Luke Hmong Language Package — Executive Summary

Why it matters: Luke is the largest, most narrative-dense book yet processed in this pipeline, and it detonates more collision points with Hmong traditional religion — animism, ancestor veneration, shamanism (txiv neeb), and fate (hmoov) — than the Romans baseline did, concentrated in exorcism narratives, the bodily resurrection, ancestral funeral/filial-duty obligations, and communal-meal ritual logic. Every one of the curriculum’s eight assigned doctrines is Critical or High risk. Getting this package wrong risks either inverting core doctrine (e.g., presenting Jesus’ exorcisms as “a stronger shaman”) or triggering real, un-mitigated pastoral harm for Hmong converts (e.g., softening the cost of discipleship around funeral rites).

By the numbers:

• 8 of 8 assigned doctrines require mandatory human theologian review before publication — 4 Critical (Holy Spirit’s Work; Good News to the Poor; Repentance and Forgiveness; Kingdom Present and Future) and 4 High (Jesus as Savior for All Nations; Prayer and Dependence; Cost and Joy of Discipleship; Compassion and Table Fellowship). There is no Medium- or Low-risk doctrine in this curriculum.
• 103 total terms in the Luke Translation Memory (42 inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline + 61 new terms surfaced across full-book coverage).
• 14 Critical-risk terms and 22 High-risk terms (36 total, ~35% of the glossary) require mandatory human theologian review — up from the Romans baseline’s smaller Critical/High concentration, reflecting Luke’s narrative genre surfacing more concrete collision scenarios (specific exorcisms, a specific afterlife parable, a specific resurrection appearance) than Romans’ more abstract doctrinal argumentation did.
• 1 term remains formally UNRESOLVED: the Beatitudes’ “blessed” (makarios, Luke 6:20-23), flagged [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] pending theologian + native-speaker adjudication — no other item in either the Romans or Luke Language Packages has been left without at least a provisional locked rendering.

Key findings:

1. The dab (spirit) family is now the single most overloaded and highest-stakes lexical neighborhood in the combined Romans+Luke packages: one root vocabulary must carry six distinct, non-interchangeable referents (Holy Spirit, angels, the devil, demons, the living human spirit, and a negated “ghost” sense at 24:37-39) without ever collapsing into Hmong animism’s undifferentiated spirit-negotiation framework.
2. Luke 24:36-43 (Jesus disproving the disciples’ fear that they see a ghost by showing flesh and bones) is the single highest-priority doctrinal collision point identified across all Phase 1 analysis documents — it directly and explicitly confronts the belief-complex underlying Hmong funeral ritual (guiding a departed soul to the ancestors).
3. The discipleship-cost material (Luke 9:57-62; 12:51-53; 14:25-33) is not a comprehension gap but a live, real-world pastoral collision: genuine Hmong converts do experience family rupture over refusing ancestor-veneration participation, and this must be taught honestly, not softened.
4. Luke fuses two doctrines (Good News to the Poor; Repentance and Forgiveness) into a single Greek word (aphesis) at the programmatic core passage (4:18), requiring active cross-referencing between two necessarily distinct Hmong strings (kev tso dawb / kev zam txim) so the integrative theology is not lost.
5. hwjchim (power) is now stretched across four distinct referents (divine power, hostile/counterfeit power, delegated civil power, and an embedded morpheme inside the humility idiom kev txo hwjchim) — the most overloaded single morpheme in either package.

Risks:

• Highest severity, unresolved: The Beatitudes’ “blessed” term has no safe native rendering yet; any premature use of koob hmoov would invert Jesus’ fortune-logic-subverting rhetoric at one of the Gospel’s most quoted passages.
• Highest frequency, highest stakes: Any lapse in the mandatory Vaj prefix on Vaj Ntsuj Plig at Luke 1:35 (virgin conception) or 12:10 (unforgivable sin) would produce a catastrophic doctrinal error at two of the book’s most theologically load-bearing verses.
• Highest cultural-collision density: The demon/exorcism vocabulary (dab/dab phem/dab qias) appears across eight chapters using the exact live vocabulary of shamanic spirit-negotiation practice; inconsistent “authoritative, non-negotiated” framing across lessons would let Jesus’ exorcisms be silently assimilated into the txiv neeb ritual framework.
• Highest pastoral-consequence risk: Discipleship-cost and household-division texts are not abstract; mistranslation or minimization has direct real-world consequences for Hmong converts navigating funeral and ancestor-ritual obligations.

Opportunities:

• Several Lukan images bridge unusually well into Hmong culture and should be leveraged pedagogically: debt-redemption custom (Jubilee/kev txhiv), clan-adoption/inheritance practice (qub txeeg qub teg), agricultural imagery (mustard seed, leaven, vineyard), and rice-harvest-adjacent firstfruits concepts.
• Jewish teshuvah and Islamic tawbah, and both traditions’ unmediated prayer models, offer respectful, non-doctrinally-equivalent comparative bridges useful for teaching repentance and prayer without importing Hmong ritual-negotiation assumptions.
• The Good Samaritan and Prodigal Son narratives, already emotionally resonant cross-culturally, are strong anchor texts for teaching the “for all nations” and “compassion and forgiveness” doctrines once the tus nyob ze (neighbor) and khuv leej tu siab (visceral compassion) terms are properly fenced.

Recommended actions:

1. Route the Beatitudes “blessed” term to formal theologian + native-speaker review as the top-priority open item before any Luke 6 content is generated.
2. Commission the recommended “spirit-world map” (six-category diagram) and “hwjchim disambiguation appendix” as standing Phase 2 reference assets before generating any exorcism, temptation, or civil-authority content.
3. Apply zero-exception automated string-validation for the Vaj prefix at Luke 1:35 and 12:10 specifically, in addition to standard style-guide enforcement.
4. Require explicit theologian sign-off on any lesson unit covering Luke 24:36-43, 9:57-62, 12:51-53, or 16:19-31 before publication, given their status as the book’s most acute, real-world collision points.
5. Carry the two Phase 1 vocabulary gaps closed in this cycle — cov nplua nuj (the rich, antithesis to the poor) and baptism_of_repentance_john (distinguishing John’s preparatory rite from full Christian baptism) — into Phase 2 as newly-locked TM entries.
6. Proceed to Phase 2 content generation for all other terms and doctrines under the enforcement rules in analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md, with mandatory human theologian review gating all Critical/High-tier output.