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

Why it matters

Acts extends the Javanese-language Bible translation infrastructure built for Romans into a book with far higher miracle, Spirit-manifestation, and conversion-narrative density. The same syncretism risks the Romans baseline documented — kejawen mystical vocabulary (kasekten, wahyu, manunggaling kawula gusti), the slametan/kaslametan word-root collision, and Islamic-majority vocabulary overlap (tobat, khitan, najis, malaikat) — recur throughout Acts at significantly higher frequency, plus Acts introduces genuinely new collision points the Romans epistolary text never required: spirit-possession phenomena (kesurupan) surface-resembling Spirit-filling, and Javanese divination practice (dhukun, tenung) directly confronted by the narrative itself.

Key findings

• 97 enforced glossary terms now govern Phase 2 translation: 41 terms inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, plus 56 new terms this book introduces — all seeded into assets/translation_memory.json.
• 53 Critical/High-risk terms require mandatory human theologian review (14 Critical, 39 High), spanning both inherited and new vocabulary — a substantially higher term-level density than Romans alone, driven by Acts’ miracle narratives, conversion accounts, and the Jerusalem Council.
• 3 of the 9 curriculum doctrines are rated Critical (The Holy Spirit and Pentecost; Apostolic Authority and Miracles; Justification apart from the Law), and 3 more are rated High (The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles; Repentance and Baptism; Conversion of Paul) — together 6 of 9 doctrines require mandatory theologian review, versus 3 requiring only native-speaker review and none requiring automated-only review.
• Two entirely new Critical-risk terms not present in the Romans baseline demand the same non-negotiable enforcement priority as Grace, Salvation, and Resurrection: kapenuhan ing Roh Suci (“filled with the Holy Spirit,” Acts 2:4 and throughout) and roh tenung (“divination spirit,” Acts 16:16).
• The core passage, Acts 2:1–41 (Pentecost), is the single highest doctrinal-density passage in the book: it converges Holy Spirit/Pentecost, Repentance and Baptism, Church as Community, and Gospel to Jews and Gentiles doctrines, and contains the book’s highest concentration of Critical terms (Holy Spirit, salvation, resurrection, Messiah/Christ) in 41 verses.

Risks

• Filled-with-the-Spirit vs. kesurupan (spirit possession): the single highest-stakes new risk in the curriculum. Surface behavioral overlap (altered speech, physical manifestation) with involuntary folk spirit-possession via a village medium requires an explicit distinguishing teaching note at every occurrence, not just correct word choice.
• Divination spirit (Acts 16:16) vs. Javanese dukun/tenung practice: the narrative itself stages this collision directly; mistranslation risks accidentally dignifying a “roh tenung” as a real parallel power rather than a defeated, subordinate one.
• “God of our fathers” (leluhur) vs. ancestor veneration: the single most delicate narrow-exception term in the whole Language Package — a word forbidden everywhere else as a Father-substitute, permitted only inside one fixed, glossed phrase (22:14; 24:14; 26:6; 28:25), with silent doctrinal drift a real danger if any single occurrence drops its mandatory note.
• Kaslametan’s slametan-ritual collision recurs at 13+ occurrences, a substantially higher frequency than in Romans, multiplying the compliance burden for the mandatory translator note.
• Circumcision, clean/unclean, and repentance all share live vocabulary with normative Islamic practice (khitan, fiqh purity law, tobat) rather than kejawen syncretism specifically, requiring careful narrow-scoping rather than lexical substitution, since no better native alternative exists for any of the three.

Opportunities

• Acts supplies strong built-in apologetic models for engaging Javanese religious sensibility respectfully: the Areopagus speech’s “unknown god” bridge-language (17:23, 29) and the Lystra crowd’s mistaken deification of Paul and Barnabas (14:11-15) both model how to affirm existing religious longing while still proclaiming exclusive truth — directly useful teaching assets, not just risks to manage.
• The narrative itself stages the kasekten/Spirit-power contrast explicitly through Simon Magus (ch. 8) and Elymas (ch. 13), giving teaching material a built-in, textually-grounded way to teach the Critical grace/power distinction rather than requiring an imported illustration.
• Acts 13:38-39’s verbatim doctrinal parallel to Romans 3:20-28 lets this curriculum reinforce Romans’ Justification teaching through a second, narrative-sermon encounter, strengthening retention for learners moving between both curricula.
• The book’s structural refrain, “unto the uttermost part of the earth” (1:8; 13:47; 28:31), gives Great Commission teaching a built-in three-point consistency check across the whole book, useful as a simple Phase 2 QA anchor.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, and analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md (all Acts-specific, extending the Romans baseline) before any Phase 2 translation work begins.
2. Route all segments touching Holy Spirit and Pentecost, Apostolic Authority and Miracles, or Justification apart from the Law doctrines to mandatory human theologian review, with zero sampling exceptions for Acts 2:38, 4:12, 13:38-39, and 16:16-18.
3. Apply per-occurrence (not sampled) human theologian review to every instance of “God of our fathers” (22:14; 24:14; 26:6; 28:25).
4. Budget higher Phase 2 QA reviewer time per chapter than the Romans baseline required, especially for chapters 2, 8, 10–11, 13, 15–16, and 22/24/26, per the linguistic gap analysis’s flagged density increase.
5. Brief theologian and native-speaker reviewers specifically on the kesurupan/kapenuhan-ing-Roh-Suci distinction before review begins, since this is a genuinely new risk category the Romans-trained reviewer pool has not previously encountered.

Sources: analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md, analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md, assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, analysis/04_comparative_theology.md, analysis/05_translation_landscape.md.