Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — 2 Corinthians (English → Japanese)
Purpose and Scope
This analysis identifies, for the full text of 2 Corinthians (chapters 1–13), where standard modern Japanese lacks adequate vocabulary for the letter’s theological content (“missing vocabulary”), where existing Japanese vocabulary sits inside a crowded semantic neighborhood shared with Shinto, Buddhist, Bushido, or purely secular concepts that must be actively fenced off (“crowded neighborhoods”), and where the choice between transliteration (loanword/proper-noun import) and paraphrase (native compound construction) carries doctrinal weight. It closes with a ranked list of this letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 translator attention.
This document extends, and must be read alongside, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json, and is the analytical basis for analysis/08_core_glossary.md and the new entries proposed for merge into assets/bible_term_registry.json. All baseline term decisions are treated as settled and are not re-argued here except where 2 Corinthians introduces a new sense or contextual pressure on an already-established term.
Full-Book Chapter Coverage Checklist
| Ch. | Load-bearing content reviewed | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Comfort/affliction (παράκλησις/θλῖψις), seal & guarantee (Spirit as ἀρραβών), Father of mercies, calling, saints, holy | New/extended terms identified |
| 2 | Forgiveness (χαρίζομαι), peddlers of God’s word, triumphal procession, aroma of Christ, gospel | New/extended terms identified |
| 3 | New covenant, letter vs. Spirit, veil, freedom, glory (Moses’ fading glory), image (εἰκών), commending ourselves | New/extended terms identified — highest-density chapter |
| 4 | God of this age, treasure in jars of clay, transformed (feeds from 3:18), resurrection, eternal weight of glory, power of God | New/extended terms identified |
| 5 | Core passage. Reconciliation, ministry of reconciliation, non-imputation of sin, be-reconciled imperative, ambassador, new creation, in Christ, flesh (kata sarka), love of Christ, judgment seat of Christ, tent/earthly house, outward appearance vs. heart, boasting, conscience, righteousness (5:21 climax) | New/extended terms identified — highest doctrinal density |
| 6 | Genuine unhypocritical love, temple of the living God, unequally yoked, holy, salvation, sanctification | New/extended terms identified |
| 7 | Repentance, godly sorrow vs. worldly sorrow, affliction, holy, salvation | New/extended terms identified |
| 8 | Fellowship of the ministry, equality, grace applied to giving, saints, church | New/extended terms identified |
| 9 | Cheerful giver, sow/reap, thanksgiving, equality | New/extended terms identified |
| 10 | Stronghold, weapons of warfare, obedience of faith (obedience of Christ), boasting, commending ourselves | New/extended terms identified |
| 11 | False apostles, angel of light, godly jealousy, betrothed pure virgin, apostle (elevated risk), gospel (false gospel warning) | New/extended terms identified |
| 12 | Paradise, third heaven, thorn in the flesh, grace is sufficient, power in weakness, weakness, signs of a true apostle | New/extended terms identified |
| 13 | Examine yourselves, disqualified, holy kiss, Trinitarian benediction (grace/love/fellowship — 13:14), resurrection, faith | New/extended terms identified |
No chapter is silently omitted; every chapter contributes at minimum a reinforced sense of an already-flagged term.
Part 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the eight assigned doctrines: the available Japanese candidate terms, the specific weakness of each, and the recommended strategy.
1. Reconciliation with God
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 和解 (wakai) | Default modern sense is a mutual, often legal, out-of-court settlement (示談, jidan) between two parties each assumed to bear some fault and each moving partway toward the other. | Adopt with mandatory fencing. No better native word exists. Every occurrence in teaching material must state explicitly that this reconciliation is one-directional, God-initiated, and accomplished while humanity was in active hostility (2 Cor 5:18–19; cf. Rom 5:10) — never a 50/50 settlement. |
| 仲直り (nakanaori) | Colloquial, child-register “making up” between friends; far too informal and interpersonal-peer-level for the God-humanity relation; also mutual in structure. | Reject. |
| 講和 (kōwa) | Diplomatic/international peace-treaty register (e.g., 講和条約, peace treaty ending a war) — closer to a negotiated ceasefire between two sovereign, roughly equal powers than to a unilateral divine act toward the guilty. | Reject as primary term; may be referenced only as a contrast case in teaching (God’s reconciliation is not a peace treaty between equals). |
Gap identified: Japanese has no single word that inherently encodes “unilateral reconciliation of an unequal, guilty party by the wronged party’s own initiative.” This is a genuine missing-vocabulary problem, not merely a crowded one; 和解 is retained by necessity and compensated entirely through explicit teaching framing, per bible_term_registry.json’s “reconciliation” entry.
2. New Creation in Christ
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 新しい創造 (atarashii sōzō) | Transparent compound, doctrinally accurate, but risks being heard through the lens of Japan’s large 自己啓発 (jiko keihatsu, self-improvement) publishing/seminar industry and the New Year’s-resolution idiom 心を入れ替える (“changing one’s heart/attitude”) — i.e., a resolved-upon personality change rather than an ontological divine act. | Adopt with mandatory fencing. Anchor explicitly to Genesis-creation language (God’s unilateral creative fiat) at first occurrence in every unit that touches 2 Cor 5:17. |
| 生まれ変わる (umarekawaru, “to be reborn”) | Strong pre-existing association with Buddhist rebirth/reincarnation (輪廻転生 register) — the exact collision the baseline flags for “resurrection.” Also used colloquially for secular life-change (“I was reborn as a new person after quitting my job”). | Reject for doctrinal statements; may appear only in loose colloquial paraphrase with heavy qualification, if at all. |
| 新生 (shinsei, “new birth/regeneration”) | A real theological option, already used in some Japanese evangelical literature for regeneration/being born again (cf. John 3, 1 Peter 1:23), but risks conflating new creation (2 Cor 5:17, a distinct Pauline image of cosmic re-creation) with new birth (a related but distinct Johannine/Petrine image). | Reserve 新生 for regeneration contexts elsewhere in the curriculum if introduced; keep 新しい創造 distinct for 2 Cor 5:17 to preserve the specific creation-motif Paul is invoking. |
3. Suffering and Comfort in Ministry
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 慰め (nagusame) for comfort | Adjacent to 癒し (iyashi), the dominant term in Japan’s large wellness/relaxation/self-care marketing industry (spas, aromatherapy, “iyashi-kei” entertainment genre); risk of collapsing God’s ministry-specific comfort into generic emotional soothing. | Adopt with fencing. Use 慰め (not 癒し) consistently and anchor to the specific comfort-in-affliction-for-ministry pattern of 2 Cor 1:3–7, never presented as self-care. |
| 苦難 (kunan) for affliction | Adequate register (formal, serious), but risks drifting toward generic “hardship/misfortune” (苦労, kurō — a very common, low-key word for everyday difficulty) if not held tightly to the ministry-suffering pairing. | Adopt; pair explicitly with 慰め in translated units so the suffering/comfort dyad from 2 Cor 1 is never separated. |
| 保証 (hoshō) for the Spirit as guarantee/down payment | Strong commercial-contract resonance (手付金, tetsukekin, a real-estate deposit) risks reducing a relational divine pledge to a financial instrument. | Adopt cautiously as a positive bridge (the commercial resonance usefully conveys legal bindingness and future-certainty) but require an explicit relational reframe every occurrence, per the baseline’s adoption/yōshi-engumi precedent for productive commercial-metaphor bridges. |
4. The New Covenant versus the Old
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 契約 (keiyaku) for covenant, extended as 新しい契約 | Fully secularized in modern Japanese as an ordinary commercial contract term (employment, rental, insurance) — the baseline’s existing dilution-risk note. Sharpened here by 2 Corinthians 3’s direct old/new contrast, which requires the relational, Spirit-enabled nature of the new covenant to be actively taught against a merely legal-code reading. | Retain baseline term; intensify teaching fencing specifically for ch. 3’s old/new contrast. |
| 聖霊 vs. 御霊 for “the Spirit” in 3:17 (“the Lord is the Spirit”) | 御霊 (mitama) is a live theological option in some historic Japanese Bible traditions but is also the standing term for enshrined ancestral/war-dead spirits (御霊信仰, goryō shinkō; 英霊, eirei — honorific term for enshrined war dead, e.g., at Yasukuni Shrine). | CRITICAL — 聖霊 required without exception at 3:17–18; 御霊 is forbidden in this passage specifically, given the unique risk of assimilating the identification of “the Lord” with “the Spirit” to Japan’s animistic enshrined-spirit theology. |
| 文字 (moji) for γράμμα (“letter”) | Ordinary word for “written character/letter of the alphabet”; adequately conveys “written code” but carries no inherent negative/condemning connotation on its own. | Adopt; the condemning sense must be supplied by context (paired antithetically with 聖霊/命) rather than by the word itself. |
5. Sincerity and Apostolic Authority
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 誠実さ (seijitsu-sa) for sincerity | Already a highly prized Japanese social/business virtue (hospitality culture, omotenashi, customer-service sincerity) — risk of being read as skillful social performance rather than actual transparency before God, precisely because Japan’s 建前／本音 (tatemae/honne, public facade vs. true feeling) structure normalizes a socially sanctioned gap between the two. | Adopt with mandatory fencing — name the tatemae/honne parallel directly in teaching material rather than avoiding it; Paul’s sincerity claim is precisely the collapse of that culturally normal gap before God. |
| 誇り (hokori) for boasting | Collides with 謙遜 (kenson, modesty), a deeply prized Japanese virtue, and the proverb 出る釘は打たれる (“the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”), which discourages self-promotion. | Adopt with explicit paradox-framing at every occurrence: Paul’s boasting is boasting only in Christ or in his own weakness, the structural opposite of self-promotion, not a culturally suspect exception to modesty norms. |
| 外見／心 (gaiken/kokoro) for outward appearance vs. heart | Not a weakness so much as an unusually precise fit — this pairing maps almost exactly onto tatemae/honne. | Adopt and use pedagogically as the clearest available cultural bridge for this entire doctrine cluster. |
6. Generosity and Grace in Giving
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 喜んで与えること (yorokonde ataeru koto) for cheerful giving | Directly engages Japan’s highly formalized gift-reciprocity culture — お返し (okaeshi), the normalized expectation of returning a gift of comparable value (wedding/funeral customs, White Day reciprocation of Valentine’s gifts, o-chūgen/o-seibo mid-year and year-end gift exchange). Risk: giving is read as initiating (or discharging) a reciprocal social debt. | Adopt with mandatory fencing. Teach explicitly as grace-motivated and non-reciprocal — giving that does not generate an implicit debt God or the recipient must repay, extending the baseline’s grace/on-giri caution into the financial domain. |
| 公平／平等 (kōhei/byōdō) for equality (ἰσότης) | 平等 in particular risks being read as demanding identical amounts given rather than proportional fairness in sharing. | Prefer 公平 (fairness) over 平等 (equality/sameness) as primary rendering to reduce the identical-amount misreading. |
7. Power in Weakness
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 弱さ (yowasa) for weakness | Runs against two strong Japanese cultural currents: the historic Bushido strength/honor ethic and the pervasive modern 頑張る (ganbaru, “persevere/push through”) achievement ethic, which treats hardship as something to be overcome by effort toward eventual strength. | Adopt with mandatory fencing. Must be taught as the ongoing, not-eventually-overcome condition through which God’s power operates — resist any framing that reads as a motivational “grow stronger through adversity” self-help trope. |
| 恵みで十分です (megumi de jūbun desu) for “my grace is sufficient” (12:9) | Inherits the full baseline Critical grace/on-giri risk at the doctrine’s most theologically load-bearing verse. | Flag for theologian review at every occurrence, per the baseline’s Critical-risk enforcement priority. |
| 要塞 (yōsai) for stronghold | Potentially a positive bridge to Japan’s rich castle/fortress cultural imagery, provided the referent (idolatrous strongholds of thought, 10:4) is kept strictly spiritual/metaphorical. | Adopt as a cautious positive bridge; explicit non-literal framing required given the adjacent militaristic imagery in the same passage (see Part 2 below on weapons of warfare). |
8. Genuine versus False Apostleship
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 偽使徒 (gi-shito) for false apostles | Compound of the baseline’s established 使徒 with 偽 (“false”); resonates powerfully — usefully, but also riskily — with the still-vivid post-Aum Shinrikyo public memory of cult-leader scandal in Japan. | Adopt; frame discernment soberly and non-sensationally, avoiding both cult-panic sensationalism and blanket secular suspicion toward all religious authority claims. |
| 失格 (shikkaku) for disqualified (ἀδόκιμος, 13:5–7) | Heavily used in competitive sports/examination contexts (disqualification from a race or exam) — echoes the baseline’s caution under “election” against merit-based competitive-selection framing. | Adopt with fencing: clarify as failing the test of genuine Christ-union, not a performance-based evaluation passable through greater effort. |
| 自分自身を確かめなさい (jibun jishin o tashikamenasai) for “examine yourselves” (13:5) | Risks collision with East Asian introspective self-cultivation traditions — Confucian 内省 (naishō, self-reflection toward moral refinement) and Buddhist mindfulness self-examination. | Adopt with fencing: clarify the object of the test is specifically the presence of Christ-uniting faith (“Christ is in you”), not generic moral self-improvement. |
Part 2: Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
A. Missing Vocabulary (no adequate native term exists at all)
These are gaps where Japanese simply lacks a word carrying the needed sense, requiring either a new compound, a periphrastic construction, or heavy compensatory teaching rather than a straightforward substitution:
- Unilateral, unequal reconciliation — no word distinguishes a wronged-and-innocent-party-initiated reconciliation from a mutual settlement (和解’s default sense). Compensated by mandatory teaching fencing (see Part 1.1).
- Christ’s self-giving agapē distinct from romantic/humanistic ai — 愛 (ai) is a single umbrella word covering romantic love (恋愛, ren’ai), parental affection, and generic humanistic benevolence, with no morphological marker distinguishing self-sacrificial covenantal love. Not present in the baseline Romans TM at all and freshly established here; compensated only by consistently anchoring 愛 to the substitutionary-death clause that follows it in 2 Cor 5:14.
- A passive-voice-friendly imperative for “be reconciled” — Japanese passive imperative constructions are stylistically awkward, creating structural pressure toward an active “make peace” phrasing (神と平和を作りなさい) that would reverse the agency Paul’s aorist passive imperative deliberately encodes. This is a genuine grammatical, not merely lexical, gap.
- A single term for “sincerity as the collapse of the tatemae/honne gap” — 誠実さ names a virtue but not specifically this collapse; the concept must be built through explicit named contrast rather than supplied by any single word.
- Agrarian metaphor vocabulary current to urban Japanese life — sow/reap (種を蒎く／収穫する), unequally yoked (つり合わない軛), and thorn-in-the-flesh imagery (肉体のとげ) are all lexically available but experientially remote for a highly urbanized readership; this is a biblical-illiteracy gap requiring brief explanatory framing rather than a false-concept collision.
- A term for “ambassador” carrying delegated divine authority without diplomatic-office connotation — 使者 (the established Shinkaiyaku choice) is closer than 大使 (modern diplomatic ambassador) but still requires active teaching to convey that Paul speaks with Christ’s own authority (“God making his appeal through us,” 5:20), not merely as a courier relaying a message on his own initiative.
B. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (native term exists but shares space with a false/competing concept and must be actively fenced)
| Term | Crowded neighbor(s) | Fencing required |
|---|---|---|
| 和解 (reconciliation) | 示談 (jidan, legal settlement); everyday interpersonal “making up” | Explicit unilateral/unequal-parties framing at every occurrence |
| 義 (righteousness, 5:21 climax) | Bushido virtue of moral courage/rectitude (Nitobe’s Bushido) | Forensic, exchanged-status framing; never personal virtue on display |
| 神 applied to Satan (4:4, “the god of this age”) | The baseline’s own mandatory “one true God” qualifying convention for 神 — this is the single passage where the opposite handling is required | Explicit disqualifying bracket every occurrence: this is Satan’s usurped, blasphemous self-designation, never real deity |
| 聖霊/御霊 (the Spirit, 3:17) | 御霊信仰 (goryō shinkō), 英霊 (enshrined war-dead spirits, e.g. Yasukuni) | 聖霊 required without exception in this passage; 御霊 forbidden here specifically |
| 肉 (flesh, kata sarka, 5:16) | 肉 as ordinary edible meat (焼肉/yakiniku food culture) | Contextual anchoring pairing with 人間的な (“merely human”) on first use per unit |
| 変身 (rejected) for “transformed” (3:18) | Tokusatsu/anime superhero “henshin” transformation-sequence trope (仮面ライダー, Super Sentai) | Never use; periphrastic 姿を変えられて required instead |
| キリストの裁きの座 (judgment seat of Christ, 5:10) | 閻魔 (Enma-ō), the Buddhist folk judge of the dead weighing deeds | Clarify as an accounting for the already-reconciled, not karmic weighing determining salvific standing |
| 楽園 (paradise, 12:4) | 極楽 (Pure Land Buddhist paradise); パラダイス as secular tourism-resort branding | Never conflate with 極楽; avoid the loanword’s leisure-destination resonance |
| 悔い改め (repentance) | 反省 (hansei, secular self-critique/apology-culture ritual); 懴悔 (sange, formal Buddhist confession rite) | God-ward, salvation-oriented turning; never social face-repair or liturgical rite |
| 香り (aroma of Christ, 2:15–16) | お線香 (Buddhist temple incense-offering ritual) | Native-speaker review flagged; frame as sensory metaphor, not ritual offering |
| 弱さ (weakness, chs. 11–13) | 頑張る achievement ethic; Bushido strength/honor ethic | Ongoing condition through which power operates, not a stage en route to eventual strength |
| 誇り (boasting) | 謙遜 modesty norm; “the nail that sticks up” proverb | Paradox framing: boasting only in Christ/weakness, structural opposite of self-promotion |
| 恵み (grace, throughout, esp. giving chs. 8–9 and 12:9) | 恩・義理 (on-giri) reciprocal-obligation system; お返し (okaeshi) gift-reciprocity custom | Non-transactional framing at every occurrence across soteriology, forgiveness, and giving domains |
| 戦いの武器 / 要塞 (weapons of warfare / stronghold, 10:4) | Japan’s postwar pacifist constitutional identity (Article 9) and WWII-era war-language sensitivity | Explicitly and immediately metaphorical/spiritual framing, never literal-military or nationalistic |
Part 3: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Satan | Transliterate (サタン) | Established loanword; no adequate native equivalent, and paraphrase would risk folk-spirit (yōkai) collision anyway. Distinguish as a specific personal adversary. |
| Ambassador (πρεσβεύω) | Paraphrase, established term (使者) | Modern loanword-adjacent 大使 (taishi) carries a diplomatic-office register too narrow and too modern (nation-state embassy) for Paul’s Christ-delegated-authority sense; retain established Shinkaiyaku 使者. |
| Paradise (παράδεισος) | Paraphrase (楽園), reject loanword (パラダイス) | The loanword’s tourism/resort-marketing saturation (“tropical paradise”) would trivialize God’s own dwelling-place into a leisure-destination image; 楽園 is native, dignified, and free of that specific modern commercial resonance (though it still requires fencing against 極楽, per Part 2). |
| Third heaven (τρίτος οὐρανός) | Paraphrase (第三の天) | No transliteration option exists; requires explanatory framing of ancient tiered-heaven cosmology regardless of rendering — a biblical-illiteracy issue, not a wording issue. |
| Stronghold (ὀχύρωμα) | Paraphrase (要塞), native compound | Deliberately chosen over any loanword to activate the positive castle/fortress cultural bridge (cf. baseline’s 主君 feudal-lord bridge precedent) rather than import a foreign military term. |
| New creation (καινὴ κτίσις) | Paraphrase (新しい創造) | A loanword or transliteration is not available for this concept; the compound must do all the work, compensated by explicit teaching fencing against jiko-keihatsu self-improvement culture. |
| Transformed (μεταμορφόω) | Paraphrase, periphrastic (姿を変えられて); reject the natural-seeming loanword-adjacent native term 変身 | The single-word native option that would otherwise be the obvious choice is disqualified entirely by pop-culture saturation; the awkward periphrastic phrase is the doctrinally safer choice despite reduced fluency. |
| Grace is sufficient (ἀρκεῖ ἡ χάρις) | Paraphrase using established baseline term (恵みで十分です) | No transliteration applicable; full baseline “grace” term retained without deviation per glossary enforcement priority. |
| Holy kiss (φίλημα ἅγιον) | Literal paraphrase (聖なる口づけ), with cultural-adaptation note | Not a doctrinal decision but a practical one: physical kissing as ordinary greeting is foreign to Japanese custom (bowing is normative); render literally and append a note that this reflects the original setting’s custom rather than mandating contemporary practice. |
| Aramaic/Greek theological proper nouns (Amen, Hallelujah) | Transliterate (アーメン, ハレルヤ), per baseline | No new instances introduced in 2 Corinthians beyond the baseline’s existing convention; noted here only for completeness — 2 Corinthians introduces no new Aramaic terms comparable to Romans’ Abba. |
General principle observed: transliteration is reserved for proper nouns and terms with no viable semantic content to paraphrase (Satan, Amen); paraphrase is preferred wherever a loanword’s contemporary secular/commercial register (パラダイス, パワー-class risk, 大使) would trivialize or narrow the doctrinal content, even at the cost of translation fluency (as with 変身 → 姿を変えられて).
Part 4: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision probability), for Phase 2 translator priority attention. Items 1–5 are Critical risk; 6–11 are High risk.
- Reconciliation (和解), 2 Cor 5:18–20. The core-passage climax term; 和解’s default “mutual settlement” (示談) sense directly contradicts the unilateral, God-initiated, no-human-contribution structure of the doctrine. Highest-priority ambiguity in the entire curriculum.
- “The Lord is the Spirit” (3:17–18) — 聖霊 vs. 御霊. A single wrong kanji/word choice here risks assimilating Trinitarian identification to Japan’s enshrined-ancestor/war-dead spirit theology (goryō shinkō/eirei). Zero tolerance for 御霊 in this specific passage.
- Righteousness (義) at 5:21’s climactic exchange formula (“he made him to be sin… so that we might become the righteousness of God”). The single verse in the letter where the Bushido-virtue collision (courage/rectitude on display) and the forensic-exchange doctrine are in most direct tension.
- “The god of this age” (4:4) — 神 applied to Satan. The one passage in the whole curriculum requiring the baseline’s mandatory “one true God” qualifying convention to be inverted into a disqualifying convention; a missed flag here risks the single most severe possible misreading (implying real deity for Satan).
- Grace as non-transactional (恵み), recurring across chs. 1–2, 4, 6, 8–9, 12–13. The on-giri reciprocity risk is not confined to soteriology in this letter — it recurs independently in forgiveness (2:7–10), financial giving (8–9), and Paul’s own affliction (12:9), multiplying the surface area for collision compared to Romans.
- New creation (新しい創造) vs. jiko-keihatsu self-improvement culture, 5:17. High probability of being heard as a motivational reinvention slogan rather than an ontological divine act, given the sheer size and normalization of Japan’s self-help publishing/seminar market.
- Transformed (3:18) — mandatory avoidance of 変身. A single lapse into the natural-sounding but pop-culture-saturated word would trivialize progressive sanctification into a tokusatsu costume-change trope; requires active vigilance since 変身 is the more fluent, expected choice.
- Judgment seat of Christ (5:10) vs. Enma-ō (閻魔) folk-Buddhist judgment imagery. Risk of readers importing a karmic-weighing-of-deeds framework that would contradict the passage’s own reconciliation-already-accomplished context just five verses earlier.
- Paradise (12:4) vs. 極楽 (Pure Land Buddhist paradise) and パラダイス tourism branding. Double collision risk on a single term — one doctrinal (Buddhist cosmology), one commercial (trivializing leisure branding) — requiring the paraphrase decision in Part 3 to be strictly maintained.
- Power in weakness (12:9–10) vs. ganbaru achievement culture. High probability that Japanese readers, primed by a deeply normalized “persevere through hardship toward eventual strength/success” cultural script, will read Paul’s paradox backward — as encouragement to overcome weakness rather than as God’s power displayed precisely through its continuance.
- Sincerity (誠実さ) vs. tatemae/honne performance, 1:12; 2:17; 4:2. Because seijitsu-sa is already a celebrated social-performance virtue in Japanese business/hospitality culture, there is a real risk that apostolic sincerity is read as skillful conduct management rather than as the doctrine’s actual claim: the elimination of any gap between honne and tatemae before God.
This analysis is the linguistic foundation for analysis/08_core_glossary.md and the proposed new entries in assets/bible_term_registry.json. All Critical-ranked ambiguities above require theologian sign-off before any Phase 2 segment translation touching the cited verses proceeds.