retains its competing sense in the hearer’s mental lexicon regardless of context.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Azazel (עֲזָאזֵל)	Transliterate (Axaxes) + mandatory dual-clause teaching note at every occurrence	A paraphrase risks either (a) explaining away the name entirely, losing the text’s own decision to leave the referent genuinely ambiguous, or (b) supplying an interpretive gloss (e.g., “the wilderness demon”) that overstates certainty about a disputed textual referent. Transliteration preserves the ambiguity while the mandatory teaching note supplies the necessary theological guardrail. Requires native-speaker phonological confirmation before TM lock.
Molek (מֹלֶך)	Transliterate (Molej, pending confirmation)	Molek is a specific historical deity name, not a common noun; existing Hmong Bible tradition transliterates rather than translates proper names of foreign deities (cf. Yexus Khetos, Povlauj). Paraphrasing as “a false god” would lose the text’s specific historical referent and its connection to the specific, named atrocity (child sacrifice) being condemned.
Shabbat (שַׁבָּת)	Transliterate + gloss (Hnub Xanpataug (Hnub So))	A pure paraphrase (Hnub So, “rest day”) alone would be comprehensible but would sever the term from its proper-noun, calendar-institution status (parallel to how “Sabbath” functions as more than “a day of rest” in English); a pure transliteration alone risks being opaque on first encounter. The dual form balances both needs pending final phonological confirmation.
Yovel / Jubilee (יוֹבֵל)	Paraphrase + transliteration (Xyoo Yubili (Xyoo Tso Kom Rov Qab))	Established loanword pattern already exists in broader Christian usage (“Yubili”); paired with the descriptive gloss (“year of release/return”) so the institution’s function is not lost behind an opaque loanword alone.
Kapporet / mercy seat (כַּפֹּרֶת)	Paraphrase (lub Npoo Kub Theej Txhoj), NOT transliteration	Unlike Azazel/Molek (proper nouns with no semantic content to translate), kapporet is a common noun describing a specific object’s function (“the covering/atoning place”); a transliterated loanword would sever the deliberate lexical bridge to the baseline’s qhov theej txhoj kev txhaum (hilastērion) that gives this package its doctrinal coherence with Romans 3:25. Paraphrase preserves the theologically load-bearing root-family.
Kohen / Kohen Hagadol (priest / high priest)	Paraphrase (tus povthawj / tus Tuam Pov Thawj), NOT transliteration	An existing, functioning Hmong Christian vocabulary for “priest” already exists and is intelligible; transliteration would produce an opaque term requiring its own gloss for no compensating doctrinal gain.
Ohel mo’ed (tent of meeting)	Paraphrase (Tsev Ntaub Sib Ntsib)	Descriptive compound is fully transparent (“cloth-house of meeting”) and requires no loanword; no proper-noun status to preserve.
Individual offering names (olah, minchah, shelamim, chattat, asham)	Paraphrase, NOT transliteration, in the primary translation text; Hebrew transliteration retained only in teaching-note citations (per §7 citation convention below)	These are common nouns naming ritual categories, not proper nouns; paraphrase renderings already transparently distinguish the categories from one another (burnt/grain/peace/sin/guilt), which a set of five opaque Hebrew loanwords would not achieve for a general audience. Hebrew transliteration is preserved only in the technical teaching-note citation format (Lus Henplais (Hebrew): [transliteration] — Hmong: [TM rendering]), mirroring the baseline’s existing Greek-citation convention.
Azazel-adjacent term “scapegoat” (English convention, not itself in the Hebrew text)	Do not transliterate or introduce as a fixed Hmong term; use only the descriptive phrase already logged (tus tshis uas raug xa mus rau Axaxes, built from muab tso mus + Axaxes)	“Scapegoat” is an English interpretive tradition-label, not a Hebrew lexical item requiring its own rendering decision; introducing a separate fixed Hmong “scapegoat” term risks creating an unnecessary second vocabulary track alongside the Azazel/goat vocabulary already established.

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4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision specificity × density of occurrence in the core passage, Lev 16:1-34) and cross-referenced to the relevant doctrine(s) and registry entries.

1. huv / qias / kev qias (clean/unclean/uncleanness) — Doctrine: Clean and Unclean. The single highest-risk item in the package: a structurally near-complete parallel purity/pollution grid already exists in Hmong traditional religion, spans the largest number of chapters (11-15, 17, 20, 22), and if mishandled could cause either syncretistic retention of shamanic purity practice or wholesale dismissal of Leviticus’s purity theology as discredited superstition. Mandatory human theologian review, no automated-review bypass.

2. Azazel and the scapegoat rite (16:8, 10, 20-22, 26) — Doctrine: The Scapegoat and Substitution / Day of Atonement. Occurs at the exact center of the core passage; the closest living cultural analogue in Hmong practice is a named shamanic illness-transfer-to-a-spirit rite, making this the highest-risk single verse cluster in the core passage specifically. Requires the dual-clause teaching note at every occurrence, not merely a first-use footnote.

3. dawb huv three-way conceptual overlap (attribute / process / folk-purity) — Doctrine: The Holiness of God. Highest-frequency term in the combined Romans+Leviticus corpus carrying a doctrinally significant ambiguity; because it is inherited from the Romans baseline as sanctification and newly extended here as holy_qadosh, any drift in disambiguation discipline propagates across the entire curriculum, not just this book.

4. ua kevcai theej txhoj / khoom fij theej txhoj kev txhaum / lub Npoo Kub Theej Txhoj (atonement root-family) vs. shamanic appeasement — Doctrine: The Sacrificial System and Atonement / Day of Atonement. The doctrinal payoff of this package (direct lexical bridge to Romans 3:25) depends entirely on this root-family being taught as God’s self-initiated action, not a human-to-spirit transaction; the risk is amplified precisely because the Levitical sacrificial procedure genuinely resembles shamanic appeasement procedure in outward form.

5. Laying on of hands (tsa (ob) txhais tes rau saum (taubhau)) — Doctrine: The Sacrificial System / Scapegoat and Substitution. Identical physical gesture to a known Hmong illness/misfortune-transfer healing technique; occurs repeatedly across the sacrificial and ordination material (chs. 1, 3, 4, 8, 16), compounding the risk through repetition.

6. tus povthawj / tus Tuam Pov Thawj vs. txiv neeb (priest vs. shaman) — Doctrine: The Priesthood and Mediation. Structural risk present across the entire book (priesthood is pervasive); heightened specifically at ch.16 where the high priest’s sole, fatal-stakes access to the Most Holy Place could otherwise be heard as an especially powerful shaman’s especially dangerous spirit-world journey.

7. ib xyoos ib zaug (once a year) left unpaired with Christ’s “once for all” — Doctrine: Day of Atonement. Risk is one of omission rather than mistranslation: the term itself is accurate, but if the contrastive pairing is dropped in any single generated unit, the gospel’s finished atonement is silently re-primed toward a repeatable-ritual framework.

8. nephesh/txoj sia vs. ntsuj plig (animal life-force vs. human/divine spirit) — Doctrine: Sacrificial System (blood theology, 17:11). Lower occurrence-density than items above but high doctrinal stakes if confused, since collapsing “life” into “soul” in the animistic multi-soul sense would import a foreign metaphysic into the Bible’s own blood-atonement logic.

9. roj pleev tsa (anointing oil) vs. shamanic ritual empowerment — Doctrine: Priesthood and Mediation / Holiness. Moderate occurrence (chs. 8, 16, 21) but a genuinely live folk-ritual analogue (oil/water blessing for spiritual potency) that could otherwise transfer uncritically.

10. ntaus ntawv rho (casting lots) vs. hmoov/fate-divination — Doctrine: Day of Atonement / Election echo. Lower risk than the items above (already well-fenced by the baseline’s permanent prohibition on hmoov vocabulary for divine sovereignty), but flagged because casting lots is the one place in ch.16 where the mechanism itself (rather than just the theological concept behind it) has a visible folk-practice analogue.

11. Koj yuav tsum hlub koj tus kwvtij zej zog... (love your neighbor) scope-boundary — Doctrine: Love of Neighbor. Lowest collision risk in this ranked list (no traditional-religion inversion), but flagged because the natural Hmong clan-bound connotation of “kwvtij zej zog” could produce an artificially narrow application if 19:18 is taught in isolation from 19:34’s explicit extension to the sojourner.

12. Hnub Xanpataug / Sabbath phonological form — Doctrine: Sabbath and Sacred Time. Lowest doctrinal risk of the ranked list (pure comprehension/register gap, no collision), but included because it remains formally unresolved pending native-speaker confirmation and appears at a structurally important point in the core passage (16:29-31’s Sabbath-timing instruction for the Day of Atonement).

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5. Full-Book Coverage Confirmation

Every chapter of Leviticus has been reviewed for this gap analysis. Chapters not separately discussed above are logged here as reviewed, no new gap beyond what is captured in the Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix and crowded-neighborhood tables:

• Ch. 1-9 (sacrificial and ordination procedure): fully covered under §1.1, §1.3, §2.2 (fij, laying on of hands, anointing).
• Ch. 10 (Nadab and Abihu, strange fire): covered under the priesthood-teaching-office entry already logged in the registry (lehavdil); no additional gap beyond the dawb huv/holy-vs-common fencing already noted in §1.2 and §2.2.
• Ch. 11-15 (dietary law, childbirth, skin disease, discharge): fully covered under §1.4 and §2.1-2.2 (huv/qias, tsara’at scope-gap, ritual bathing).
• Ch. 16: the core passage; covered throughout §1.1, §1.4, §1.5, §1.6, §2.2, §3, and ranked items 1-2, 4-5, 8, 10 of §4.
• Ch. 17: blood theology fully covered under §2.2 (nephesh/txoj sia); no additional gap.
• Ch. 18, 20: covered under §1.8 (kinship/sexual-holiness euphemism), §3 (Molek transliteration decision); no additional lexical gap beyond what is logged.
• Ch. 19: covered fully under §1.8 (Love of Neighbor) and §1.2 (holiness thesis statement).
• Ch. 21-22: priestly-holiness accountability language reuses the already-fenced dawb huv and qadash root-family; no new gap.
• Ch. 23: covered under §1.7 (appointed times, Sabbath, Jubilee-adjacent calendar); firstfruits reuses the Romans-baseline term with no new gap.
• Ch. 24: lex talionis and blasphemy vocabulary are low/medium comprehension-level items with no traditional-religion collision identified beyond what is logged in the registry; reviewed, no new gap.
• Ch. 25: covered under §1.7 (Sabbath year, Jubilee, kinsman-redeemer) — notably one of the package’s strongest positive cultural bridges (Hmong clan-redemption custom), reviewed and confirmed low-risk.
• Ch. 26: covenant-blessing/curse structure reuses the baseline’s promise/covenant vocabulary with the new berit/vow distinction (§2.2 governing note on lus cog tseg vs. neder); reviewed, no new gap beyond what is logged in the registry.
• Ch. 27: vows and devoted things reuse the qodesh/cherem holiness-vocabulary already fenced in §1.2; reviewed, no new gap.

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6. Governing Note

This gap analysis extends, and does not contradict, analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json. All renderings referenced here remain pending Phase 2 TM-revision review; nothing in this document should be read as pre-authorizing any term as permanent ahead of that formal review, per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §2.4 and §9’s escalation rules. The three items flagged [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] in the prior registry (Axaxes, Molej, Hnub Xanpataug) remain open pending native-speaker phonological confirmation; no Phase 2 content generation should treat their current forms as final.