Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — Luke 1–24 (English → Japanese)
This analysis extends, and never contradicts, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json and the Luke-specific 08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json already produced for this curriculum. It answers four questions for Phase 2 planning: (1) for each of the eight curriculum doctrines, what Japanese vocabulary exists and where does it strain; (2) where is Japanese genuinely missing vocabulary versus where is an existing word overcrowded by competing religious/secular senses that must be fenced; (3) where should the AI transliterate rather than paraphrase (and vice versa); (4) which specific ambiguities carry the highest doctrinal risk across the whole book, ranked.
All Critical/High items below inherit the baseline’s human-theologian escalation routing; Medium items inherit native-speaker routing; Low items inherit automated routing, per doctrine_risk_registry.json’s risk_definitions.
Part 1 — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
1. Jesus as Savior for All Nations and All People (Jew and Gentile, Rich and Poor)
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 救い主 (savior), 異邦人 (Gentiles), 百人隊長 (centurion), 貧しい人 (poor), ザアカイ (Zacchaeus, transliterated) | 救い主 risks loose popular equation with Amida Buddha as a folk-explained “savior” figure, or with a secular ヒーロー (hero) archetype saturating manga/tokusatsu culture. 異邦人 must resist collapsing into casual 外人 (outsider), reinforcing Japan’s uchi-soto insider/outsider frame rather than the redemptive-historical category Luke intends. “Rich and poor” together is a genuinely low-frequency social pairing in Japanese public discourse given the 一億総中流 (“all 100 million are middle class”) self-image, so both terms individually exist but the paired social-inclusion claim is under-resourced. | Reuse 救い主/異邦人 exactly as fixed. Require an explicit non-equivalence footnote wherever 救い主 occurs near tariki (other-power) teaching bridges. Actively teach the rich-poor pairing as a deliberate narrative device (centurion/Zacchaeus wealth vs. shepherds/widows poverty) rather than assuming the pairing self-evidently reads as inclusive in Japanese social imagination. |
2. The Holy Spirit’s Work in Salvation History
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 聖霊 (Holy Spirit, fixed Critical), 御使い (angel), 神の力 (power of God), 上からの力 (power from on high) | 聖霊 is doctrinally sound but Luke’s sheer density of occurrences (15+ distinct passages from 1:15 through 24:49) multiplies exposure to the underlying animistic-spirit-world collision risk documented in the baseline; a single explanatory footnote at first occurrence is insufficient across a 24-chapter narrative arc. 御使い is vulnerable to contemporary エンジェルカード/パワーストーン pop-spirituality marketing, which frames “angels” as generic lucky-charm guardian figures rather than commissioned divine messengers. | Reuse 聖霊 exactly; require repeated (not single) reinforcement at each major narrative cluster (infancy narrative, Jordan/temptation, Nazareth manifesto, Pentecost promise). For 御使い, anchor every occurrence to the messenger’s specific commissioned function and message content, not aesthetic association. |
3. Good News to the Poor and Marginalized
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 貧しい人 (poor), 目の見えない人 (blind), 捕らわれ人 (captive), 抑圧された人 (oppressed), 重い皮膚病の人 (leper), やもめ (widow), 足のなえた人/体の不自由な人 (lame/disabled), 取税人 (tax collector) | This is the doctrine with the largest blankness gap in the whole curriculum: Japan’s public self-narrative of broad middle-class uniformity, combined with genuine modern discomfort discussing visible poverty (stigma toward 路上生活者, the homeless) and disability, means competent vocabulary exists but carries low rhetorical charge — readers can process each term denotatively without feeling Luke’s narrative center of gravity resting on these figures. The leper terminology carries an added acute risk: Japan’s own 1907–1996 らい予防法 (Leprosy Prevention Law) enforced quarantine, making older terms (らい病人) actively discriminatory in living memory. | Use the descriptive, disability-sensitive compounds already fixed in the Part B glossary (重い皮膚病の人, 足のなえた人/体の不自由な人) with zero exceptions; never revert to historical terminology even in quotation or paraphrase. Teaching materials must explicitly name and counteract the middle-class-uniformity blind spot rather than assuming the poor/marginalized emphasis registers automatically as it might in a culture with more visible economic stratification. |
4. Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 悔い改め (repentance, fixed Critical), 罪の赦し / 解放 (forgiveness/release, fixed Critical, context-split), 罪 (sin, fixed High), バプテスマ/洗礼 (baptism, fixed High) | 悔い改め risks collapse into secular 反省 (self-reflection/regret with no reference to God) or Buddhist ritual confession (懺悔). The ἄφεσις split (解放 for social/physical release vs. 罪の赦し for sin) is Japanese’s most severe structural gap in this doctrine: the single Greek word’s deliberate conceptual bridge between liberation and forgiveness has no single Japanese lexical equivalent, so the connection must be built by explicit teaching rather than by the words themselves. 洗礼 risks conflation with Shinto ritual purification (清め/禊) addressing ceremonial pollution rather than repentance. | Retain 悔い改め and the 解放/罪の赦し split exactly as fixed; require a standing cross-reference note wherever both senses appear in the same passage (esp. 4:18-19) instructing the writer to make the liberation-forgiveness link explicit in prose, since the vocabulary alone will not carry it. Always verify 赦す (moral forgiveness) is used, never 許す (mere permission), at every occurrence — this is a homophone-adjacent kanji-choice risk parallel to the baseline’s 預言/予言 caution. |
5. Prayer and Dependence on God
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 祈り (prayer), 日ごとの糧 (daily bread), 心配する (worry/anxious), アバ (Abba), 摂理 (providence) | 祈り risks conflation with Shinto/Buddhist ritual petition practice (お参り, おみくじ) — a request-based transaction with a shrine/temple deity for favor — rather than relational address to a personal Father. 日ごとの糧’s dependence-on-provision framing runs directly counter to Japan’s strong self-sufficiency/diligence work ethic (勤勉), which is admired as a virtue; the term is not wrong but culturally counter-intuitive. 摂理 remains unfamiliar formal vocabulary to secular readers (a blankness risk, not a collision risk, per the baseline). | Reuse all terms exactly. For 祈り, explicitly distinguish the direction of address (a personal Father who already knows and cares, Luke 12:30) from the transactional structure of shrine/temple petition. For 日ごとの糧, frame dependence as trust rather than deficiency, given the counter-cultural valence of asking for only “enough for today” in a diligence-prizing culture. |
6. The Kingdom of God Present and Future
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 神の国 (fixed Medium in the baseline but functionally High-frequency-Critical in Luke), 神の国はあなたがたのただ中にあります (kingdom “in your midst”), 幸いである (blessed), 災いだ (woe) | 神の国 carries the pre-1945 State Shinto ultranationalist echo (神国日本) documented in the baseline, but Luke’s 30+ occurrences make this a cumulative risk rather than a single-instance risk: readers encounter the phrase far more often than in Romans, and any lapse in anchoring at even one occurrence leaves an un-anchored instance for the rest of the book to lean on. The “in your midst” vs. “within you” translation choice (17:20-21) risks drifting toward Buddhist inward-realization language (内なる悟り, satori-adjacent) if rendered individualistically. | Apply the Romans 14:17 doctrinal anchor not merely at first occurrence but at every chapter-cluster transition (Galilean ministry, travel narrative, Jerusalem ministry, Passion) — treat this as a recurring reinforcement requirement, not a one-time footnote. Lock the 17:20-21 rendering to the fixed communal “in your midst” form and forbid an individualized “within you” variant anywhere in the curriculum. |
7. The Cost and Joy of Discipleship
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 弟子 (disciple, fixed High), 従う (follow, fixed Medium), 十字架 (cross, fixed High), 喜び (joy, fixed Medium) | 弟子 collides with Japan’s living craft/martial-arts/tea-ceremony apprenticeship system (弟子制度), which is skill-transmission-oriented and culminates in graduation/independence (暖簾分け, noren-wake, “splitting the shop curtain” to open one’s own branch) — the opposite trajectory of lifelong, grace-based discipleship to Christ. 十字架 is secularized as an idiom for “a burden one must bear” (十字架を背負う, itself a historically Christian-influenced loanword-idiom now used with zero religious content, e.g. in career or family-obligation contexts). | Reuse both terms exactly, but require active doctrinal restoration language at every 十字架 occurrence rather than assuming the correct word alone conveys the doctrine (paralleling the baseline’s 復活 caution). For 弟子, explicitly name and reject the graduation/independence trajectory in teaching notes wherever discipleship’s permanence is thematically load-bearing (9:57-62; 14:26-33). |
8. Jesus’ Compassion and Table Fellowship with Sinners
| Available Japanese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 深く憐れむ (gut-level compassion), 憐れみ (mercy), 罪人 (sinner, social category, fixed High), 迎え入れる/一緒に食事をする (welcome/eat with, fixed High), 取税人 (tax collector) | 深く憐れむ must be distinguished from 同情 (dōjō), which carries a faint distancing/pitying connotation in ordinary Japanese usage — the opposite of the visceral, moved-to-action warmth σπλαγχνίζομαι requires. Modern Japan has no direct social-disgust equivalent for the tax collector’s first-century social contempt, making 取税人 denotatively correct but affectively flat without explanatory framing. Table fellowship’s ancient family-inclusion significance is easily read by modern readers as a minor social nicety (merely “being nice to eat with someone”) rather than a scandalous, boundary-crossing act of grace. | Reuse all fixed terms exactly. Require 深く憐れむ (never 同情) at every Compassion-doctrine passage. Require explicit historical-contempt framing for 取税人 at first occurrence (5:27) and recurrence (15:1; 19:2), and explicit “this was scandalous, not merely polite” framing for every table-fellowship scene (5:29-30; 7:36-50; 15:1-2; 19:1-10). |
Part 2 — Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2A. Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (blankness risk — no competing false concept, but no ready native term either)
| Concept | Japanese situation | Fencing/mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Jubilee background (Leviticus 25) underlying “the acceptable year of the Lord” (4:19) | No everyday Japanese vocabulary exists for a periodic debt-release/land-restoration/slave-freedom social institution; ヨベルの年 (Year of Jubilee) is a specialized OT-studies term unknown to general readers. | Do not rely on the term alone; every occurrence of 主の恵みの年 requires an explanatory bridge to Leviticus 25 supplied in teaching prose, not assumed background knowledge. |
| σῴζω’s healing/salvation wordplay (throughout, esp. 8:36-50; 17:19; 18:42; 19:10) | Japanese has no single verb spanning both senses the way Greek σῴζω does; idiomatic Japanese forces a split between 治る (physical healing) and 救われる (salvation). | Flag every occurrence for translator awareness (already recorded in the Luke term registry as Critical); supply a standing cross-reference note connecting the healing scenes to the salvation thesis of 19:10 so the split vocabulary does not erase Luke’s intended unity. |
| ἄφεσις’s liberation/forgiveness bridge (4:18-19) | As above (Doctrine 4) — structurally missing, not merely under-resourced. | See Doctrine 4 mitigation above. |
| ”Rich and poor” as a paired inclusion category | No natural single Japanese phrase pairs these as a doctrinal category the way Luke’s narrative structure does; 貧富 (rich-and-poor) exists as a neutral socioeconomic descriptor but carries no inherent gospel-inclusion resonance. | Teach the pairing explicitly as authorial structure (centurion/Zacchaeus alongside shepherds/widows), not as a phrase expected to carry doctrinal weight unaided. |
| Table fellowship’s ancient family-inclusion force | Modern Japanese dining customs (formal but largely status-neutral in casual settings) do not carry the same sharp honor/shame boundary-crossing weight that first-century Jewish table fellowship did. | Require explicit historical framing at every table-fellowship scene rather than assuming shared meals self-evidently signal radical acceptance to a modern Japanese reader. |
2B. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (existing term, but surrounded by competing/adjacent concepts requiring active fencing)
| Japanese term | Competing neighbor(s) | Fencing required |
|---|---|---|
| 神 (God) | Shinto’s yaoyorozu no kami (eight million kami); Buddhist deities | Already fenced in the baseline via 唯一のまことの神; Luke’s high density of divine-identity statements (1:32,35,47; 2:14) requires this fence reapplied at each cluster, not once. |
| 聖霊/霊 (Holy Spirit / spirit) | Animistic ancestor spirits, 幽霊 (ghosts), 妖怪 (folk spirit-monsters) | NEVER 霊 alone (baseline rule); reapply at every one of Luke’s 15+ occurrences rather than relying on a single early explanatory note to carry the whole book. |
| 悪魔/悪霊 (devil/demon) | 妖怪 folk-monster tradition; idiomatic secular “devilish” (悪魔的な) usage in food/fashion marketing | Fence as a real, personal, defeated spiritual being under Christ’s direct authority, not a folkloric trope or marketing adjective. |
| 復活 (resurrection) | Secular pop-culture “comeback” usage (band reunions, product relaunches, sports rallies) | Baseline caution intensifies at Luke 20:27-40 and ch. 24, the book’s highest-density resurrection material; require active weight-restoration teaching at both points. |
| 姿が変わる (transfigured) | Japanese folklore’s kitsune/tanuki henge (fox/tanuki shape-shifting tales); baseline-forbidden 化身/権化 avatar-manifestation concept | Fence explicitly: this is a one-time unveiling of permanent, pre-existing divine glory, not a magical shape-change or a repeatable manifestation. |
| 楽園 (paradise) | Secular travel/leisure marketing (“tropical paradise,” トロピカル楽園); Pure Land Buddhism’s 極楽 (gokuraku), sharing the character 楽 | Double fence: not a scenic reward-destination, and not equivalent to (though structurally adjacent to) the Pure Land cosmology of ongoing rebirth. |
| ハデス (Hades) | 黄泉 (Yomi), the named Shinto/Kojiki mythological underworld | Never substitute 黄泉; transliterate only, per the newly identified Critical risk with no baseline parallel. |
| 天に上げられた (Ascension) | Shinto posthumous apotheosis (deceased emperors/war dead enshrined as kami, e.g. Yasukuni Shrine) | Fence as the eternal, already-divine Son returning to preexistent glory, never a human elevated to divinity after death. |
| 弟子 (disciple) | Craft/martial-arts/tea-ceremony apprenticeship (弟子制度), oriented toward eventual graduation/independence (暖簾分け) | Fence as lifelong, grace-based allegiance never “graduated” from. |
| 十字架 (cross) | Secularized idiom for “a burden to bear” (十字架を背負う) | Fence with active doctrinal-weight restoration at every occurrence, paralleling the baseline’s 復活 caution. |
| 契約 (covenant), esp. 新しい契約 (new covenant) | Everyday commercial-contract usage (employment, rental, insurance) | Baseline dilution caution intensifies maximally at 22:20’s founding declaration; require the strongest relational/sacrificial framing available anywhere in the curriculum at this single verse. |
| 会堂 (synagogue) | 教会 (church) | Fence to preserve the redemptive-historical Jew-then-Gentile pattern; the two institutions must never be read as interchangeable. |
| 安息日 (Sabbath) | Secular 休日 (“day off”) | Fence as covenantal, creation-rooted, worship-oriented rest, not mere leisure time. |
| 祈り (prayer) | Shinto/Buddhist ritual petition (お参り, おみくじ) | Fence as direct relational address to a personal Father, not a ritual transaction for favor. |
| 罪人 (sinner, social) | Shame/迷惑 (causing trouble to others) framing already flagged in the baseline under 罪 | Fence to retain both moral guilt-before-God and social-outcast dimensions together; losing either weakens the Table Fellowship doctrine specifically. |
Part 3 — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Christ/Messiah | Transliterate (キリスト) | Already the established Shinkaiyaku and cultural-brand form; paraphrasing (e.g., 救世主 as a substitute) was already rejected in the baseline. Requires heavy explanatory teaching, not a different word. |
| Savior | Paraphrase (救い主, compound of 救う + 主) | No transliteration tradition exists; the compound is theologically transparent and already fixed. Must carry the non-equivalence footnote against Amida Buddha and ヒーロー tropes. |
| Hades | Transliterate (ハデス) | Any paraphrase using native vocabulary (黄泉) imports a specific, named competing cosmology; transliteration is the only safe option, exactly as the baseline transliterates rather than translates other proper theological names where no safe native equivalent exists (cf. アバ). |
| Abba | Transliterate (アバ), retaining 父よ alongside | Already established in the baseline for Romans 8:15; Luke does not use this term directly but the same principle governs Luke’s Father-warmth material (ch. 15) — transliteration preserves intimacy a formal term alone cannot carry. |
| Zacchaeus, Samaritan(s), Pharisee(s), centurion (as a Roman military-rank loanword concept, not a translated title) | Transliterate proper names and group names (ザアカイ, サマリア人, パリサイ人); paraphrase functional description (百人隊長 for centurion, a compound rather than a transliteration since a functional Japanese military-rank compound is fully adequate and clearer than a loanword) | Standard practice for proper nouns and named historical groups; centurion is a functional military rank with a clear native compound, so paraphrase (not transliteration) is preferred there, unlike Hades/Abba where no safe native equivalent exists. |
| Anoint | Paraphrase (油を注ぐ, verb phrase) | No single-word Japanese equivalent exists that is not already claimed by Buddhist ritual-consecration vocabulary (e.g., 灌頂, kanjō, an esoteric Buddhist initiation rite); the descriptive verb phrase avoids this collision entirely while remaining doctrinally precise. |
| Acceptable year of the Lord / Jubilee | Paraphrase (主の恵みの年), NOT the specialist transliteration/technical term ヨベルの年 alone | ヨベルの年 is accurate but unknown to general readers and would require its own explanatory apparatus with no compensating gain in doctrinal precision over the already-fixed compound; retain 主の恵みの年 as primary rendering, with ヨベル(の年) permissible only as a supplementary background gloss when explaining Leviticus 25. |
| Synagogue, Sabbath, Temple | Paraphrase with established compounds (会堂, 安息日, 神殿) | Long-standing, doctrinally sound Shinkaiyaku terms; no viable transliteration tradition and none needed — the risk here is dilution/collision management (Part 2B), not absence of vocabulary. |
| Mammon | Hybrid: primary paraphrase (富) with parenthetical transliteration (マモン) available | Already fixed this way in the Luke term registry; the transliteration preserves the personifying “rival master” force (16:13) that a purely economic paraphrase risks flattening. |
| Release/Forgiveness (ἄφεσις) | Paraphrase, context-split (解放 / 罪の赦し) — no transliteration option considered | A grammatical/functional concept, not a proper name; transliteration is not applicable. The split is unavoidable and must be managed through teaching notes (see Part 1, Doctrine 4), not solved lexically. |
| Amen, Hallelujah (occurring in Luke’s doxological material, e.g. within hymnic infancy-narrative material) | Transliterate (アーメン, ハレルヤ) | Reused exactly from the baseline’s established transliteration standards; no paraphrase attempted anywhere in Bible translation tradition. |
Part 4 — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision/dilution specificity × frequency of exposure across Luke’s 24 chapters).
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σῴζω (save/heal/make whole) split rendering — Critical. The single verb underlying Luke’s most frequent healing narratives and its own thesis statement (19:10) has no unified Japanese equivalent; the split into 治る/救われる silently erases Luke’s deliberate wordplay across at least six major narrative passages (8:36-50; 17:19; 18:42; 19:10) unless every occurrence is actively cross-referenced.
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ἄφεσις (release/forgiveness) split rendering — Critical. Same structural problem as above, concentrated at the core passage itself (4:18-19), meaning any failure to bridge the split at the curriculum’s theological anchor point undermines the entire book’s opening manifesto.
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神の国 (Kingdom of God) — cumulative anchoring failure risk — High/Critical in practice. 30+ occurrences against a single historically-loaded phrase (神国日本) mean the baseline’s “anchor at first occurrence” instruction, sufficient for Romans’ lower frequency, is insufficient for Luke; a single un-anchored later occurrence can undo earlier correct framing.
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Hades vs. 黄泉 (Yomi) — Critical, newly identified. Direct proper-name collision with a named, specific competing cosmology (the Shinto/Kojiki underworld); no baseline precedent exists for this exact risk pattern, making it easy for a translator unfamiliar with Kojiki mythology to reach for 黄泉 as a seemingly natural “underworld” gloss.
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Ascension vs. Shinto posthumous apotheosis — Critical, newly identified. Risk of the Ascension being processed through the living cultural pattern of deceased humans (emperors, war dead) being enshrined as kami — a pattern with real contemporary institutional presence (Yasukuni Shrine) rather than a historical curiosity, unlike most of Luke’s other collision risks.
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Transfiguration vs. kitsune/tanuki henge folklore and the baseline-forbidden 化身/権化 — Critical. Compounds two risks at once (a native folklore collision plus the baseline’s already-established avatar-manifestation prohibition), concentrated in a single short, doctrinally dense passage (9:29-32).
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Paradise (楽園) — double collision, High. Secular travel-marketing dilution and proximity to 極楽 (Pure Land Buddhist Paradise) compound at the single most pastorally quoted verse in the Passion narrative (23:43, “today you will be with me in paradise”), raising the stakes of an otherwise moderate-risk term.
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Leper terminology — High, Japan-specific historical acuity. Unlike most collision risks in this analysis, this is not a theological-syncretism risk but a living-memory discrimination-history risk (1907-1996 らい予防法); an incorrect lexical choice here causes real-world harm to readers with personal or family connection to Hansen’s disease history, not merely doctrinal confusion.
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Disciple (弟子) vs. craft-guild apprenticeship trajectory — High. The competing frame is not a false religious concept but a deeply respected, living Japanese social institution (弟子制度) whose entire logic (skill transfer toward eventual independence) runs directly opposite to the Cost and Joy of Discipleship doctrine’s lifelong-allegiance claim — a structural-trajectory mismatch rather than a simple wrong-association risk.
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Poor (貧しい人) — High, blankness/social-imagination risk. Denotatively unambiguous but affectively muted by Japan’s middle-class self-narrative; the risk is that correct vocabulary produces incorrect emotional/doctrinal weight, a subtler failure mode than outright mistranslation and correspondingly harder to catch in review.
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New Covenant (新しい契約) at 22:20 — High, maximal-stakes instance of an existing baseline caution. The baseline already flags 契約’s commercial-contract dilution; Luke’s Last Supper occurrence is the single highest-stakes instance of this exact risk anywhere in either curriculum, since it is Christ’s own founding declaration of the New Covenant.
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Compassion (深く憐れむ) vs. 同情 (dōjō) — High. A subtle register risk: both are “acceptable” Japanese words for compassion, but only one carries the visceral, moved-to-action force Luke’s σπλαγχνίζομαι requires; drift toward 同情 would not read as an error to most native speakers, making this a risk especially likely to survive unflagged review.
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Kingdom “in your midst” vs. “within you” (17:20-21) — High. A single disputed clause where the more literal-sounding rendering choice (“within you”) risks drifting toward Buddhist inward-enlightenment framing; the doctrinally safer choice is less intuitive to a translator working word-for-word.
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Anointing (油を注ぐ) vs. Buddhist esoteric consecration vocabulary (灌頂) — High. Low profile but high stakes, since this term sits directly inside the core passage (4:18) and constitutes the very act that names Jesus ὁ χριστός.
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Table fellowship (迎え入れる / 一緒に食事をする) — High, force-dilution risk. Not a false-concept collision but a significance-flattening risk: modern Japanese dining customs supply no automatic sense that eating with someone is a scandalous act of inclusion, so the term can be rendered “correctly” while the narrative’s central provocation (5:29-30; 15:1-2; 19:1-10) goes unfelt.