Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: 2 Peter (English → Kashmiri)
Curriculum: 2 Peter
Destination language: Kashmiri (Koshur), Perso-Arabic script
Core passage: 2 Peter 1:16-21
Companion documents: analysis/08_core_glossary.md, assets/bible_term_registry.json
Baseline authority: Romans Language Package (translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, doctrine_risk_registry.json, 12_ai_translation_requirements.md) — all findings below extend, and never contradict, that baseline.
Purpose: This document executes the linguistic gap analysis step for 2 Peter: it maps each curriculum doctrine against the Kashmiri vocabulary actually available, distinguishes true lexical gaps (concepts with no existing word) from crowded semantic neighborhoods (concepts where an existing word already carries strong competing theological freight from Islam or Kashmir Shaivism), records transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions with rationale, and ranks this letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 attention.
1. Method and Scope
2 Peter is unusual among the curriculum books assigned to this Language Package in that nearly every chapter is doctrinally dense relative to its length: three chapters carry the full weight of an apologetic for the reliability of apostolic testimony (ch. 1), a polemic against corrupt teachers (ch. 2), and an eschatological argument against scoffers (ch. 3). All three chapters have been reviewed verse-by-verse against the seven assigned curriculum doctrines. No chapter is exempt from new load-bearing vocabulary; this is recorded explicitly rather than silently, per the full-book coverage mandate.
Two structural facts shape this analysis, both already anticipated by the baseline’s framing of Kashmiri’s dual religious landscape:
- The Sunni Muslim majority supplies the largest crowded-neighborhood risk: 2 Peter’s vocabulary of apostleship, prophecy, prophethood, divine speech (kalām), repentance (tauba), the Day of Judgment (Qiyāmah), and partaking the divine nature (adjacent to shirk) all sit extremely close to load-bearing Islamic theological categories.
- The Kashmiri Pandit Shaivite (Trika) minority supplies a narrower but sharper risk: 2 Peter 1:3-4’s “divine nature” and “escaping corruption” language, and the letter’s repeated emphasis on epignōsis (“knowledge” of God), sit remarkably close to pratyabhijñā (self-recognition of one’s own innate Shiva-consciousness) and to Trika’s non-dual metaphysics generally.
This analysis treats these as two distinct fencing problems, not one generic “religious vocabulary” problem, consistent with the baseline’s own methodology.
2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
| Curriculum Doctrine | Available Kashmiri Term(s) | Weaknesses of Available Term(s) | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Reliability and Inspiration of Scripture | پیغمبر (prophet), پیشن گوئی (prophecy), پاک روح (Holy Spirit), کلام (word/speech) | پیغمبر/پیشن گوئی both default to a supersession model (Torah→Injil→Qur’an, each correcting the last) under Islamic prophetology; کلام directly imports the classical kalām debate over the Qur’an’s created/uncreated status; there is no existing single Kashmiri term for “eyewitness testimony as opposed to legend.” | Reuse پیغمبر/پیشن گوئی but pair with explicit continuity-not-supersession teaching at every occurrence (1:19-21, 3:2). Reuse پاک روح exactly per baseline, restating the divine-Person-not-Gabriel distinction at 1:21, the book’s single clearest inspiration text. For کلام (3:5), require an explicit disambiguating clause every time (“God’s own creative speech-act, not a claim about a scripture’s created/uncreated status”). Coin descriptive compounds for “eyewitnesses” (عینی شاہد) and “cleverly devised myths” (چالاکی سٕتی بنٲومت کہانیہ) rather than reuse a Qur’anic-resonant term, since no existing single word carries the specific apologetic force of 1:16. |
| Growing in Christian Virtue | نیکی (virtue), خُداترسی (godliness), ضبطِ نفس (self-control), صبر (endurance), محبت (love), علم/معرفت (knowledge, two senses) | Nearly every rung of the 1:5-7 virtue ladder has a pre-existing, well-worn Islamic devotional near-synonym (فضیلت for virtue, تقویٰ for godliness, مجاہدہ-adjacent ضبطِ نفس, قناعت/صبر for endurance) that frames the same conduct as self-cultivated religious achievement rather than grace-enabled fruit. This is the single largest crowded neighborhood in the book, because the entire seven-item chain in 1:5-7 risks being reheard whole as an ascetic self-improvement program. | Use the coined/selected terms in the glossary (نیکی, خُداترسی, ضبطِ نفس, صبر, برادرانہ محبت, محبت, علم) consistently, but require 1:3’s “granted by his divine power” and 1:4’s “through these he has granted to us his precious and very great promises” to be taught immediately before the ladder in every teaching unit, so the entire chain is framed as grace-supplied fruit, not merit-earning steps — this is a structural/pedagogical fencing strategy rather than a purely lexical one. |
| False Teachers and Their Judgment | جھوٹہٕ پیغمبر / جھوٹہٕ استاد (false prophets/teachers), فرقہ (heresy/sect), مالِک (master/owner) | استاد and (in the Rishi Sufi tradition) پیر both name a venerated, trusted spiritual-guide category; applying جھوٹہٕ to them requires very deliberate framing so the compound reads as a condemnation of specific corrupt figures, not a slight on the whole teacher/pir institution. فرقہ risks narrowing 2:1’s point (denial of Christ) into mere sectarian schism, a live and sensitive category in Islamic religious history. مالِک applied to Christ (2:1) directly strains the baseline’s own restriction of مالِک to ordinary human-authority contexts. | Keep جھوٹہٕ استاد/جھوٹہٕ پیغمبر as compounds, never bare استاد/پیغمبر with implied negativity. Use ہلاکت خیز فرقہ بازی only with an explicit gloss anchoring it to 2:1’s specific charge (denying Christ’s redemptive Lordship), not schism generally. For “the Master who bought them” (2:1), mandate the qualifying phrase خرید کرنہ والا (purchasing) every time مالِک is used of Christ, and flag every occurrence for theologian sign-off, consistent with the tension already flagged in the core glossary. |
| The Certainty of Christ’s Return | آمد (coming/arrival) | No existing single Kashmiri term distinguishes Christ’s parousia from the mainstream Sunni eschatological expectation of ‘Isa’s subordinate, prophet-level return (to defeat al-Dajjal, then die naturally); آمد alone is theologically neutral and could default toward that lower Islamic Christology unless taught explicitly. | Retain آمد as the base term (already selected in the core glossary) but require the Theological Consistency Rule: identical rendering at 1:16 and 3:4, always co-occurring with خُداوند/مُنجی titles so the returning person is unmistakably identified as the divine Lord-Judge, not a subordinate prophet-figure. |
| The Day of the Lord and Final Judgment | قیامتُک ڈۮھ (Day of Resurrection/Judgment) | This phrase is drawn directly from, and immediately evokes, the fully developed Islamic Yawm al-Qiyāmah apparatus (bodily resurrection, the scales/mīzān, the bridge/ṣirāṭ, intercession/shafā’ah) — the single deepest shared-vocabulary risk in the whole letter. | Retain قیامتُک ڈۮھ / خُداوندُک ڈۮھ (already selected, offering the choice between the two forms per context) but mandate that every occurrence (2:9, 3:7, 3:10, 3:12) include explicit teaching that Christ himself, not an independent deeds-weighing mīzān, is the ground of final judgment and vindication — this is a Critical-tier doctrine risk requiring theologian review at every occurrence, not just first use. |
| Patience of God’s Timing | تحمل (patience/forbearance), توبہ (repentance) | تحمل risks being flattened toward قسمت/taqdir-style impersonal fatalistic delay if not explicitly anchored to God’s stated purpose (3:9b, “not wishing that any should perish”). توبہ imports the fully formed Islamic repentance procedure (sincere remorse, verbal confession, resolution) which lacks any mediating-atonement component. | Keep تحمل lexically distinct from صبر (human endurance) as already fixed in the core glossary; require an explicit purpose-clause gloss (“God delays because he desires repentance, not because delay is empty fate”) at 3:9 and 3:15. Require توبہ to be immediately qualified with reference to trust in Christ’s atoning work, since bare توبہ could otherwise read as a self-sufficient remorse-and-resolve act. |
| Divine Nature and Escaping Corruption | اِلٰہی طبیعتہ منز حصہ دار بننہٕ (partaking divine nature), خرابی (corruption) | This is the single sharpest doctrinal flashpoint in 2 Peter for BOTH audiences simultaneously (see §4 below): the Muslim-majority reading risks shirk; the Pandit-minority reading risks collapsing into pratyabhijñā. There is no existing Kashmiri vocabulary that avoids both risks by default; a wholly coined descriptive compound was required. | Retain the coined compound exactly, never introduce شریک (root of shirk) under any circumstance, and require the moral-transformation-not-ontological-fusion clarification to accompany every occurrence of 1:4. Retain خرابی (never فنا) for “corruption” for the same reason already fixed in the core glossary. |
3. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
Distinguishing these two categories matters because they require opposite repair strategies: a missing-vocabulary gap is filled by coining a new descriptive compound (safe, because there is no competing prior claim on the empty semantic space); a crowded-neighborhood gap must instead be fenced — the existing term is kept (because avoiding it entirely would sacrifice intelligibility or existing Bible-translation convention) but is hedged with mandatory explanatory framing so it cannot silently import its prior religious content.
3a. True Missing-Vocabulary Gaps (require coined descriptive compounds)
| Concept | Gap | Coined Kashmiri Compound |
|---|---|---|
| ”Partaking of the divine nature” (1:4) | No existing single term; nearest available roots (شریک) are doctrinally forbidden | اِلٰہی طبیعتہ منز حصہ دار بننہٕ |
| ”Cleverly devised myths” (1:16) | No existing idiom carrying this specific apologetic force (fabricated-but-artful religious tale) | چالاکی سٕتی بنٲومت کہانیہ |
| ”Eyewitnesses” in the technical sense of ἐπόπται (1:16) | No existing single Kashmiri word distinguishes eyewitness testimony from second-hand report or mystical private vision | عینی شاہد |
| ”Majestic Glory” as a periphrastic divine title (1:17) | No existing fixed honorific compound of this exact form | عظمت آمت جلال |
| ”The Master who bought them” / redemptive ownership (2:1) | مالِک alone lacks the purchase/redemption sense; باعثِ خرید is not attested as a fixed compound | خرید کرنہ والا مالِک |
| ”Despising lordship” (2:10) | No existing fixed idiom for this specific compound sin | خُداوندی خلاف نفرت |
| ”Freedom / slaves of corruption” as a paired ironic contrast (2:19) | No existing fixed idiom pairs these two concepts as Peter does | آزادی / خرابی ہنٛز غلام |
| ”Without spot or blemish” as sacrificial-purity idiom (3:14) | No existing fixed Kashmiri compound of this exact sacrificial resonance | بے داغ تہٕ بے عیب |
| ”Tent of the body” as a euphemism for mortality (1:13-14) | No existing fixed Kashmiri idiom | جسمُک خَیمہ |
3b. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (require fencing, not replacement)
| Kashmiri Term | Occupying Tradition | Content That Must NOT Transfer | Fencing Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| معرفت (ma’rifat, for epignōsis) | Sufi mysticism (progressive experiential unveiling, kashf); Trika jñāna/pratyabhijñā | A gradual mystical path toward union, or self-recognition of latent divinity | Always anchor to apostolic eyewitness testimony and historical Christ (1:16-18); never let the term stand without an object |
| کلام (kalām, for “word of God”) | Classical Islamic ‘ilm al-kalām (created/uncreated Qur’an debate) | Entry into that specific created/uncreated ontological controversy | Explicit clause: “God’s own creative, sustaining speech-act” every occurrence (3:5) |
| قیامتُک ڈۮھ (Day of Judgment) | Islamic Yawm al-Qiyāmah apparatus (mīzān, ṣirāṭ, shafā’ah) | Independent deeds-weighing as the ground of final destiny | Explicit teaching that Christ himself is the returning Judge and ground of vindication, every occurrence |
| توبہ (tauba, repentance) | Islamic repentance procedure (remorse + confession + resolution, no mediator) | Self-sufficient remorse-and-resolve without an atoning mediator | Always paired with explicit reference to trust in Christ’s finished work |
| فرقہ (heresy/sect) | Islamic sectarian-schism discourse (hadith on 73 sects) | Narrowing to communal/sectarian division rather than Christological denial | Anchor to 2:1’s specific charge (denying the Master who bought them) |
| استاد / پیر-adjacent (teacher) | Rishi Sufi pir/ustād veneration | Implying the false teachers occupy, or discredit, the honored spiritual-guide office generally | Always compound with جھوٹہٕ, never bare |
| مالِک (master/owner, applied to Christ in 2:1) | Baseline’s own restriction to ordinary human authority | Diluting Christ’s unique Lordship (already reserved to خُداوند in the baseline) into ordinary human mastery | Mandatory qualifying phrase خرید کرنہ والا + theologian sign-off every occurrence |
| صبر (endurance) | Qur’anic/Islamic devotional patience-as-submission to qadar | Fatalistic submission rather than hope-filled active perseverance | Anchor to certain hope in Christ’s return (1:6 in light of ch. 3) |
| تحمل (God’s patience) | Adjacent to قسمت/taqdir fatalistic-delay associations | Impersonal, purposeless divine postponement | Anchor to explicit stated purpose in 3:9b |
| آزادی (freedom, 2:19) | Kashmir political self-determination movement’s central slogan | ANY implied commentary on regional political status | Strict, repeated bounding to moral/spiritual bondage-versus-liberty in Christ only; flag as Critical political-sensitivity risk distinct from its doctrinal risk |
| نیکی / خُداترسی / ضبطِ نفس (virtue chain terms) | Islamic taqwā/mujāhada self-cultivation discourse | Reading 1:5-7 as a self-earned merit ladder | Structural pairing with 1:3-4’s grace-grounding in every teaching unit |
| گناہ کرنہٕ وول فرشتہٕ (angels who sinned, 2:4) | Mainstream Islamic angelology (angels cannot sin; Iblīs is jinn, not angel) | Softening or omitting the claim to avoid apparent contradiction | State plainly and directly; do not omit or soften |
| اندھیرن ہنٛز کھڈ (Tartarus, 2:4) | Islamic Jahannam theology, if glossed too quickly as دوزخ | Premature full identification with the developed doctrine of Jahannam | Retain the descriptive compound as primary; use دوزخ only as an explanatory aside, never a replacement |
| نوٕن آسمان تہٕ نوٕن زمین (new heavens/new earth, 3:13) | Qur’an 14:48’s earth/heaven transformation at Qiyāmah | Should not be hidden as a coincidence; is a genuine point of contact | Note the point of contact explicitly while clarifying distinctly Christ-centered content (righteousness dwelling in it, 3:13b) |
| طوفان / نوح (flood/Noah, 2:5), لوط (Lot, 2:6-8), بلعام (Balaam, 2:15-16) | Shared Qur’anic narrative figures (Nūh, Lūṭ, possible tafsīr identification for Balaam) | Assuming identical narrative emphasis (e.g., Noah’s “herald of righteousness” role is not emphasized in the Qur’anic account) | Use as genuine points of contact but explicitly supply the emphasis 2 Peter adds that the Qur’anic account does not carry |
4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Savior (σωτήρ) | Paraphrase-adjacent established loan: مُنجی | Existing regional Christian usage; not a Qur’anic-resonant term, low collision risk, needs no coined compound. |
| God and Savior (Granville Sharp, 1:1) | Preserve as single unified phrase خُدا تہٕ مُنجی, NOT split into “God, and also the Savior” | The Greek’s single-article construction is a grammatically forceful deity-of-Christ claim; a paraphrase that introduces a second implied referent would silently erase the doctrine. Transliteration is not applicable here; the decision is about syntactic fidelity, not lexical choice. |
| Divine nature (θεία φύσις, 1:4) | Full descriptive paraphrase, no transliteration, no borrowing of شریک-root vocabulary | No safe existing single term exists in either script tradition; a coined compound is the only viable path, per §3a above. |
| Parousia (παρουσία) | Paraphrase (آمد), not transliteration of the Greek term itself | Kashmiri has no precedent for transliterating this specific Greek technical term; a plain Kashmiri noun for “coming/arrival” is both more intelligible and doctrinally safer than importing an unfamiliar Greek loan that would need its own separate gloss. |
| Tartarus (ταρταρόω, 2:4) | Descriptive paraphrase (اندھیرن ہنٛز کھڈ), not transliteration, and NOT default-glossed as دوزخ | Transliterating “Tartarus” directly would be opaque to readers with no Greek mythological background; but glossing straight to دوزخ risks premature conflation with the fully developed Islamic Jahannam doctrine. A neutral descriptive compound (“the pit of darkness”) threads this needle. |
| Balaam, Noah, Lot, Sodom, Gomorrah (proper names, 2:5-16) | Transliterate using the form shared with existing Qur’anic-narrative convention (نوح, لوط) where such convention exists and is well attested; otherwise standard transliteration (بلعام، سدوم، عمورہ) | Maximizes genuine point-of-contact value for Muslim-background readers while flagging (not hiding) where the narrative emphasis diverges from the Qur’anic account. |
| Day of the Lord / Day of Judgment (2:9, 3:7, 3:10, 3:12) | Paraphrase using the Islamic-resonant compound قیامتُک ڈۮھ, deliberately NOT avoided or replaced with an artificial neologism | Avoiding the shared vocabulary entirely would sacrifice intelligibility for no doctrinal gain, since the underlying Greek concept (a final day of divine reckoning) is genuinely close to the Islamic category; the safer strategy is retention plus mandatory explicit contrast-teaching (see §2, §3b), consistent with the baseline’s own handling of comparable shared vocabulary (e.g., مسیح, انجیل). |
| Word of God / creative speech (ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ, 3:5) | Paraphrase using خُدایُک کلام, not a coined alternative avoiding کلام entirely | کلام is the only natural Kashmiri rendering; avoiding it would produce an unnatural circumlocution. Fencing (explicit disambiguating clause) is preferred over lexical avoidance. |
| Own interpretation (ἰδία ἐπίλυσις, 1:20) | Paraphrase using پننہٕ تفسیر | تفسیر is retained despite Qur’anic-exegesis resonance because no safer alternative exists that still communicates “interpretation” plainly; the doctrinal point (origin of prophecy, not interpretive method) is carried by the surrounding clause, not by lexical avoidance alone. |
| Divine power / power of God (θεία δύναμις, 1:3, 1:16) | Reuse baseline قوت exactly; NEVER شکتی | Already fixed by baseline; reaffirmed here because 2 Peter uses this term at a structurally important point (the foundation of the entire virtue chain, 1:3), raising its practical exposure in this book. |
| Servant (δοῦλος, 1:1) | Transliteration-adjacent existing loan غلام, honorific devotional sense | Standard existing usage in regional Christian self-designation contexts; low risk. |
5. Ranked List of This Letter’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of default misreading toward a specific competing frame) and frequency of occurrence across the letter.
-
“Partaking of the divine nature” (1:4) — Critical. The single sharpest ambiguity in the book: reads as shirk to a Muslim-background audience and as pratyabhijñā to a Trika-shaped audience, two entirely different wrong readings from a single Greek phrase, occurring at the letter’s theological hinge-verse (linked directly to the core passage 1:16-21’s argument for the reliability of what believers have been promised). No existing Kashmiri vocabulary is safe without full coining and constant qualification.
-
“Day of the Lord / Day of Judgment” (2:9, 3:7, 3:10, 3:12) — Critical. Four occurrences of vocabulary that directly overlaps the fully developed Islamic Yawm al-Qiyāmah apparatus; the risk compounds with repetition, since each occurrence is an opportunity for the deeds-weighing (mīzān) frame to silently reassert itself if the Christ-centered teaching is not re-supplied every time, not just at first occurrence.
-
“The Master who bought them” (2:1) — Critical, with an internal Language-Package tension. مالِک applied to Christ directly strains the baseline’s own rule reserving مالِک to ordinary human authority; this is not merely an external religious-collision risk but an internal consistency risk between this curriculum and the Romans baseline, requiring mandatory theologian sign-off at the single occurrence.
-
Parousia / Christ’s return (1:16, 3:4) — Critical. Both audiences share vocabulary for “Christ’s coming/return” with the Christian text, but mainstream Sunni eschatology holds a subordinate-prophet return model for ‘Isa; the risk is heightened because this concept must be rendered identically at two separated occurrences (Theological Consistency Rule), multiplying any single point of failure across the whole letter.
-
Knowledge — epignōsis vs. gnōsis (1:2-3, 1:5-6, 1:8, 2:20, 3:18) — Critical/High. The letter’s own emphasis word (bookended at 1:2 and 3:18) sits directly on top of معرفت’s Sufi-mystical and Trika-jñāna resonance; five to six occurrences across all three chapters make this among the most frequently recurring high-risk terms in the book.
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Virtue-chain terms as a set (1:5-7): virtue, self-control, endurance, godliness — High, cumulative. No single term here is individually Critical, but the chain as a whole risks total reframing as a self-cultivated Islamic-devotional achievement ladder (echoing taqwā/mujāhada discourse) unless 1:3-4’s grace-grounding is structurally paired with it in every teaching unit — an ambiguity of cumulative rather than singular severity.
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“Word of God” as creative speech (3:5) — High. A single occurrence but with sharp specific risk: unintentionally invoking the classical Islamic kalām (created/uncreated Qur’an) controversy in a verse that has nothing to do with that debate.
-
“Angels who sinned” (2:4) — High. Directly contradicts a specific, well-known mainstream Islamic theological position (angels cannot sin); risk lies not in ambiguity of rendering but in the temptation to soften or omit the claim to avoid apparent contradiction — this must be explicitly flagged so translators do not quietly weaken it.
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“Freedom / slaves of corruption” (2:19) — High doctrinal risk compounded by extreme political sensitivity. آزادی’s contemporary political weight in Kashmir (the self-determination movement’s central slogan) exceeds even the baseline’s existing sensitivity flags for “peace” and “kingdom,” requiring the strictest possible scope-bounding of any term in this letter.
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“Repentance” (3:9) — High. Tauba’s well-formed Islamic procedural content (remorse, confession, resolution) lacks any mediating-atonement component; risk is moderate-frequency (single occurrence) but doctrinally central to the letter’s argument about why judgment is delayed.
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“Eyewitnesses” / “cleverly devised myths” (1:16) — High, but more apologetic-strategic than syncretism-risk: failure here weakens the entire chapter’s argument for the historical reliability of the Transfiguration testimony, which underlies the whole book’s claim to trustworthy apostolic witness against both scoffers (ch. 3) and false teachers (ch. 2).
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“New heavens and new earth” (3:13) — Medium-High. Lower risk than the above because the Qur’anic parallel (14:48) is a genuine, not merely superficial, point of contact; the ambiguity here is one of incompleteness (failing to add the Christ-centered content) rather than active misdirection toward a hostile frame.
6. Chapter-by-Chapter Coverage Confirmation
- Chapter 1 — Reviewed in full. Contains the core passage (1:16-21) and the highest concentration of Critical-risk terms in the book: apostleship, faith, God-and-Savior construction, divine nature, virtue chain, epignōsis/gnōsis, eyewitness testimony, Transfiguration Christology, and inspiration of Scripture. No verse without load-bearing content.
- Chapter 2 — Reviewed in full. Contains the false-teachers polemic vocabulary set (false prophets/teachers, heresies, the Master who bought them, despising lordship, blaspheming glorious ones, angels who sinned, Tartarus, flood/Noah/Sodom/Lot/Balaam typology, freedom/slaves of corruption). Every verse reviewed; no verse without load-bearing content.
- Chapter 3 — Reviewed in full. Contains the eschatological vocabulary set (scoffers, parousia, word of God/creative speech, Day of the Lord, God’s patience, repentance, elements/cosmic dissolution, new heavens and new earth, twisting the Scriptures, closing grace/knowledge charge). Every verse reviewed; no verse without load-bearing content.
No chapter of 2 Peter is without new theological vocabulary requiring gap analysis; this is stated explicitly per the full-book coverage mandate, not left to silent omission.
This analysis must be read alongside analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json before Phase 2 translation begins. All Critical-risk ambiguities ranked above require mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence, not merely at first use, consistent with the baseline’s escalation rules.