Linguistic Gap Analysis — Acts (English → Japanese)

Purpose and Scope

This document executes Phase 1 Step 8 (Linguistic Gap Analysis) for the Acts curriculum, extending the Romans baseline Language Package into new doctrinal and lexical territory. It analyzes where existing Japanese theological vocabulary is sufficient, where it is absent, and where it is dangerously crowded by competing Shinto, Buddhist, Bushido, folk-religious, or secularized meanings.

Coverage is full-book (Acts 1–28). The core passage (Acts 2:1–41, Pentecost) is treated as the theological anchor and receives the deepest analysis, but every chapter is reviewed; chapters contributing no new lexical risk are explicitly noted as reviewed rather than silently skipped.

This analysis assumes the Romans baseline translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json as settled law (Section A of 08_core_glossary.md). It focuses on (1) the doctrine-by-term vocabulary matrix, (2) missing-vocabulary vs. crowded-neighborhood classification, (3) transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions, and (4) a ranked ambiguity list to drive Phase 2 review routing priority.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the nine Acts curriculum doctrines: available Japanese terms, their weaknesses, and the recommended handling strategy.

1.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
聖霊 (baseline, Critical)	None on its own — but Acts uses it far more densely (2, 4–8, 10, 13, 15, 19, 21) than Romans, raising cumulative exposure to the animistic-spirit-world collision at every single occurrence, not just first use.	Reuse baseline exactly. Escalate baseline instruction: require the 聖 qualifier at every occurrence in Acts, not only first occurrence/doctrinal statements, given occurrence density.
五旬節 (Pentecost)	Zero prior exposure for secular readers; no OT Feast-of-Weeks/Shavuot schema to hang it on. Pure blankness risk, not a false-concept risk.	New term. Retain 五旬節 as the anchor (continuity with OT festival calendar); permit ペンテコステ as a supplementary gloss only, never as the primary rendering (it would sever the OT-fulfillment link).
他国の言葉 (tongues, known languages) vs. 異言 (tongues, ecstatic)	Greek uses one word family (γλῶσσαι) for two distinct phenomena; Japanese vocabulary forces an early either/or choice that the Greek text does not force at first glance.	Fence the two terms apart explicitly at first occurrence (2:4) with a translator’s note explaining that Acts itself later (10:46; 19:6) narrates a related-but-distinct phenomenon using the same Greek root. Never use 異言 for the Pentecost languages of ch. 2; never use 他国の言葉 for ch. 10/19.
聖霊に満たされる (filled with the Spirit)	Risk of overlap with 霊が取り憑く (folk spirit-possession vocabulary), which in popular usage names ambiguous or malevolent possession phenomena (cf. horror genre, folk exorcism accounts).	New term, fenced against 取り憑く vocabulary absolutely; frame always as personal Trinitarian communion/empowerment, never involuntary possession by an ambiguous entity.
聖霊の賜物 (gift of the Holy Spirit)	Compound of two Critical/High terms; carries both the animistic-spirit risk of 聖霊 and the on-giri reciprocity risk of 賜物/恵み simultaneously.	Treat as its own Critical-tier compound entry (already done in the term registry); anchor firmly against Simon Magus’s attempted purchase (8:18–20) as the standing narrative refutation of any transactional reading.

1.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
異邦人 (baseline)	Adequate, but risk of default collapse into Japan’s uchi-soto (内・外) insider/outsider social frame if teaching is passive rather than active.	Reuse baseline; actively name and reject the uchi-soto framing at Acts 10, 11, 15 — the doctrinal hinge chapters — rather than relying on the term alone to carry the correction.
知られていない神 (unknown god)	Genuinely apt bridge to yaoyorozu no kami (八百万の神) tradition — but the bridge is also the danger: too smooth a bridge risks the true God being received as merely one more identified kami added to an already vast pantheon.	New term, Critical tier. Mandatory 唯一のまことの神 qualifier immediately following, per baseline’s God entry; explicit teaching note contrasting countable-plural kami with the singular, uncountable Creator category.
汚れたもの／きよくないもの (common/unclean)	Direct surface overlap with Shinto kegare (穢れ) and its ritual remedy harae/misogi (祓い／禊) — a live, still-practiced category in modern Japan (shrine purification, New Year rites), unlike most other risk terms in this book which collide with historical/discontinued practice.	New term. Fence hard: teach as abolition of a specific OT ceremonial distinction fulfilled in Christ, explicitly not commentary on or replacement for the ongoing Shinto purity system, which remains a live, unrelated cultural practice for many readers.
神は人を偏り見ない (no partiality)	Not a lexical gap so much as a softening risk — natural Japanese register tends toward diplomatic hedging; a flat literal rendering could be smoothed in drafting toward something more socially palatable.	Preserve as an unqualified universal statement; validation rule required (see §4) checking the rendering has not been softened.
無知の時代 (times of ignorance)	Formal, somewhat abstract theological register; risk of being read as an excuse-clause (“they didn’t know, so it’s fine”) rather than a hinge into present accountability.	New term; pair explicitly with 悔い改め (repentance) command in the same breath, per Acts 17:30’s own grammar, to prevent the excuse-reading.

1.3 Repentance and Baptism

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
悔い改め (repentance)	Crowded neighborhood. Competes with (a) 反省 — secular self-reflection/regret, heavily reinforced by Japan’s public corporate/political apology-press-conference culture, and (b) 懺悔 — Buddhist-inflected ritual confession. Both are readily available, more familiar substitutes a drafter or reviewer might reach for.	Reuse established term; forbid substitution with 反省 or 懺悔 in doctrinal statements; require an explanatory note at first occurrence (2:38) distinguishing Godward whole-person reorientation from socially-performed acknowledgment of fault.
バプテスマ (baptism, transliteration) vs. 洗礼 (baptism, native compound)	洗礼 is intelligible but its literal “washing rite” sense risks pulling toward Shinto ceremonial water purification (清め／禊) — a live collision given how visually similar full-body/water ritual is to indigenous practice. バプテスマ avoids the collision but costs comprehension for biblically illiterate readers.	Transliteration preferred as primary term (バプテスマ), per established Shinkaiyaku convention; 洗礼 permissible as a secondary gloss with an explicit note that this is not Shinto purification from ritual pollution but forgiveness of sin before a personal God.
罪の赦し (forgiveness of sins)	Critical risk of an implicit works-righteousness reading: 2:38’s grammar (baptism “for” forgiveness) can be misread in Japanese, where sequencing markers are looser, as baptism being the meritorious cause rather than the accompanying response.	Mandatory catechetical note at every occurrence (2, 10, 13, 26) clarifying logical priority of grace; treat as a standing Critical-tier flag requiring theologian review whenever it co-occurs with baptism vocabulary.
家族 (household, in salvation contexts)	Collectivist misreading risk: Japan’s ie (家) household-continuity tradition, reinforced historically by the Edo-period terauke system (temple registration passing corporately through the household head), could suggest one member’s faith automatically secures the whole household’s salvation.	New term; explicit note at each occurrence (10, 16, 18) affirming each individual household member’s own faith-response, even while proclamation naturally moves along household lines.

1.4 The Church as Community

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
教会 (church, baseline) vs. 会堂 (synagogue, new term)	Risk of terminological blur, since Acts narrates the church’s emergence out of synagogue contexts repeatedly (13–19); a careless rendering could use 教会-adjacent language for synagogue scenes or vice versa.	Keep strictly distinct throughout; never use 教会 for a synagogue scene prior to the narrative’s explicit transition point in each city.
交わり (fellowship, baseline)	Adequate but risk of collapsing into 仲間意識 (generic in-group harmony feeling, reinforced by Japan’s wa culture) if the apostolic-teaching anchor is dropped from view.	Reuse baseline; keep 2:42’s fourfold list (teaching/fellowship/breaking of bread/prayer) intact as a single unit so 交わり is never isolated from its doctrinal anchor.
パンを裂くこと (breaking of bread)	Risk of flattening into 会食 (ordinary communal meal-sharing), a very common, low-weight secular Japanese social term (work dinners, potlucks).	New term; retain literal rendering rather than substituting a natural-sounding but weight-losing paraphrase; note covenantal/sacramental resonance at first occurrence.
持ち物を共有していた (holding all things common)	Given Japan’s strong group-harmony (和) culture and 20th-century collectivist economic memory, risk of being read either as (a) an enforced ideological system or (b) unremarkable given already-high social conformity, thus losing its force as a voluntary, Spirit-motivated act.	New term; explicit “voluntary, motivated by love, not by external enforcement” note required at both occurrences (2:44–45; 4:32–35).
監督／長老 (overseer/elder)	監督 carries strong secular “coach/director” overtones (sports team manager, film director) in ordinary usage; the shepherd metaphor undergirding ποιμαίνω has no strong indigenous Japanese pastoral-herding referent to draw on (biblical-illiteracy gap, not false-concept collision).	New term; explanatory teaching of the shepherd/flock image itself required, not assumed as intuitive.

1.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
しるしと不思議 (signs and wonders)	不思議 has strong secular dilution into “curious/mysterious/quaint” everyday usage (casual conversational “不思議だね”), parallel to 復活’s pop-culture dilution risk already flagged in baseline.	Reuse; active teaching restoration of weight as divinely-authenticating acts, not simply curiosities.
手を置く／按手 (laying on of hands)	Surface-resemblance risk to Buddhist esoteric hand-laying rites (加持, kaji, Shingon/Tendai practice understood as transmitting the practitioner’s own accumulated spiritual attainment).	New term; fence explicitly: this is a prayerful sign accompanying God’s sovereign giving, not a power-transmission technique dependent on the practitioner’s own attainment.
イエスの名によって (in the name of Jesus)	Risk of being heard through Japanese folk-magic incantation formulas (陰陽師 spell traditions) or modern pop-culture “chant the name for power” tropes (a live risk given tokusatsu/anime saturation, per baseline’s power_of_god caution).	New term; fence as authorized action under delegated Lordship, not verbal incantation with inherent power.
魔術 (magic/sorcery)	Requires care not to appear to mock or single out Japan’s own indigenous occult/divination heritage (陰陽師, folk exorcism, fortune-telling) as uniquely condemned, when the text condemns manipulative purchasable spiritual power as a general category.	New term; teach as one culturally proximate example of a general condemned category, not a target of cultural derision.
神のみこころのすべて (whole counsel of God)	Formal register; ties conceptually to 摂理 (providence) but the connection is not obvious without an explicit bridge, risking the two being processed as unrelated formal phrases.	New term; explicit cross-reference note to 摂理 and to Acts 2:23’s βουλή vocabulary required.

1.6 Persecution and Bold Witness

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
大胆に (boldness)	Direct collision with Japan’s strong conformity culture (出る杭は打たれる, “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”); risk of reading as socially inappropriate self-assertion or arrogance rather than virtue.	New term; every occurrence (4, 9, 13–14, 19, 26, 28) requires framing as Spirit-empowered, God-directed courage flowing from having been with Jesus (4:13) — not a personality trait or social transgression.
証人 (witness)	証人 names a legal courtroom witness in standard secular Japanese usage, risking a merely juridical reading disconnected from firsthand resurrection testimony.	New term; connect forward explicitly to 殉教 (martyrdom) as the same conceptual root the Greek μάρτυς unifies but Japanese formally separates.
殉教／殉教者 (martyr/martyrdom)	No single Japanese word bridges witness → martyrdom the way Greek μάρτυς does; introducing 殉教 without the bridge note loses this deliberate narrative arc (1:8 → 2:32 → 7 → 22:20).	New term; introduce explicitly at Stephen’s death (ch. 7) with the bridge note back to 証人.
サンヘドリン (Sanhedrin)	議会 alone risks a modern-parliament reading (Japan’s own National Diet is 国会), erasing the specific Jewish judicial-religious character of the body.	Prefer transliteration サンヘドリン with explanatory gloss (ユダヤの最高法院); do not use 議会 unqualified.

1.7 Conversion of Paul

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
回心 (conversion)	Standard Japanese Christian theological term, but also used in ordinary secular Japanese for any decisive change of opinion/political view — risk of reading Paul’s conversion as a psychological attitude shift he arrived at himself.	New term; explicit note at each of the three narrations (9, 22, 26) that this is Spirit-wrought and God-initiated, not self-generated reflection.
選びの器 (chosen instrument)	Risk of merit-based misreading through Japan’s competitive exam/hiring “selection” culture (受験, 選抜) — being “selected” colloquially implies passing a competitive process.	New term; teach as the paradigm case overturning merit-selection — Paul is chosen while actively persecuting the church, making this the single strongest available anti-merit illustration in the whole book.
目を開かせ、闇から光に立ち返らせる (opening eyes/darkness to light)	Broadly cross-cultural, low collision — but risk of drifting toward Buddhist 悟り (satori, sudden enlightenment) if rendered with vocabulary evocative of inner awakening rather than relational reorientation before God.	New term; anchor specifically to spiritual/moral blindness before God, avoid enlightenment-adjacent vocabulary.

1.8 Justification apart from the Law

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
義と認められること (justification, baseline)	Reused correctly, but Acts 13:38–39’s direct explicit pairing with 律法 (“could not be justified by the law of Moses”) is the first full Acts statement and thus a higher-density collision point than most Romans occurrences.	Reuse baseline exactly; flag Acts 13:38–39 as a Critical-tier priority passage for theologian review given its status as doctrinal thesis statement for this specific curriculum doctrine.
義 (righteousness, baseline)	Same Bushido-virtue collision as baseline (Nitobe’s codified moral-courage virtue); recurs at 13:38–39 and, notably, 24:25 in a non-forensic, general-ethics-adjacent context (Paul addressing Felix on “righteousness, self-control, and coming judgment”).	Reuse baseline; note the register shift at 24:25 — here 義 functions closer to general moral righteousness in a courtroom-apologetic speech, requiring a distinct contextual note from the strictly forensic sense at 13:38–39. Do not treat both occurrences identically without comment.
割礼 (circumcision)	Pure biblical-illiteracy gap; no cultural analog at all for the rite’s covenantal significance.	New term; requires full first-principles explanation of the Abrahamic/Mosaic covenant background at first occurrence (15:1).
律法 (law, baseline)	Adequate; central hinge is Acts 15 (Jerusalem Council), the definitive narrative resolution.	Reuse baseline; treat Acts 15 as the doctrinal companion passage to Acts 13:38–39, cross-referenced.

1.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled

Available Term	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
地の果てまで (to the end of the earth)	Risk of being read as poetic hyperbole rather than a literal programmatic scope statement structuring the entire book’s geography.	New term; teach as literal narrative-structuring statement (Jerusalem → Judea/Samaria → the nations), echoed at 1:8, 13:47, fulfilled by 28.
王国を回復してくださる (restoring the kingdom)	This is the disciples’ mistaken nationalistic question — risk that a drafter renders it neutrally, losing the fact that Jesus directly corrects it.	New term; must be paired immediately with Jesus’s correction (1:7–8) in any teaching excerpt, since the text’s own rhetorical structure is corrective, not affirming.
神の国 (kingdom of God, baseline)	Baseline’s mandatory anchoring against 神国日本 (pre-1945 State Shinto slogan) applies with added force in Acts, since 1:6’s nationalistic-restoration question and 28:31’s closing “unhindered” statement bookend the entire book — both are natural, textually-motivated anchor points, unlike some Romans occurrences that require the anchor to be supplied externally.	Reuse baseline; treat Acts 1:6 as the single best teaching opportunity in the whole curriculum to proactively defuse the State Shinto resonance, since the text corrects the nationalistic misreading in its own next verse.
聖徒たちの間の相続財産 (inheritance among the sanctified)	Long descriptive compound, not an established single term; risk of being paraphrased inconsistently across documents.	New term; lock exact rendering in translation memory to guarantee cross-document consistency (per baseline’s Theological Consistency Rules).

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

Acts’ new vocabulary demands fall into two structurally different problem types requiring different mitigation strategies.

2.1 Missing Vocabulary (Blankness Risk — No Japanese Term Exists at All)

These concepts have no ready-made Japanese lexical item; the risk is comprehension gap, not competing false meaning. Mitigation: coin a descriptive compound, lock it in translation memory, and provide first-principles explanatory teaching.

Concept	Gap Type	Mitigation
五旬節 / Pentecost’s OT festival background	No Shavuot/Feast-of-Weeks schema exists for secular readers	Explanatory teaching from OT festival calendar; do not assume comprehension from the term alone
割礼 / Circumcision’s covenantal significance	No cultural analog to the rite’s covenant-sign function	Full first-principles explanation required at first occurrence
神のみこころのすべて / Whole counsel of God	No single established compound; assembled descriptively	Lock exact phrase in translation memory for cross-document consistency
聖徒たちの間の相続財産 / Inheritance among the sanctified	No single established compound	Lock exact phrase in translation memory
監督／長老 (shepherd metaphor underlying pastoral office)	No indigenous pastoral-herding tradition to draw the image from	Explanatory teaching of the shepherd/flock image itself, not just the office title
王国を回復してくださる / Restoring the kingdom (nationalistic sense)	Not missing vocabulary per se, but a missing narrative frame — readers will not automatically recognize this as a corrected misunderstanding without explicit signposting	Pair with Jesus’s correction in the same teaching unit

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (False-Concept / Dilution Risk — Too Many Competing Meanings Already Occupy the Space)

These terms already have vivid, active Japanese associations that risk substituting for the biblical concept rather than merely under-communicating it. Mitigation: explicit fencing — a stated, repeated distinction from the named competitor concept.

Term	Crowding Neighbors	Fencing Note Required
悔い改め (repentance)	反省 (secular self-reflection/regret; corporate apology-press-conference culture), 懺悔 (Buddhist ritual confession)	Godward whole-person reorientation, not socially-performed fault acknowledgment
バプテスマ／洗礼 (baptism)	清め／禊 (Shinto ceremonial water purification, harae/misogi)	Forgiveness of sin before a personal God, not ceremonial-pollution removal
聖霊に満たされる (filled with the Spirit)	霊が取り憑く (folk spirit-possession, horror/pop-culture genre)	Personal Trinitarian communion, not ambiguous involuntary possession
異言 (ecstatic tongues)	Folk-shamanic/mediumship trance phenomena	Spirit-given, church-edifying purpose, not dissociated trance
汚れたもの (common/unclean)	Shinto kegare ritual impurity and its harae remedy — a live, still-practiced modern category	Abolished OT ceremonial distinction, not commentary on or replacement for ongoing Shinto purity practice
手を置く／按手 (laying on of hands)	Buddhist esoteric hand-laying rites (加持, kaji)	Prayerful sign accompanying God’s sovereign gift, not power-transmission technique
イエスの名によって (in the name of Jesus)	Folk-magic incantation formulas (陰陽師 spells); pop-culture “power word” tropes	Authorized delegated action, not incantation with inherent verbal power
魔術 (magic/sorcery)	Japan’s own indigenous occult/divination heritage (陰陽師, folk exorcism)	General condemned category of manipulative purchasable power; not derision of Japanese folk tradition specifically
くじ (casting lots)	おみくじ (Shinto/Buddhist fortune-slip drawing at shrines/temples)	Spirit-guided decision-method, not fortune-telling
この道 (the Way)	道 (dō) as disciplined-practice suffix (茶道, 剣道), and especially 神道 itself (“the way of the kami”) — direct etymological overlap	Anchored to specific content (faith in the risen, exclusive Lord Jesus), not a generic interchangeable named Way
回心 (conversion)	Secular usage for any decisive opinion/attitude change	Spirit-wrought, God-initiated total reorientation, not self-generated reflection
選びの器／選び (chosen instrument/election)	受験／選抜 (competitive exam/hiring selection culture)	Sovereign, unmerited choice — Paul chosen while persecuting the church
知られていない神 (unknown god)	Yaoyorozu no kami (八百万の神) pantheon-inclusion framing	Singular, categorically unique Creator, not one more identified kami
家族 (household, salvation context)	Ie (家) household-continuity tradition; historical terauke corporate religious registration	Individual faith-response of each household member, not automatic corporate salvation
大胆に (boldness)	Conformity-culture pressure (出る杭は打たれる)	Spirit-empowered, God-directed courage, not social transgression
証人 (witness)	Legal courtroom witness (secular usage)	Firsthand resurrection testimony; bridge forward to 殉教
サンヘドリン／議会 (Sanhedrin)	Modern parliamentary body (国会) if rendered as 議会 alone	Ancient Jewish supreme religious-judicial court
監督 (overseer)	Secular “coach/director” (sports/film) usage	Sacrificial shepherding pastoral care, not managerial direction

Structural observation: Acts’ crowded-neighborhood risks skew more toward live, currently-practiced competing rituals (Shinto purification, shrine fortune-slips, esoteric hand-laying) than Romans’ baseline risks, which skewed toward historical/discontinued doctrines (State Shinto emperor-worship, Kirishitan-era terminology). This raises the practical stakes: a Japanese reader is statistically more likely to have personally drawn an omikuji or visited a shrine for harae than to hold any active State Shinto conviction. Phase 2 teaching materials should weight explanatory effort accordingly.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Pentecost	Paraphrase/compound (五旬節), transliteration (ペンテコステ) as supplementary gloss only	Preserves OT festival-calendar continuity; the Shinkaiyaku tradition anchor outweighs the comprehension cost
Baptism	Transliteration primary (バプテスマ), native compound (洗礼) as secondary gloss with fencing note	Avoids 洗礼’s pull toward Shinto ritual washing; matches established Shinkaiyaku convention
Sanhedrin	Transliteration primary (サンヘドリン) with explanatory gloss (ユダヤの最高法院)	議会 alone imports a modern-parliament reading; transliteration + gloss cleanly isolates the ancient institution
Christians	Transliteration (クリスチャン), already established loanword	Broad but shallow secular recognition; still requires explanatory teaching to move past a generic Western-associated sense
The Way	Paraphrase (この道), not transliteration	A transliterated Greek loanword would forfeit the valuable — if risky — 道 (dō) teaching bridge entirely; paraphrase retained specifically to exploit and then fence the bridge
Tongues (known languages)	Paraphrase (他国の言葉), not transliteration and not reuse of 異言	Must be lexically distinct from ecstatic tongues; a descriptive paraphrase makes the distinction self-evident in a way a shared transliteration could not
Tongues (ecstatic)	Native compound (異言), established theological usage	Standard rendering in Japanese Pentecostal/charismatic theological discourse; retained but fenced against shamanic-trance association
Unknown god	Paraphrase (知られていない神), not transliteration of ἄγνωστος θεός	The Greek phrase itself has no transliteration tradition in Japanese Bible history; paraphrase is the only viable option and must carry the mandatory 唯一のまことの神 qualifier
Simon Magus’s “magic”	Native compound (魔術), not transliteration of μαγεία	Native compound already carries appropriate negative connotation in Japanese without needing a loanword; no comprehension gap exists here
Messiah/Christ	Transliteration (キリスト) — baseline reuse, no change	Baseline already establishes this as the standard, unavoidable term; Acts inherits the same heavy-explanatory-teaching requirement rather than a different decision
Ascension	Native compound, dual-form: 天に上げられた (descriptive) primary, 昇天 (compact) secondary	昇天 alone risks Daoist immortal-ascension or generic Buddhist/Shinto afterlife-departure association if used without the fuller descriptive form nearby

General principle applied: transliteration is preferred where (a) a Shinkaiyaku transliteration tradition already exists (Pentecost’s ペンテコステ as gloss, バプテスマ, サンヘドリン, キリスト), or (b) the concept has no safe native equivalent at all (unknown god’s paraphrase excepted, since no transliteration tradition exists for that specific Greek phrase). Paraphrase/native-compound is preferred where (a) exploiting a native term’s connotative weight is doctrinally advantageous once properly fenced (この道, 魔術), or (b) two distinct source-language senses sharing one Greek word family must be kept visibly separate in Japanese (他国の言葉 vs. 異言).

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4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities (Acts-Specific)

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision plausibility × occurrence frequency), for Phase 2 review-routing prioritization within this curriculum. Baseline Critical-tier terms (神, イエス, 聖霊, 主, 救い, 恵み, 義, 義と認められること, キリスト, 神の子) are presumed already at maximum priority per the baseline and are not re-ranked here; this list ranks Acts-specific new risks and Acts-specific intensifications of baseline risks.

1. 知られていない神 (unknown god / idols, Acts 17) — Critical. The single most theologically delicate new bridge-term in the curriculum: genuinely useful contact point with yaoyorozu no kami, but one careless sentence turns Paul’s exclusive-Creator proclamation into pantheon-inclusion. Requires mandatory theologian review at every occurrence.

2. 聖霊の賜物 (gift of the Holy Spirit) — Critical. Compound stacking of two individually Critical/High risks (聖霊’s animism collision + 恵み/賜物’s on-giri collision); Simon Magus narrative (8:18–20) makes the transactional misreading a live narrative temptation, not merely an abstract risk.

3. 罪の赦し in baptismal context (2:38; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18) — Critical. Directly touches Justification apart from the Law’s core concern; Japanese sequencing grammar around “baptism for forgiveness” is genuinely more permissive of a causal/meritorious misreading than English is.

4. 汚れたもの／きよくないもの (common/unclean, Acts 10) — High/Critical-adjacent. Unlike most other collision risks in this analysis, this one collides with a currently, actively practiced Shinto purity system (kegare/harae), not a historical or discontinued belief — raising real-world plausibility of the wrong association significantly above average.

5. 回心 (conversion) at Acts 9/22/26 — High. Paul’s conversion is narrated three times, making this term’s secular “changed my mind” dilution risk cumulative across the book rather than a single-occurrence risk; requires consistent fencing at each of the three narrations, not just the first.

6. 義 register shift between Acts 13:38–39 (forensic) and Acts 24:25 (general-ethics-adjacent) — High. A single glossary entry risks obscuring that Paul’s own usage shifts register within the book itself; flag for theologian attention as a within-book consistency question, not just a Romans-baseline collision.

7. 大胆に (boldness) — High. Direct, sustained collision with Japan’s conformity culture across seven+ occurrences (4, 9, 13–14, 19, 26, 28); this is not a single flashpoint but a recurring low-grade risk across the entire second half of the book.

8. 他国の言葉 vs. 異言 (the two “tongues”) — High. The single clearest case in this curriculum of one source-language term family requiring two permanently distinct Japanese terms; a translator reusing 異言 for Acts 2 (rather than reserving it for 10/19) would create real doctrinal confusion about the nature of the Pentecost sign.

9. この道 (the Way) — High. The etymological overlap with 神道 (“the way of the kami”) is not incidental — it is Japan’s own indigenous religion’s name-root. This is the highest-value/highest-risk bridge term in the whole Acts glossary, requiring the most active anchoring of any “helpful bridge” term identified.

10. 選びの器／選び (chosen instrument, Acts 9:15) — High. The competitive-selection (受験/選抜) misreading is especially dangerous here because it runs directly counter to the narrative point (Paul chosen while persecuting the church) — get this wrong and the illustration inverts its own doctrinal purpose.

11. 神の国 at Acts 1:6 and 28:31 — High. Elevated above its baseline High rating for this curriculum specifically because Acts uniquely bookends the entire narrative with this term in a context (1:6’s nationalistic question) that is itself a built-in teaching opportunity — a missed opportunity here is a larger loss than in a typical Romans occurrence.

12. 家族 (household salvation, Acts 10/16/18) — Medium-High. Collectivist misreading risk compounded by the historical terauke corporate-registration precedent, giving Japanese readers a specific historical analog (rather than a purely abstract risk) for corporate-by-default religious affiliation.

13. 手を置く／按手 (laying on of hands) — Medium-High. Collision with Buddhist kaji ritual is subtle (both involve a religious figure’s hands and a claimed spiritual effect) and easy to overlook precisely because it does not involve an obviously “wrong” word choice, only an unstated wrong inference.

14. くじ (casting lots, Acts 1:26) — Medium. Lower narrative weight (a single, minor decision-episode) but very high cultural familiarity of the competing association (omikuji shrine-visit practice is near-universal in Japan), making the misreading easy to form even though the doctrinal stakes are comparatively small.

15. 証人 → 殉教 bridge (witness → martyrdom) — Medium. Not a false-concept risk but a structural-loss risk: failing to bridge these terms loses one of Acts’ most deliberate narrative arcs (1:8 promise → 7’s fulfillment) without introducing any actively wrong idea — lower urgency than items above but a real loss of doctrinal richness if unaddressed.

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5. Full-Book Coverage Confirmation

All 28 chapters of Acts have been reviewed for linguistic-gap content. Chapters not separately itemized in the matrices above (e.g., portions of chs. 3, 5, 16, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27 not already covered under a listed term’s occurrence list) were reviewed and found to introduce no new load-bearing vocabulary beyond terms already catalogued in 08_core_glossary.md Sections A–B and reflected in this analysis; their content is carried by terms already ranked and fenced above (e.g., ch. 16’s household/baptism vocabulary, ch. 27’s providence vocabulary, ch. 25’s Sanhedrin/legal-proceeding vocabulary). This satisfies the full-book-coverage mandate: every chapter has been checked, and chapters contributing no new lexical risk are explicitly noted here as reviewed rather than silently omitted.

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Cross-reference: analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md for verse-level contextual detail underlying every term above; analysis/08_core_glossary.md for the full glossary entries; assets/bible_term_registry.json for the canonical per-term registry records; Romans baseline translation_memory.json and doctrine_risk_registry.json for all inherited terms and risk-tier conventions, which this analysis extends but never contradicts. This document feeds Phase 1 Step 9 (Doctrine Risk Registry update) and Phase 1 Step 12 (AI Translation Requirements update) for the Acts curriculum.