Linguistic Gap Analysis: Revelation (Konkani)

1. Purpose and Method

This analysis identifies where Konkani (Devanagari-script, Goa Official Language Act standard, Bible Society of India tradition) has, lacks, or dangerously over-supplies vocabulary for Revelation’s doctrine set. It extends — and does not revise — the Romans baseline translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json. Revelation multiplies the baseline’s risk profile for one structural reason: apocalyptic literature is saturated with cosmic-conflict, throne-room, sacrificial, and consort/marriage imagery, and Goa’s living religious landscape (temple Hinduism, Shakta/Shaiva devotional traditions, naga-shrine folk religion, Devchar/Rakhandar spirit veneration, and — for Catholic-background readers — Romi Konkani liturgical vocabulary) supplies competing, semantically adjacent words for nearly every one of these images. The task of this document is therefore less about inventing vocabulary than about fencing existing vocabulary so it cannot drift toward a competing referent, and about flagging the smaller number of places where Konkani genuinely lacks any ready term at all.

Method: every doctrine in the curriculum parameters is cross-walked against (a) candidate Konkani terms already in general religious use, (b) their doctrinal weaknesses/collision risks, and (c) the recommended strategy (reuse-with-fence, compound/coin, or transliterate). This feeds directly into the term-level decisions recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and the registry files.

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2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

Doctrine	Candidate Konkani Term(s) Available	Weaknesses of Available Terms	Recommended Strategy
The Return and Reign of Christ	प्रभूचें परत येणें (Lord’s return, descriptive phrase); राज्य करप (to reign); राजा (king)	No single native word for a personal, bodily, historical second coming distinct from a temple deity’s periodic ritual “appearance” (utsav, darshan) or a fresh avatar-descent. राजा alone is generic monarchy vocabulary with no built-in exclusivity.	Compound/descriptive phrase, never a single noun. Anchor with baseline देवाचो पुत्र/प्रभू and explicit “one-time, bodily, visible” qualifiers. Use established हांव वेगीं येतां (22:7,12,20) as the fixed formula; pair राजांचो राजा आनी प्रभूंचो प्रभू (17:14; 19:16) with baseline प्रभू, never abbreviate the doubled superlative.
The Sovereignty of God over History	देवाची तरतूद (baseline providence); सामर्थ्य (baseline power); नशीब/प्रारब्ध/कर्मफळ (fate/destiny — REJECTED)	नशीब and प्रारब्ध are the ordinary Konkani words an average Hindu-background reader reaches for when discussing “why things happen”; both name an impersonal, non-personal ordering force, directly contradicting personal divine sovereignty.	Reuse baseline देवाची तरतूद and सामर्थ्य/सर्वसमर्थ exactly; never permit नशीब/प्रारब्ध as glosses even in paraphrase or teaching notes. New compound सर्वसमर्थ (Pantokrator) must be built on सामर्थ्य, extending the baseline’s forbidden-substitution logic to this new curriculum.
Perseverance and Faithful Witness under Persecution	सहनशीलता / धीर धरप (endurance); साक्ष (witness/testimony); तपस्या (ascetic austerity — REJECTED)	तपस्या and related ascetic-merit vocabulary (present throughout Goan Hindu devotional and Jain-adjacent practice) reads endurance as self-generated spiritual achievement accruing merit, the opposite of Revelation’s Christ-sustained endurance (12:11).	Reuse existing Konkani सहनशीलता/धीर धरप and साक्ष; every occurrence of “overcomer” (जिकोवपी) must be taught alongside 12:11 (“they conquered by the blood of the Lamb”) to block a self-achievement reading.
Judgment of the Wicked and Vindication of the Saints	निवाडो (verdict); कोप (wrath); कर्म/कर्मफळ (karma/karmic fruit — REJECTED); कृती (deed, neutral)	कर्म is the single highest-collision word in the entire curriculum: it is the ordinary Konkani/Marathi noun for the karma-and-rebirth causal mechanism, wholly incompatible with a one-time forensic verdict by a personal Judge.	Never use कर्म. Use कृती (neutral “deed/action”) for judgment-basis vocabulary, always footnoted; use निवाडो/कोप, both already legal/judicial rather than karmic in flavor, for the verdict and its execution.
The New Heaven and New Earth	नवें आकाश आनी नवी पृथ्वी (descriptive compound); युग/कल्प (cosmic age/cycle — REJECTED for cosmology framing)	Goan Hindu cosmology (yuga cycles, creation-dissolution-recreation) supplies a ready cyclical framework into which “new heaven and new earth” can silently be absorbed as merely the next cycle.	Compound descriptive phrase (already used in core glossary), always paired with a translator note on qualitative, one-time, non-repeating newness (καινός), explicitly contrasted with cyclical cosmology.
The Church as Bride of Christ	नवरी (bride); बायल (wife, generic); देवी/देवाची बायल-भशेन (goddess-consort framing — REJECTED)	Goa’s devotional landscape prominently features divine consort pairings (Vishnu–Lakshmi, Shiva–Parvati) in which the female figure shares in divine status. नवरी alone risks being absorbed into that consort-goddess pattern rather than read as a corporate, covenantal, non-divine Bride.	Reuse नवरी but mandatorily fence with (a) explicit corporate reference (“the redeemed people, not a goddess-consort”), (b) consistent co-occurrence with कोंकरूं (Lamb) rather than a name suggesting personal divine parity, (c) footnote at every occurrence in chs. 19, 21–22.
Worship of the Lamb	उपासना करप (worship, verb); भक्ती (devotion — REJECTED); पूजा (ritual worship — REJECTED)	भक्ती and पूजा are the two ordinary Konkani words for devotional practice, both saturated with temple-specific ritual meaning (image-offering, aarti, prasad) inseparable in the popular mind from a specific deity’s shrine.	Reuse the baseline-consistent उपासना करप (already fenced away from भक्ती in the Romans baseline for “faith”); extend the same fence to the worship-verb here, and preserve the text’s own internal prohibition (worship of angels/beast forbidden) as an explicit contrastive teaching point, not softened.
Symbolic and Apocalyptic Interpretation	प्रगटीकरण (revelation/unveiling); दृष्टांत (vision, generic); ज्योतिष/भविष्यफळ (astrology/horoscope-prediction — REJECTED)	Konkani has no dedicated word for “apocalyptic genre” as such; generic दृष्टांत risks reducing Revelation’s visions to private mystical experience, and any astrology-adjacent vocabulary risks reframing prophetic symbol as horoscope-style fortune-telling (an active regional practice).	Use प्रगटीकरण (already in registry) as the fixed genre-anchor term; teaching materials must state explicitly that apocalyptic symbol is revealed, God-given, and publicly verifiable — not privately-received mystical or astrological insight.
Assurance of God’s Final Victory over Evil	जैत (victory); जिकप (to conquer/win); तारणाची खात्री (baseline “assurance of salvation”)	जैत/जिकप are religiously neutral (used equally of sporting or military victory) and therefore carry low collision risk, but by the same token carry no automatic theological weight — assurance must be built entirely through explicit doctrinal framing rather than word choice alone.	Combine जिकप-family vocabulary with baseline तारणाची खात्री and सैतान’s explicit, repeated defeat (12:9-11; 20:10) to construct assurance cumulatively across the book rather than relying on any single lexical item.

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3. Missing Vocabulary (Genuine Lexical Gaps)

These concepts have no existing Konkani word or fixed phrase at all — not even a compromised or risky one — and require deliberate compounding or transliteration, decided at the term level in Section 5 below and finalized in the core glossary:

1. Apocalyptic genre-marker distinguishing “revealed truth” from “private vision/omen.” प्रगटीकरण is coined/extended from general Konkani वापर (usage) of “to reveal” (प्रगट करप); no pre-existing single noun names this genre. Recommendation: retain प्रगटीकरण, reinforced by teaching notes rather than a new coinage.
2. A word for “cosmic Adversary defeated once for all” distinct from generic भूत/पिशाच (folk ghost-spirit) or देवचार/राखणदार (Konkan tutelary/guardian spirits venerated, not feared, in local folk religion). No native Konkani word carries “defeated, personal, singular arch-adversary” without either (a) sounding like a folk-spirit or (b) sounding like a serpent-deity. Recommendation: retain the transliteration सैतान (already established) as the only safe option; explicitly forbid भूत as substitution.
3. A word for “symbolic totality expressed as a large round number” (144,000; 666; 1,000 years) — Konkani numerals translate literally but carry no inherent signal that the number is symbolic rather than a literal census/count/duration. Recommendation: numeral + mandatory footnote in every instance (not a lexical solution but a paratextual one, since no word-level solution exists).
4. A single compound for “forensic, once-for-all death-after-death judgment” (second death) — Konkani मरण (death) is unmarked for number/iteration; “दुसरें मरण” (second death) is a literal compound with no independent idiomatic life in the language and must be taught from scratch every time, unlike (for example) पुनरुत्थ्यान which at least echoes an existing baseline concept.
5. A dedicated Christological title for “the divine Judge-Warrior-King riding a white horse” (19:11-16) — Konkani has royal-procession and warrior vocabulary (स्वारी, योद्धा) but nothing that natively fuses judge + warrior + king + divine into one word; the curriculum must render this scene descriptively, phrase by phrase, rather than seeking a single-term equivalent.

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4. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

Unlike Section 3’s gaps, these are cases where Konkani has too much competing vocabulary — existing, well-used words whose primary cultural referent is a rival religious concept. Each requires an explicit “fence”: a footnote, a paired qualifier, or a forbidden-substitution rule.

Konkani Term/Concept Zone	Competing Cultural Referent(s)	Fence Required
सर्प / नाग imagery (Dragon, ancient serpent, 12:3-17; 20:2)	Naga-shrine veneration, sacred serpent groves (nagbans), Nag Panchami festival — all active, respected Goan folk-Hindu practice	Mandatory footnote at every dragon/serpent occurrence identifying this figure explicitly and only as Satan, the defeated adversary; never allow it to be read as, or juxtaposed neutrally with, naga deities.
देव generic term (God, Almighty, throne-occupant)	Any individual Hindu deity (Shantadurga dev, Mangueshi dev, Mahalasa dev) — same word, per the Romans baseline’s own documented risk	Continue the baseline’s exclusivity-marker rule (एकच खरो देव) at every doctrinally load-bearing occurrence; this applies with even greater frequency in Revelation given देवाच्या सिंहासनार बसिल्लो’s repetition (4:2-11; 21:5) and the covenant formula (21:7).
शक्ती-family words (any rendering of “power,” “the Destroyer,” “wrath”)	Shakta goddess theology (Shantadurga, Mahalasa) in which शक्ती is itself a divine-feminine ontological category, not a mere descriptive noun	Extend the baseline’s forbidden substitution (power_of_god: never शक्ती) to सर्वसमर्थ/Pantokrator and to all “power/might” vocabulary throughout Revelation without exception.
”The Destroyer” title (Abaddon/Apollyon, 9:11)	Shiva’s role as Destroyer within the Trimurti (creator-preserver-destroyer)	Mandatory footnote explicitly denying any equivalence to Shiva; transliterate rather than translate the name to avoid triggering the association at the lexical level.
मूर्ति-related vocabulary (idolaters, 21:8; 22:15)	Central and reverently-held image/murti worship in Goan Hindu temple devotion	Frame मूर्तिपूजक as a theological category requiring pastoral sensitivity — never a slur directed at neighbors’ religious identity; teaching notes must state this explicitly.
भक्ती / पूजा (devotion, ritual worship)	Same devotional-practice referents documented in the Romans baseline for “faith”	Continue the established fence: reserve उपासना करप for the worship due to God/the Lamb alone; never substitute भक्ती or पूजा.
Forehead-marking imagery (mark of the beast vs. name of God on forehead, 7:3; 13:16-17; 14:1; 22:4)	Tilak, kumkum, vibhuti — visible forehead markings central to everyday Goan Hindu devotional identity	Handle with maximum pastoral care: the text’s own internal contrast (beast’s mark vs. God’s name) must be taught on its own terms, never presented as a blunt one-to-one condemnation of any present-day forehead-marking practice.
Consort/marriage imagery (Bride of Christ, marriage supper of the Lamb, chs. 19, 21-22)	Divine consort pairings (Vishnu-Lakshmi, Shiva-Parvati) granting the female figure shared divinity	Fence नवरी and कोंकरांचें लग्नाचें जेवण with explicit corporate/covenantal framing; the Bride is the redeemed people, never a co-divine consort.
Purifying/refining fire imagery (lake of fire, burning with fire and sulfur)	Hindu yajna/homa fire ritual, in which fire purifies and transforms rather than punishes finally	Every fire-of-judgment occurrence must be marked as punitive and final, explicitly not purificatory or cyclical.
Vehicle/animal-form imagery (four living creatures, 4:6-9 and throughout)	Vahana (deity-vehicle) traditions: Garuda (eagle), Nandi (bull), Simha (lion) as mounts of specific deities	Footnote clarifying these are worshiping creatures in their own right before God’s throne, not vehicles, mounts, or avatar-forms of any deity.
Abyss/netherworld imagery (bottomless pit, Hades)	Patala (Naga-associated netherworld) and Naraka (Hindu hell-realm), both cosmologically distinct realms in a rebirth-oriented cosmology	Footnote distinguishing these as temporary, God-controlled places of confinement/holding, not parallel cosmological realms within a rebirth system.
कर्म / कृती (deeds as judgment basis)	Karma as an impersonal, self-operating law of moral cause-and-effect across rebirths — arguably the single most pervasive worldview-level concept in the region	Absolute prohibition on कर्म in this sense; कृती only, always footnoted, at every occurrence (2:23; 20:12-13; 22:12). This is flagged in Section 6 as the single highest-risk ambiguity in the entire curriculum.
संत-adjacent “elite holy figure” vocabulary (implicitly relevant to saints, priests, elders, witnesses)	The Varkari bhakti-poet संत tradition (Tukaram, Namdev, Dnyaneshwar) already fenced off in the Romans baseline	Continue baseline पवित्र जन for all believers, never संत; extend same fence to 24 elders, priesthood-of-believers, and witness vocabulary so none of these accidentally imply an ascetic-elite category.

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5. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Revelation contains an unusually high number of proper names, technical apocalyptic titles, and liturgical exclamations that must be decided term-by-term as transliterate (retain foreign/Greek/Hebrew sound-form in Devanagari) vs. paraphrase (render meaning in ordinary Konkani) vs. hybrid (transliterate + Konkani gloss).

Transliterate (retain sound-form, Devanagari script):

• अल्फा आनी ओमेगा (Alpha and Omega) — a merism naming actual Greek letters; paraphrase (“first and last”) loses the letter-naming force and must be supplied only as a footnote gloss, not a replacement.
• सैतान (Satan) — established baseline transliteration; paraphrase risks भूत collision (Section 4).
• अबद्दोन / अपोल्लीयोन (Abaddon/Apollyon) — transliteration deliberately avoids triggering the “Destroyer” title’s association with Shiva that a Konkani paraphrase (“नाशकर्ता,” “the Destroyer”) would immediately invite.
• हर्मगिदोन (Armageddon), हल्लेलूया (Hallelujah), आमेन (Amen) — established proper names/liturgical exclamations with no meaningful Konkani paraphrase target; low risk, low doctrinal weight, transliterate per baseline convention.
• मिखाएल (Michael) — proper name.
• मसीहा / ख्रिस्त (Messiah/Christ) — established baseline dual transliteration retained.

Paraphrase / compound (render meaning):

• कोंकरूं (Lamb) — a real Konkani word for the animal, retained rather than transliterated, but requires the heaviest doctrinal fencing in the entire glossary (Section 4-style collision with bali-sacrifice practice) precisely because it is not transliterated and therefore carries full native semantic weight.
• देवाचें वचन (Word of God, Christ’s title, 19:13) — paraphrased to echo baseline देहधारण/Incarnation theology (John 1:1,14) rather than transliterating λόγος, which would produce an opaque loanword carrying no connection to the already-established doctrine.
• जिवीताचें पुस्तक (Book of Life), दुसरें मरण (Second Death), आगीचें व्हरण (Lake of Fire), नवें आकाश आनी नवी पृथ्वी (New Heaven and New Earth), कोंकरांचें लग्नाचें जेवण (Marriage Supper of the Lamb) — all compound descriptive phrases; single-word transliteration would strip these of any comprehensibility for a first-time reader and is never appropriate for content-bearing apocalyptic images (versus proper names, which benefit from transliteration precisely because they are not meant to be locally meaningful).
• मनीसपुत्र (Son of Man) — paraphrase preserves the Daniel 7 dominion sense in ordinary Konkani; transliterating “huios anthropou” would be meaningless to the target reader and obscure the title’s connection to baseline देवाचो पुत्र.

Hybrid (transliterate + mandatory Konkani gloss/footnote):

• सर्वसमर्थ for Pantokrator — technically a Konkani compound (not a transliteration), but functions as a hybrid decision because it deliberately avoids the more common Marathi-family loan-rendering सर्वशक्तिमान specifically to dodge the शक्ती collision; recorded here because the “obvious” choice was rejected in favor of a fenced compound.
• देवाचे सात आत्मे (Seven Spirits of God) — rendered in plain Konkani rather than transliterating πνεύματα, precisely so that the compulsory footnote (this is the one Spirit in fullness, not seven spirit-beings) can be attached to ordinary, comprehensible words rather than an opaque loan-phrase.

General rule derived: transliterate proper names, titles, and liturgical exclamations with no native semantic content to protect (Alpha/Omega, Satan, Abaddon, Armageddon, Hallelujah, Amen, Michael); paraphrase/compound doctrinally rich apocalyptic images that must be immediately comprehensible to a first-time Konkani reader, accepting that comprehensibility is exactly what makes these terms collision-prone and therefore requires heavier footnoting, not less.

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6. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision concreteness × frequency of occurrence):

1. कर्म vs. कृती (deeds/works as judgment basis, 2:23; 20:12-13; 22:12). The single highest risk in the curriculum: कर्म is not a marginal folk term but the ordinary Konkani/Marathi word for the region’s dominant causal worldview (karma-rebirth). A single lapsed substitution here would silently convert Revelation’s forensic, personal, one-time judgment into a karmic ledger. Mandatory footnote at every occurrence; कर्म is an absolute forbidden substitution, on par with the baseline’s मुक्ती/मोक्ष rule for salvation.

2. जिवीताचें पुस्तक (Book of Life) vs. Chitragupta’s karmic ledger (3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:12,15; 21:27). Directly adjacent to #1: a heavenly record-book is a familiar image to Hindu-background readers via Yama/Chitragupta mythology, where deeds are recorded for judgment leading to rebirth. Requires explicit grace-based framing at every occurrence.

3. अजगर / मोटो सर्प (Dragon/ancient serpent) vs. naga-shrine veneration (12:3-17; 20:2). Uniquely concrete and local (not merely “Hindu-background” in the abstract): active serpent-shrine and Nag Panchami practice exists in Goa today. Every occurrence without a clarifying footnote risks direct, tangible confusion with a still-practiced local devotion.

4. देव (God) generic ambiguity, intensified by Revelation’s throne-room density (throughout, esp. 4:2-11; 21:3,7; 22:1,3). The baseline’s known risk (देव = any deity in ordinary Goan Hindu usage) recurs far more often in Revelation than in Romans because of the book’s heavy throne-room/worship-scene concentration; the exclusivity-marker discipline (एकच खरो देव) must be applied with even greater vigilance and consistency here.

5. नवरी / कोंकरांचें लग्नाचें जेवण (Bride of Christ / Marriage Supper) vs. divine consort pairings (19:7,9; 21:2,9; 22:17). High doctrinal centrality (a named curriculum doctrine) combined with a readily available, prestigious, and doctrinally incompatible cultural template (Vishnu-Lakshmi, Shiva-Parvati) makes this a leading risk, requiring consistent corporate/covenantal fencing across every occurrence, not just a single footnote.

6. सामर्थ्य/सर्वसमर्थ vs. शक्ती (power/Almighty vs. Shakta goddess theology, 1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:14; 19:6,15; 21:22, and throughout as “power of God”). The forbidden substitution is already documented in the baseline for “power of God” but Revelation’s repeated Pantokrator title multiplies the exposure; a single lapse into सर्वशक्तिमान (a common regional-translation default) would compromise the term across the entire book.

7. अबद्दोन/अपोल्लीयोन (“the Destroyer”) vs. Shiva’s Trimurti role (9:11). Low frequency (single occurrence) but very high concreteness of collision — “the Destroyer” is a widely known epithet in regional Hindu religious literacy; requires explicit denial of equivalence, not merely a neutral footnote.

8. मूर्तिपूजक (idolaters) vs. living murti-devotion (21:8; 22:15). Doctrinally necessary (appears in the core passage, 21:8) but pastorally the most socially sensitive single word in the glossary, since it names a practice central to the identity of many readers’ Hindu neighbors and, in some cases, family members.

9. आगीचें व्हरण / burning with fire and sulfur vs. purificatory yajna fire (19:20; 20:10,14-15; 21:8). Fire-as-purification is a deeply positive image in regional Hindu ritual (agni as a purifying, transformative medium); Revelation’s fire is the opposite (punitive, final), and the positive cultural valence of fire makes this an easy, comfortable, and therefore dangerous misreading.

10. दुसरें मरण (Second Death) vs. rebirth-cycle logic (2:11; 20:6,14; 21:8). A phrase literally built from ordinary words for “second” and “death” invites, almost by grammatical default, a rebirth-adjacent reading (“another death, hence another life before it”) unless explicitly and repeatedly fenced as final and non-repeating.

11. श्वापदाची खूण / ताचें नांव तांच्या कपाळार (mark of the beast vs. name on forehead) vs. tilak/kumkum practice (7:3; 13:16-17; 14:1; 22:4). High pastoral sensitivity given the visibility and everyday devotional normalcy of forehead-marking in Goan Hindu practice; the text’s own internal literary contrast must carry the teaching weight, not an imposed cultural equivalence.

12. देवाचे सात आत्मे (Seven Spirits of God) vs. Devchar/Rakhandar multiple-spirit veneration (1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6). Lower frequency than items above but a genuine and locally concrete folk-religious collision (guardian/tutelary spirit veneration is an active Konkan practice); requires the same mandatory-footnote discipline as the dragon/serpent risk.

13. सिंहासनार बसिल्लो चार जिवंत प्राणी (four living creatures) vs. vahana/deity-vehicle imagery (4:6-9 and throughout). Superficial resemblance (composite animal-faced beings before a throne) to Garuda/Nandi/Simha vehicle imagery; moderate risk given the visual, non-verbal nature of the collision, which footnotes can only partially mitigate.

14. अगाध खाडी / अधोलोक (Abyss/Hades) vs. Patala/Naraka cosmology (9:1-11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1-3; 1:18; 6:8; 20:13-14). Real but more diffuse risk than items above, since these terms are less lexically “loaded” than कर्म or सर्प; still requires a footnote distinguishing temporary God-controlled confinement from a parallel cosmological realm.

15. राजांचो राजा आनी प्रभूंचो प्रभू / मनीसपुत्र (King of kings / Son of Man) vs. generic royal-title inflation. Lowest risk in this ranked list, but flagged because Konkani royal-title vocabulary is otherwise unremarkable and could be abbreviated or flattened by translators seeking economy; the doubled superlative and the Daniel 7 background must be retained in full every time to preserve their doctrinal force.

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7. Forward Recommendations

• Every term ranked 1–9 above requires mandatory theologian-reviewed footnoting at first occurrence and at every subsequent occurrence, not merely a one-time glossary note, given Revelation’s episodic, non-linear reading pattern (learners may encounter chapter 20 before chapter 12).
• Items 10–15 require footnoting at first occurrence with reference back to that note at subsequent occurrences, consistent with Medium/High native-speaker review routing.
• No new term identified in this analysis should be entered into translation_memory.json without an accompanying doctrine_risk_registry.json entry specifying its review routing, per the baseline’s Translation Memory Load and Enforcement Instructions.
• This analysis’ findings are already reflected in the term-level decisions recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and the extended assets/bible_term_registry.json; those files should be treated as the authoritative implementation of the strategies recommended here.