Executive Summary — Acts 1–28 Language Package (Indonesian)

Why it matters

Acts is the theological hinge connecting the gospel narratives to the doctrine Paul develops in Romans — and it does so through the single most doctrinally collision-prone stretch of vocabulary this pipeline has yet processed for Indonesian. The core passage, Acts 2:1–41 (Pentecost), compresses repentance, baptism, forgiveness, and the gift of the Holy Spirit into one sermon and one command (2:38) — and every one of those four elements has a named, load-bearing Islamic theological counterpart (tawbah, wudhu/ghusl, maghfirah, Ruh al-Qudus). Get this passage wrong, and the curriculum’s theological anchor collapses into a deeds-and-mercy framework the text itself is written to refute.

Key findings

• 30 curriculum doctrines identified, spanning all 28 chapters with no chapter silently omitted (per full-book coverage mandate); 7 rated Critical, 14 High, 7 Medium, 2 Low — identical to doctrine_risk_registry.json’s risk_summary.
• 21 of 30 doctrines require mandatory human theologian review; 7 require native speaker review; only 2 (legal/civic narrative, thanksgiving/fellowship) clear for automated review alone.
• 106 terms tracked in the combined Acts term registry; 56 carry Critical (22) or High (34) doctrinal risk — over half of all tracked vocabulary in this book.
• Acts introduces 7 entirely new Critical-risk terms absent from the Romans baseline: repentance (bertobat/pertobatan), baptism (dibaptis/baptisan), the baptismal name-formula, filled/gift/baptized-with-the-Holy-Spirit compounds, crucifixion as a standalone term, Son of Man, no-other-name exclusivity, and justified-apart-from-the-Law — each requiring dedicated theologian-reviewed notes at every occurrence.
• The Cornelius narrative (Acts 10) and Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) sharpen — rather than merely repeat — the baseline’s Gentile-inclusion and grace doctrines, producing two new Critical entries (saved_through_grace_just_as_they_are, justified_apart_from_law) that state explicitly what Romans leaves to systematic inference.
• Five NEW forbidden substitutions were identified beyond the baseline’s existing list (Nabi Isa, pahala, orang kafir, takdir, syariat, wali): haram (unclean/common food), dirajam (mob stoning), khitan-as-equivalent framing (circumcision controversy), Yehuwa-insertion into OT quotations, and impersonal-force Holy Spirit language — the last two traced to documented Watchtower/New World Translation rendering patterns in circulation.

Risks

• Highest-density risk zone: Acts 2:38 alone fuses four Critical-risk concepts with four distinct, named Islamic doctrinal neighbors — no single word choice resolves this; only sustained teaching-note discipline across every occurrence prevents the verse from being silently re-read through a deeds-and-mercy grid.
• “Bahasa lain” (tongues, 2:4) risks conflation not only with Islam but with a live, internal Indonesian Pentecostal/charismatic debate over “bahasa roh” (glossolalia) — this is a destination-culture-internal Christian risk, not only an interfaith one.
• “Mujizat” (signs and wonders) is lexically identical to the Islamic mu’jizat prophet-authentication doctrine and recurs 12+ times across Acts; cumulative exposure multiplies the collision risk beyond any single occurrence.
• “Jalan” (the Way) sits inside Indonesia’s crowded plural spiritual-path vocabulary (Javanese kejawen, Islam’s As-Sirat al-Mustaqim); careless rendering risks reading the gospel as one path among several.
• Legal/social sensitivity around evangelism: Acts 4:12’s exclusivity claim and Acts 10-15’s Gentile-inclusion doctrine intersect Indonesia’s agama (registered-religion) system and its legal norms on religious propagation — doctrinal content must stay unsoftened while application framing stays witness-oriented, never inducement-oriented.
• Cult/sect contamination risk: Indonesian-language Watchtower/NWT materials and unpublished “Insider Movement” translations circulate with documented renderings (divine-name insertion, impersonal Spirit, softened Bapa/Anak Allah/disalibkan) that must be actively screened against in back-translation review, not merely avoided by default vocabulary choice.

Opportunities

• Acts 2:6-8’s “each in his own language” is itself Scripture’s own warrant for this translation pipeline’s existence — strong homiletical material for framing the whole curriculum to Indonesian audiences.
• Acts 15’s Jerusalem Council gives the clearest possible textual proof-text for “Justification apart from the Law,” letting this curriculum state directly what Romans 3-4 requires readers to infer — a genuine teaching advantage once the sunat/khitan stakes-distinction is taught correctly.
• Paul’s Athens (17:16-31) and Lystra (14:11-18) engagements offer a ready-made, textually grounded model for respectful-but-uncompromising engagement with Indonesia’s animist and syncretistic backgrounds, without needing to invent a new apologetic framework.
• The book’s literary bookend structure (1:8 → 11:17 → 28:31, all sharing the same “hinder” verb root) gives Phase 2 teaching materials a built-in, low-risk, high-value structural payoff once flagged for translators and preachers alike.

Recommended actions

1. Route the entire core passage (Acts 2:1-41) as a single combined theologian review unit in Phase 2, not segment-by-segment, given how tightly repentance, baptism, forgiveness, and the Spirit’s gift interlock within it.
2. Load both the Romans baseline and this curriculum’s Acts-specific translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json together for every Phase 2 segment; never treat the Acts extension as a replacement for the baseline.
3. Add the five new forbidden substitutions (haram, dirajam, khitan-equivalence, Yehuwa-insertion, impersonal-force Spirit) to the Phase 2 automated validation checklist alongside the baseline’s existing six.
4. Escalate every occurrence of the 7 new Critical terms and the 2 sharpened Critical doctrine statements (Acts 2:36; 4:12; 13:38-39; 15:11) to mandatory human theologian review, matching the same fixed cross-document consistency treatment the baseline gives Romans 1:16-17, 8:28, and 10:9-10.
5. Fix the YouVersion citation standard at version_id 61 / book code ACT, identical to the Romans baseline’s TB anchor, so learners moving between curricula encounter one consistent citation target.
6. Carry the cult/sect screening protocol from 05_translation_landscape.md §3 into every Phase 2 back-translation pass, not only into initial translation — this is a detection-and-escalation control, not a one-time word-list exclusion.