Core Glossary
Core Glossary — 3 John (English → Italian)
This glossary consolidates every load-bearing theological term identified in 07_semantic_analysis.md, citing every occurrence across the whole book of 3 John (a single 14-verse chapter). Terms already recorded in the baseline Romans translation_memory.json are reused exactly as established; their baseline risk tier and notes are carried forward without alteration. New terms proper to 3 John are assigned risk tiers using the identical Critical/High/Medium/Low framework, with grounded, Italy-specific reasoning consistent with the baseline’s evidentiary standard.
Legend: 🔁 = reused verbatim from baseline translation_memory.json (no deviation permitted). 🆕 = new term introduced in this curriculum, to be added to translation memory at Phase 2 Step 16 per the Language Package’s term-discovery protocol.
| # | English Term | Greek (transliteration) | Italian Rendering | Doctrine(s) | Risk | Verses | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elder | πρεσβύτερος (presbyteros) | anziano | Church Leadership and Pride | High | 1:1 | 🆕 | Must never render as “presbitero” (a modern Catholic sacramental clerical office/holy order). “Anziano” is the Waldensian/evangelical term for a non-sacramental local congregational leader — correct register, but Catholic-formed readers may still hear a “presbitero” echo. |
| 2 | Beloved | ἀγαπητός (agapētos) | caro / carissimo / amato | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Low-Medium | 1:1, 2, 5, 11 | 🆕 | Repeated vocative address structuring the letter; standard across CEI/Riveduta. |
| 3 | Love | ἀγάπη / ἀγαπάω (agapē / agapaō) | amore / amare | Truth and Christian Fellowship | High | 1:1, 6 | 🆕 | Ordinary Italian “amore” defaults to romantic/erotic love; Catholic liturgical tradition sometimes reserves “carità” for the theological virtue (1 Cor 13). Do not substitute “carità” (imports Tridentine virtue-theology register foreign to this personal letter) but ensure covenantal, non-romantic sense is contextually clear. |
| 4 | Truth | ἀλήθεια (alētheia) | verità | Truth and Christian Fellowship; Commendation of Faithful Witness | Medium | 1:1, 3 (×2), 4, 8, 12 | 🆕 | The letter’s organizing term (6 occurrences). Risk is secular “post-verità” flattening into subjective opinion, not a competing rendering. Render consistently across all occurrences. |
| 5 | Pray / wish | εὔχομαι (euchomai) | pregare / augurare | — | Low | 1:2 | 🆕 | Standard epistolary health-wish formula. |
| 6 | Prosper (lit. “have a good journey”) | εὐοδοῦσθαι (euodousthai) | prosperare | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers (etymological echo) | Low-Medium | 1:2 | 🆕 | Root sense (“good journey”) quietly anticipates the hospitality theme of vv. 5–8; wordplay likely lost in translation, flag for teaching notes only. |
| 7 | Be in health | ὑγιαίνειν (hygiainein) | godere di buona salute | — | Low | 1:2 | 🆕 | Purely physical; resist metaphorical over-reading (“sound doctrine” sense not in view here). |
| 8 | Soul | ψυχή (psychē) | anima | — | Low-Medium | 1:2 | 🆕 | Standard; minor risk of importing Greek body/soul dualism absent from the text’s simple sense. |
| 9 | Rejoice / Joy | χαίρω / χαρά (chairō / chara) | gioire / gioia | — | Low | 1:3, 4 | 🆕 | Standard, stable term. |
| 10 | Brothers | ἀδελφοί (adelphoi) | fratelli | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers; Truth and Christian Fellowship | Medium | 1:3, 5, 10 | 🆕 | Covenant-family term for fellow believers, not mere biological kinship or generic camaraderie; render consistently across all three occurrences to preserve the Gaius/Diotrephes reception-contrast structure. |
| 11 | Testify / Testimony | μαρτυρέω / μαρτυρία (martyreō / martyria) | testimoniare / testimonianza | Commendation of Faithful Witness | Medium | 1:3, 6, 12 (×3) | 🆕 | Distinguish from cognate “martirio” (martyrdom) — no death-for-faith sense intended, only reputational/character attestation. Render consistently across Gaius (vv. 3, 6) and Demetrius (v. 12) to preserve the letter’s parallel structure. |
| 12 | Walk (conduct) | περιπατέω (peripateō) | camminare (nella verità) | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Low-Medium | 1:3, 4 | 🆕 | Established idiom in Italian Bible tradition (cf. 2 John 1:4); preserve the conduct-metaphor rather than paraphrasing into abstract “vivere secondo.” |
| 13 | Children (spiritual) | τέκνα (tekna) | figli | — | Low-Medium | 1:4 | 🆕 | Spiritual, not biological, paternity; standard idiom. |
| 14 | Faithful | πιστός (pistos) | fedele | Commendation of Faithful Witness; Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | 1:5 | 🆕 | Adjacent to baseline “fede” (faith); Italian “fedele” also functions as a noun for “practicing churchgoer” in Catholic parish usage (“i fedeli”) — keep the character-attesting, act-describing sense clear rather than a religious-observance sense. |
| 15 | Stranger / Guest | ξένος (xenos) | stranieri / forestieri | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | High | 1:5 | 🆕 | The letter’s most culturally loaded term for a contemporary Italian audience: Italy’s live, highly charged immigration debate (“stranieri,” “immigrati,” “migranti”) saturates ordinary usage with contemporary sociopolitical freight absent from the first-century missionary-hospitality referent (traveling gospel workers, not modern migrants/refugees). Requires contextual glossing to keep the referent unambiguously missionary. |
| 16 | Work / labor for | ἐργάζομαι (ergazomai) | fare / operare (per) | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Low-Medium | 1:5 | 🆕 | Simple practical service sense here, not the faith/works merit register found elsewhere in the NT. |
| 17 | Church | ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia) | chiesa | Church Leadership and Pride | High | 1:6, 9, 10 | 🔁 | Reused exactly from baseline. Per baseline: “la Chiesa” defaults to the institutional Roman Catholic Church given the Vatican’s Italian presence; here ἐκκλησία denotes the local gathered congregation, not the universal institution — the same disambiguation task the baseline documents for Romans. |
| 18 | Send on one’s way (with provision) | προπέμπω (propempō) | provvedere per il viaggio / aiutare a proseguire il viaggio | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | High | 1:6 | 🆕 | Technical ancient missionary-support term (material provisions, funds, escort) — cf. Acts 15:3; 1 Cor 16:6, 11. A bare “accompagnare/salutare” flattens this into a mere social farewell, losing the costly, active-provisioning sense central to the “Hospitality to Traveling Ministers” doctrine. |
| 19 | Worthily | ἀξίως (axiōs) | in modo degno (di Dio) | — | Low | 1:6 | 🆕 | Standard. |
| 20 | God | θεός (theos) | Dio | — | Medium | 1:6, 11 (×2) | 🔁 | Reused exactly from baseline. General biblical-illiteracy risk in secularizing Italy, not a competing rendering. |
| 21 | The Name (of Christ) | ὄνομα (onoma) | il Nome | Church Leadership and Pride (implicit Christology) | Medium | 1:7 | 🆕 | Reverent early-church shorthand for Christ’s name/authority; requires capitalization and/or a glossing footnote so it is not read as a bare grammatical referent. |
| 22 | Gentiles / unbelieving outsiders | ἐθνικός (ethnikos) | pagani | — | Medium-High | 1:7 | 🔁 | Reuse baseline “pagani” (cognate of baseline ἔθνη entry). Note nuance shift: here the sense is general “unbelieving outsiders” in a mission-support context, not the Jew/Gentile salvation-history antithesis dominant in Romans — curriculum notes should clarify the narrower contextual sense. |
| 23 | Ought | ὀφείλω (opheilō) | dovere / avere il dovere di | — | Low | 1:8 | 🆕 | Standard. |
| 24 | Support / receive (material) | ὑπολαμβάνω (hypolambanō) | sostenere / accogliere | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | 1:8 | 🆕 | Distinguish carefully from ἐπιδέχομαι (#26) so the positive-support vs. negative-refusal contrast between Gaius and Diotrephes remains visible in Italian. |
| 25 | Fellow workers | συνεργός (synergos) | collaboratori | Truth and Christian Fellowship; Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | 1:8 | 🆕 | Cooperation in gospel mission support, not cooperation in one’s own justification — must be distinguished from the Tridentine “fede operante per carità” merit-cooperation register already flagged High-risk for baseline “grace”/“obedience_of_faith,” despite overlapping Italian vocabulary (“cooperare/collaborare”). |
| 26 | Receive / welcome (acknowledge) | ἐπιδέχομαι (epidechomai) | ricevere / accogliere | Church Leadership and Pride; Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium-High | 1:9, 10 (×2) | 🆕 | Negative counterpart to Gaius’s reception vocabulary (#24, #18); Diotrephes’s refusal here is the letter’s central negative example. Render consistently across both occurrences. |
| 27 | Loves to be first / craves preeminence | φιλοπρωτεύω (philoprōteuōn) | che ama essere il primo / bramoso di primeggiare | Church Leadership and Pride | High | 1:9 | 🆕 | NT hapax legomenon; names Diotrephes’s core vice. Risk of trivializing into generic ambition, or of being read (given Italy’s hierarchical Catholic ecclesial structure and the Vatican’s national presence) as generalized commentary on clerical hierarchy/papacy rather than this text’s specific, individual moral critique. Anchor to the concrete behaviors of v. 10. |
| 28 | Works / deeds | ἔργα (erga) | le opere / i fatti | — | Low-Medium | 1:10 | 🆕 | Morally neutral form, negatively qualified by context; general awareness of the heavier faith/works register elsewhere in the NT, not active here. |
| 29 | Talk maliciously / slander | φλυαρέω (phlyareō) | calunniare / sparlare maliziosamente | Church Leadership and Pride | Medium | 1:10 | 🆕 | Must not be softened to harmless gossip (“chiacchierare,” “spettegolare”); carries the weight of deliberate false accusation against apostolic authority. |
| 30 | Content / satisfied | ἀρκέω (arkeomai) | essere contento di | — | Low | 1:10 | 🆕 | Standard. |
| 31 | Forbid / hinder | κωλύω (kōlyō) | impedire / vietare | Church Leadership and Pride | Low-Medium | 1:10 | 🆕 | Standard. |
| 32 | Put out / expel | ἐκβάλλω (ekballō) | cacciare fuori / espellere (dalla chiesa) | Church Leadership and Pride | Medium-High | 1:10 | 🆕 | Do not use the technical canon-law term “scomunicare” (excommunicate) — a distinct, formal Catholic sacramental-juridical process, not the same as this informal unilateral local expulsion. Also avoid an overly casual “buttare fuori,” which loses the ecclesial-disciplinary seriousness. |
| 33 | Imitate | μιμέομαι (mimeomai) | imitare | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Low | 1:11 | 🆕 | Direct stable cognate; the doctrine’s anchor verb. |
| 34 | Evil / Good | κακός / ἀγαθός (kakos / agathos) | il male / il bene | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Low | 1:11 | 🆕 | Stable moral-category terms. |
| 35 | Do good / Do evil | ἀγαθοποιέω / κακοποιέω (agathopoieō / kakopoieō) | chi fa il bene / chi fa il male | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Low-Medium | 1:11 | 🆕 | Preserve the antithetical parallel construction in Italian to maintain the verse’s rhetorical structure. |
| 36 | Has (not) seen God | ὁράω (heōraken) | (non) ha visto Dio | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Medium | 1:11 | 🆕 | Not literal ocular vision (cf. John 1:18) but relational/experiential knowledge of God evidenced by moral conduct; guard against flat-literal misreading. |
| 37 | True | ἀληθής (alēthēs) | vero / verace | Commendation of Faithful Witness | Low | 1:12 | 🆕 | Render consistently with the ἀλήθεια word-family (#4). |
| 38 | Ink | μέλαν (melan) | inchiostro | — | Low | 1:13 | 🆕 | Material-culture term; no doctrinal content. |
| 39 | Pen / reed | κάλαμος (kalamos) | calamo (o “penna” per chiarezza) | — | Low | 1:13 | 🆕 | Material-culture term; either rendering is doctrinally safe. |
| 40 | Hope (mundane) | ἐλπίζω (elpizō) | sperare | — | Low | 1:14 | 🆕 | Everyday epistolary expectation, not the theological virtue of hope (ἐλπίς) found in passages such as Romans 8; do not over-theologize. |
| 41 | Peace | εἰρήνη (eirēnē) | pace | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Low | 1:14 | 🔁 | Reused exactly from baseline. Relational, covenantal peace; standard closing greeting here. |
| 42 | Friends | φίλος (philoi) | amici | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Low-Medium | 1:14 (×2) | 🆕 | Closing-greeting shift from ἀδελφοί (#10) to φίλοι; possibly echoes the Johannine friendship theme (cf. John 15:15). Doctrinally low-risk but pedagogically significant — flag the vocabulary shift in teaching notes rather than treating “amici” as a bare stylistic synonym for “fratelli.” |
| 43 | Greet | ἀσπάζομαι (aspazomai) | salutare | — | Low | 1:14 (×2) | 🆕 | Standard epistolary closing convention. |
Risk Summary
| Tier | Count | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 0 | — |
| High | 6 | Elder; Love; Stranger/Guest; Church (🔁); Send on one’s way (προπέμπω); Loves to be first (φιλοπρωτεύω) |
| Medium (incl. Medium-High) | 15 | Truth; Prosper; Soul; Brothers; Testify/Testimony; Walk; Faithful; God (🔁); The Name; Gentiles (🔁); Support/receive; Fellow workers; Receive/welcome; Talk maliciously; Put out/expel; Has (not) seen God; Friends |
| Low (incl. Low-Medium) | 22 | Beloved; Pray/wish; Be in health; Rejoice/Joy; Children; Work/labor; Worthily; Ought; Works/deeds; Content/satisfied; Forbid/hinder; Imitate; Evil/Good; Do good/Do evil; True; Ink; Pen/reed; Hope; Peace (🔁); Greet |
Note: Unlike the Romans baseline (2 Critical, 14 High terms), 3 John’s short pastoral-narrative genre produces no Critical-risk terms — there is no direct forensic-soteriological vocabulary (justification, imputed righteousness, atonement) in this letter. The doctrinal weight instead concentrates in High-risk relational/ecclesial-conduct vocabulary (hospitality, love, leadership pride) requiring the same human-theologian review routing as the baseline’s High tier, per doctrine_risk_registry.json conventions to be extended in Step 2 of this curriculum’s analysis.
This glossary must be loaded alongside the baseline translation_memory.json for Phase 2 processing. New terms marked 🆕 are to be formally added to translation memory (version increment) before Phase 2 segment translation begins, per the Language Package’s term-discovery protocol in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
High Risk Terms
Church
Approved rendering: chiesa
Transliteration: chiesa
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Original: ἐκκλησία
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
Inherited from Romans package (baseline entry unchanged). In 3 John 1:6, 9, 10, ekklesia denotes Gaius’s single local congregation — the specific body Diotrephes dominates, slanders his opponents before, and expels members from — not the universal institution. ‘La Chiesa’ still defaults to the institutional Roman Catholic Church given the Vatican’s physical presence in Italy; render lowercase and anchor with a local-referent phrase (‘la chiesa locale,’ ‘la comunità di Gaio’) wherever context does not already disambiguate.
Elder
Approved rendering: anziano
Transliteration: anziano
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Rejected alternatives: presbitero
Original: πρεσβύτερος
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
HIGH RISK, new for this curriculum: the letter’s self-designation (3 John 1:1) for John’s seasoned, relational pastoral authority. NEVER render as the cognate ‘presbitero,’ which in modern Italian names one of the three degrees of Catholic sacramental holy orders (vescovo, presbitero, diacono) — a live and unusually salient false-friend trap given Italy’s dense concentration of ordained clergy. ‘Anziano’ correctly matches Waldensian/evangelical usage for a non-sacramental local congregational leader, though Catholic-formed readers may still faintly hear a ‘presbitero’ echo and should be alerted in teaching notes.
Love
Approved rendering: amore / amare
Transliteration: amore / amare
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: carità
Original: ἀγάπη / ἀγαπάω
Category: Truth and Christian Fellowship
HIGH RISK, new for this curriculum. Ordinary Italian ‘amore’ is overwhelmingly read as romantic/erotic love in everyday usage (1:1, 6). The Catholic liturgical alternative ‘carità’ (from the ‘inno alla carità,’ 1 Corinthians 13, CEI tradition) is available but must NOT be substituted here: it would import Tridentine virtue-theology register foreign to this short personal letter’s informal, relational tone. Use ‘amore/amare’ with contextual signaling (pairing with ‘fratelli,’ ‘nella verità’) to keep the covenantal, non-romantic sense clear.
Stranger
Approved rendering: stranieri / forestieri
Transliteration: stranieri / forestieri
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ξένος
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
HIGH RISK, new for this curriculum. The letter’s central hospitality term (1:5, xenos), referring to traveling gospel workers not personally known beforehand. Italy’s live, highly charged national immigration debate (‘stranieri,’ ‘immigrati,’ ‘migranti’) saturates ordinary usage with contemporary sociopolitical freight entirely absent from the first-century missionary-hospitality referent. Requires mandatory contextual glossing in every occurrence (e.g. ‘questi fratelli, che pure non conoscevi di persona’) to keep the referent unambiguously missionary; teaching notes must explicitly disclaim any intended commentary on modern migration policy.
Send On Journey
Approved rendering: provvedere per il viaggio / aiutare a proseguire il viaggio
Transliteration: provvedere per il viaggio / aiutare a proseguire il viaggio
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: accompagnare (bare), salutare (bare)
Original: προπέμπω
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
HIGH RISK, new for this curriculum. A recognized technical term of ancient missionary-hospitality custom (1:6, propempō; cf. Acts 15:3; 1 Cor 16:6, 11; Titus 3:13): to provision and/or escort a traveler onward with material support. No single Italian word carries this sense; a bare ‘accompagnare’ or ‘salutare’ flattens it into a mere social farewell, losing the costly, active-provisioning dimension central to the ‘Hospitality to Traveling Ministers’ doctrine. Requires the fuller descriptive phrase, rendered consistently.
Receive Welcome
Approved rendering: ricevere / accogliere
Transliteration: ricevere / accogliere
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Original: ἐπιδέχομαι
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
HIGH RISK, new for this curriculum. Diotrephes’s refusal to receive the elder’s emissaries and welcome the brothers (1:9, 10, epidechomai) is the letter’s central negative example of leadership abuse. Must be rendered consistently across both occurrences and clearly paired with authority-language in context (‘non riconosce la nostra autorità,’ ‘si rifiuta di riceverci’) so the refusal reads as rejection of legitimate apostolic authority, not mere social snubbing.
Loves To Be First
Approved rendering: che ama essere il primo / bramoso di primeggiare
Transliteration: che ama essere il primo / bramoso di primeggiare
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Rejected alternatives: ambizioso (too generic, loses vice diagnosis), arrogante (too generic)
Original: φιλοπρωτεύω
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
HIGH RISK, new for this curriculum. NT hapax legomenon (philoprōteuōn, 1:9) naming Diotrephes’s core vice: craving preeminence within church leadership. Two failure modes in Italian: (1) trivializing into ordinary ambition or a personality quirk, losing the diagnosis as a spiritual vice with concrete destructive fruit (1:10); (2) given Italy’s dense hierarchical Catholic ecclesial structure and the Vatican’s national presence, readers may (mis)generalize this into commentary on clerical hierarchy or the papacy rather than the text’s specific, individual critique of one local leader. Use a descriptive phrase, never a single abstract noun; anchor teaching notes explicitly to the concrete behaviors of 1:10.
Medium Risk Terms
God
Approved rendering: Dio
Transliteration: Dio
Doctrine: God
Original: θεός
Category: God
Inherited from Romans package (baseline entry unchanged). Used in 3 John 1:6 (conduct ‘worthy of God’) and 1:11 (moral conduct as evidence of relational knowledge of God). General biblical-illiteracy risk in secularizing Italy, not a competing rendering.
Gentiles
Approved rendering: pagani
Transliteration: pagani
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: genti
Original: ἐθνικός
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Inherited from Romans package (baseline entry unchanged), applied here to the cognate ethnikos (3 John 1:7). NUANCE SHIFT FROM BASELINE: in Romans, pagani/ethnē distinguishes ‘the nations’ from ethnic Israel within salvation-historical argument; here ethnikos means simply ‘unbelieving outsiders in general’ in a missionary-funding-integrity context (the missionaries refuse patronage from non-Christians to avoid any suggestion the gospel is peddled for profit). Curriculum notes must clarify this narrower sense so readers do not import the Romans Jew/Gentile salvation-history frame onto this verse.
Peace
Approved rendering: pace
Transliteration: pace
Doctrine: Salvation
Original: εἰρήνη
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package (baseline entry unchanged). In 3 John 1:14 the sense is the standard Greco-Roman/biblical epistolary peace-wish closing a personal letter, lighter in argumentative weight than Romans 5:1’s ‘peace with God through justification,’ though the same Italian term applies without alteration.
Beloved
Approved rendering: caro / carissimo / amato
Transliteration: caro / carissimo / amato
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀγαπητός
Category: Truth and Christian Fellowship
New for this curriculum. Repeated vocative address structuring the letter (1:1, 2, 5, 11). Standard across CEI and Riveduta; risk is register flattening into generic politeness (‘caro amico’) if the underlying covenantal agapē-root is not felt by the reader.
Truth
Approved rendering: verità
Transliteration: verità
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀλήθεια
Category: Truth and Christian Fellowship
New for this curriculum. The letter’s organizing term, six occurrences (1:1, 3 ×2, 4, 8, 12). No competing Italian rendering exists, but contemporary secular ‘post-verità’ (post-truth) discourse and general biblical illiteracy risk flattening ‘verità’ into subjective opinion rather than the Johannine sense of revealed, personal, communally embodied gospel reality. Render consistently across every occurrence.
Soul
Approved rendering: anima
Transliteration: anima
Doctrine: General
Original: ψυχή
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Gaius’s inner spiritual condition (1:2, psychē). Standard rendering; minor risk of importing a Greek dualistic body/soul reading foreign to the text’s simple sense.
Brothers
Approved rendering: fratelli
Transliteration: fratelli
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἀδελφοί
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
New for this curriculum. Covenant-family term for the traveling gospel workers received by Gaius, occurring at 1:3, 5, 10. Risk that ‘fratelli’ reads as generic camaraderie or biological kinship rather than the covenant-family bond of the ekklesia; render consistently across all three occurrences to preserve the Gaius/Diotrephes reception-contrast structure of the letter.
Testify Testimony
Approved rendering: testimoniare / testimonianza
Transliteration: testimoniare / testimonianza
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness
Rejected alternatives: martirio (unintended martyrdom sense)
Original: μαρτυρέω / μαρτυρία
Category: Commendation of Faithful Witness
New for this curriculum. Public, verifiable, communal character-attestation of Gaius (1:3, 6) and Demetrius (1:12). Distinguish from the Italian cognate ‘martirio’ (martyrdom); Italy’s rich hagiographic martyr-saint culture (San Sebastiano, Santa Lucia, the martirologio) risks pulling this word-family toward dying-for-the-faith rather than the letter’s actual sense of reputational attestation of a living believer. Render consistently across all Gaius/Demetrius occurrences to preserve the letter’s parallel structure.
Walk
Approved rendering: camminare (nella verità)
Transliteration: camminare (nella verità)
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: vivere secondo la verità (abstract paraphrase, loses the conduct-metaphor)
Original: περιπατέω
Category: Truth and Christian Fellowship
New for this curriculum. NT conduct idiom (1:3, 4, peripateō). ‘Camminare nella verità’ is well-established in Italian biblical tradition (cf. 2 Giovanni 1:4); preserve the pilgrimage-conduct metaphor rather than paraphrasing it away.
Children
Approved rendering: figli
Transliteration: figli
Doctrine: General
Original: τέκνα
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Spiritual, not biological, paternity language (1:4, tekna) for the elder’s converts/disciples. Standard idiom in Italian Bible tradition; minor risk of a purely literal-biological misreading without contextual signaling.
Faithful
Approved rendering: fedele
Transliteration: fedele
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: πιστός
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
New for this curriculum. Describes Gaius’s hospitality as an act of trustworthy faithfulness (1:5, pistos). Adjacent to baseline ‘fede’ (faith); Italian ‘fedele’ also functions as the standard noun for ‘a practicing churchgoer’ in ordinary Catholic parish usage (‘i fedeli’), risking a shift from ‘a trustworthy act’ toward ‘a pious religious-observance act.’ Keep the character-attesting, act-describing sense clear.
Work For
Approved rendering: fare / operare (per)
Transliteration: fare / operare (per)
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἐργάζομαι
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
New for this curriculum. Gaius’s practical service toward the traveling brothers (1:5, ergazomai). Simple practical-service sense here, not the faith/works merit register found elsewhere in the NT.
The Name
Approved rendering: il Nome
Transliteration: il Nome
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Original: ὄνομα
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
New for this curriculum. Reverent early-church shorthand for the name and person of Jesus Christ (1:7, onoma), under whose authority the missionaries traveled and refused pagan patronage. Without capitalization or a clarifying gloss, ‘il nome’ reads as a bare grammatical referent rather than the reverent, quasi-titular early-church usage; capitalize as ‘il Nome’ and, where curriculum space permits, footnote that the referent is Christ.
Support Receive
Approved rendering: sostenere / accogliere
Transliteration: sostenere / accogliere
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ὑπολαμβάνω
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
New for this curriculum. Ongoing material support of traveling gospel workers (1:8, hypolambanō). Must be carefully distinguished from epidechomai (‘receive_welcome,’ 1:9-10) so the vocabulary contrast between Gaius’s active support and Diotrephes’s refusal to receive remains lexically visible to the Italian reader; assign ‘sostenere’ preferentially to this term.
Fellow Workers
Approved rendering: collaboratori
Transliteration: collaboratori
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: cooperatori (too close to Tridentine ‘cooperare con la grazia’)
Original: συνεργός
Category: Truth and Christian Fellowship
New for this curriculum. By materially supporting itinerant gospel workers, Gaius becomes an active partner in their gospel labor (1:8, synergos). Italian Catholic moral theology has its own vocabulary of ‘cooperare’ with grace, echoing the Tridentine ‘fede operante per carità’ framework already flagged High-risk in the baseline for ‘grace’ and ‘obedience_of_faith.’ This is a different, non-soteriological cooperation — cooperation in gospel mission support, not in one’s own justification — and teaching notes must keep the two distinct despite overlapping Italian vocabulary (‘cooperare/collaborare’).
Slander
Approved rendering: calunniare / sparlare maliziosamente
Transliteration: calunniare / sparlare maliziosamente
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Rejected alternatives: chiacchierare (too mild, trivializes into harmless gossip), spettegolare (too mild)
Original: φλυαρέω
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
New for this curriculum. Diotrephes’s specific sin of speech (1:10, phlyareō, intensified by ‘evil words’): deliberate, damaging slander against the elder’s apostolic authority. Must carry the weight of deliberate false accusation; ‘calunnia’ carries appropriate Italian legal-moral gravity (cf. calunnia as a criminal offense, Art. 368 Codice Penale).
Forbid Hinder
Approved rendering: impedire / vietare
Transliteration: impedire / vietare
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Original: κωλύω
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
New for this curriculum. Diotrephes stopping congregation members who want to receive the traveling brothers (1:10, kōlyō). Standard rendering; no competing sense.
Expel
Approved rendering: cacciare fuori / espellere (dalla chiesa)
Transliteration: cacciare fuori / espellere (dalla chiesa)
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Rejected alternatives: scomunicare (distinct formal Catholic canon-law sacramental-juridical process)
Original: ἐκβάλλω
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
New for this curriculum. Diotrephes’s climactic act of abusive leadership (1:10, ekballō): unilateral, punitive exclusion of fellow believers from church fellowship. NEVER render as ‘scomunicare’ (excommunicate) — a distinct, formal Catholic sacramental-juridical process, not the same as this informal unilateral local expulsion by a single self-appointed leader. Also avoid an overly casual ‘buttare fuori,’ which underplays the disciplinary seriousness.
Do Good Do Evil
Approved rendering: chi fa il bene / chi fa il male
Transliteration: chi fa il bene / chi fa il male
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: ἀγαθοποιέω / κακοποιέω
Category: Imitating Good rather than Evil
New for this curriculum. Habitual moral conduct presented as diagnostic evidence of one’s relationship to God (1:11, agathopoieō/kakopoieō). Preserve the antithetical parallel clause construction in Italian rather than collapsing into a single generalized moral statement, so the verse’s diagnostic force survives.
Has Not Seen God
Approved rendering: (non) ha visto Dio
Transliteration: (non) ha visto Dio
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: οὐχ ἑώρακεν τὸν θεόν
Category: Imitating Good rather than Evil
New for this curriculum. Genuine relational/experiential knowledge of God evidenced by moral fruit (1:11), echoing the Johannine ‘seeing/knowing God’ theme (cf. John 1:18) — not literal ocular vision. Italy’s strong visual-devotional tradition (icons, Marian apparitions, visionary saints) creates a distinctive risk of a literal-vision misreading; gloss where curriculum space allows as ‘non conosce veramente Dio.‘
Friends
Approved rendering: amici
Transliteration: amici
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: φίλος
Category: Truth and Christian Fellowship
New for this curriculum. Closing-greeting vocabulary shift from ‘fratelli’ (the covenant-family term used throughout, 1:3, 5, 10) to ‘amici’ (1:14, philos), possibly echoing the Johannine friendship theme (cf. John 15:15). Doctrinally low-risk, but curriculum teaching notes should flag the shift rather than treating ‘amici’ as a bare stylistic synonym for ‘fratelli.‘
Low Risk Terms
Pray Wish
Approved rendering: pregare / augurare
Transliteration: pregare / augurare
Doctrine: General
New for this curriculum. Standard epistolary health-wish formula (1:2, euchomai). No doctrinal freight.
Prosper
Approved rendering: prosperare / andare bene
Transliteration: prosperare / andare bene
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: εὐοδοῦσθαι
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
New for this curriculum. Literally ‘to have a good journey’ (1:2, euodousthai); the travel-root meaning quietly anticipates the hospitality theme of 1:5-8. The wordplay is easily lost in Italian and should be flagged for teaching notes though the doctrinal risk itself is low.
Be In Health
Approved rendering: godere di buona salute
Transliteration: godere di buona salute
Doctrine: General
Original: ὑγιαίνειν
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Purely physical sense (1:2, hygiainein); resist over-spiritualizing into the metaphorical ‘sound doctrine’ usage found elsewhere in the NT (e.g. 1 Timothy 1:10), not intended here.
Rejoice Joy
Approved rendering: gioire / gioia
Transliteration: gioire / gioia
Doctrine: General
Original: χαίρω / χαρά
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Standard, stable term across Italian Bible traditions (1:3, 4).
Worthily
Approved rendering: in modo degno (di Dio)
Transliteration: in modo degno (di Dio)
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἀξίως
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
New for this curriculum. Standard rendering (1:6, axiōs).
Ought
Approved rendering: dovere / avere il dovere di
Transliteration: dovere / avere il dovere di
Doctrine: General
Original: ὀφείλω
Category: General
New for this curriculum. The church’s obligation to support traveling gospel workers (1:8, opheilō). Standard rendering.
Works Deeds
Approved rendering: le opere / i fatti
Transliteration: le opere / i fatti
Doctrine: General
Original: ἔργα
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Morally neutral in form, negatively qualified by context (1:10, erga, ‘the things he does’). General awareness that ergon-family words carry heavier freight in faith/works passages elsewhere in the NT, though not active here.
Content
Approved rendering: essere contento di
Transliteration: essere contento di
Doctrine: General
Original: ἀρκέω
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Standard rendering (1:10, arkeomai, ‘not content with that’).
Imitate
Approved rendering: imitare
Transliteration: imitare
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: μιμέομαι
Category: Imitating Good rather than Evil
New for this curriculum. The doctrine’s anchor verb (1:11, mimeomai), the letter’s explicit pivot from the Diotrephes narrative to direct exhortation. Direct, stable cognate across Italian Bible traditions; no competing rendering.
Evil Good
Approved rendering: il male / il bene
Transliteration: il male / il bene
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: κακός / ἀγαθός
Category: Imitating Good rather than Evil
New for this curriculum. The two moral categories set in antithesis (1:11, kakos/agathos). Stable, standard moral-category terms.
True
Approved rendering: vero / verace
Transliteration: vero / verace
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness
Original: ἀληθής
Category: Commendation of Faithful Witness
New for this curriculum. Describes the elder’s own testimony about Demetrius as verifiably true (1:12, alēthēs). Render consistently alongside the verità word-family to keep the truth-word-family visible across the letter.
Ink
Approved rendering: inchiostro
Transliteration: inchiostro
Doctrine: General
Original: μέλαν
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Material-culture term in the closing (1:13, melan); no doctrinal content.
Pen
Approved rendering: calamo / penna
Transliteration: calamo / penna
Doctrine: General
Original: κάλαμος
Category: General
New for this curriculum. A reed used as a writing implement (1:13, kalamos). ‘Calamo’ preserves historical accuracy; ‘penna’ may aid comprehension for readers unfamiliar with reed pens. Either rendering is doctrinally safe.
Hope
Approved rendering: sperare
Transliteration: sperare
Doctrine: General
Original: ἐλπίζω
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Everyday epistolary expectation of a future visit (1:14, elpizō), distinct from the weighty theological virtue of hope (elpis) found elsewhere in the NT (e.g. Romans 8). Do not over-theologize this occurrence.
Greet
Approved rendering: salutare / saluta
Transliteration: salutare / saluta
Doctrine: General
Original: ἀσπάζομαι
Category: General
New for this curriculum. Standard epistolary closing convention (1:14, aspazomai).
Gaius
Approved rendering: Gaio
Transliteration: Gaio
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: Γάϊος
Category: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
New for this curriculum. The letter’s addressee, commended for hospitality to traveling gospel workers. Standard, established Italian Bible proper-name form; stable across Catholic and Protestant traditions.
Diotrephes
Approved rendering: Diotrefe
Transliteration: Diotrefe
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride
Original: Διοτρέφης
Category: Church Leadership and Pride
New for this curriculum. The local church leader condemned for craving preeminence, refusing hospitality, slandering the elder, and expelling members. Standard transliterated proper name; the doctrinal risk lies in the surrounding vocabulary (loves_to_be_first, receive_welcome, expel), not in the name itself.
Demetrius
Approved rendering: Demetrio
Transliteration: Demetrio
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness
Original: Δημήτριος
Category: Commendation of Faithful Witness
New for this curriculum. A believer commended for a truth-attested reputation, the letter’s positive counterpart to Diotrephes. Standard transliterated proper name, stable across Italian Bible traditions.