Executive Summary — Luke Language Package (English → Korean)

Why it matters

Korean is the most translation-ready language in this pipeline: a century-old, indigenous Bible translation tradition (개역개정/KRV) already supplies settled vocabulary for nearly every doctrine in Luke. The real risk isn’t building new theological vocabulary from scratch — it’s syncretistic drift. Luke’s core passage (4:16-21) and its dominant themes — good news to the poor, the Spirit’s power, forgiveness, and reversal of status — sit directly on top of Korea’s most self-critically documented spiritual hazard: 기복신앙 (fortune-seeking faith), where blessing language quietly becomes transactional. This package exists to keep Luke’s gospel of grace from being heard as a gospel of luck.

Key findings

• 81 theological terms are now tracked in the Luke translation memory (26 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 55 newly surfaced by Luke’s narrative), of which 46 are Critical or High risk (21 Critical, 25 High) and require mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence.
• 26 doctrines are cataloged across Luke’s full 24 chapters, of which 22 require theologian review (9 Critical, 13 High) and 4 require native speaker review (Medium) — zero are automated-only, reflecting Luke’s unusually dense concentration of high-stakes material relative to Romans.
• Two brand-new collision points, absent from the Romans baseline entirely, now rank among the single highest-risk items in the whole two-book pipeline: 복이 있다 (“blessed,” Luke 6:20-26) and 주의 은혜의 해 (“the Lord’s favorable/Jubilee year,” Luke 4:19) — both directly import 복/은혜 into new textual territory where a “lucky year” or “coming prosperity” misreading is live and plausible.
• The single Greek word ἄφεσις is rendered by two different Korean words across Luke (자유 at 4:18, 죄 사함 elsewhere) — a built-in translation-fidelity risk requiring explicit cross-referencing so learners don’t perceive two unrelated ministries.
• 귀신 (“demon”) is the exact term a Korean mudang claims to channel or exorcise in shamanistic ritual, making Luke’s extensive exorcism material (chs. 4, 8, 9, 10, 11) one of the highest-density collision zones in the curriculum.
• Luke’s own text supplies a built-in doctrinal asset: at 24:37-39 the risen Christ explicitly denies being a πνεῦμα (ghost/spirit), directly countering Korean ancestor-ghost folk categories — this should be taught as Scripture correcting the culture, not merely defended against it.

Risks

• Critical: Prosperity-gospel inversion of the Beatitudes and the Jubilee-year announcement (복/은혜 collision), compounding the baseline’s single most sensitive term.
• Critical: Collapse of the ἄφεσις split (자유/죄 사함) into two unrelated concepts, obscuring Luke’s unified liberation-and-forgiveness theology.
• High: 귀신/마귀 (demon/devil) vocabulary drifting toward a shamanistic consult-or-placate framing rather than Christ’s exclusive, defeated-enemy authority.
• High: 인자 (Son of Man) flattened to generic “a human being,” losing its dual apocalyptic-authority/humble-solidarity force load-bearing for nearly every doctrine.
• Medium-High: First-century social stigma (세리, 목자, 사마리아인) invisible to modern Korean readers without explicit background teaching, flattening Luke’s table-fellowship and neighbor-redefinition parables into generic kindness lessons.

Opportunities

• Korea’s unusually settled, indigenous Protestant Bible vocabulary means Phase 2 translation work is narrower and more surgical than in most pipeline languages: correctly deploying and fencing existing terms, not inventing new ones.
• Korean 아빠 (appa) is an unusually natural near-cognate for Aramaic “Abba,” an asset for Luke’s prayer material.
• Luke 24:37-39’s explicit ghost-denial is a ready-made apologetic bridge against ancestor-spirit folk belief — a rare case where the source text does the fencing work for us.
• Korea’s status of leading missionary-sending nation gives the Ascension/Great Commission material (24:44-53) natural cultural resonance, provided the achievement-metrics caution already flagged in the baseline is maintained.

Recommended actions

1. Route all 21 Critical and 25 High term-level entries, and all 22 Critical/High doctrines, through mandatory human theologian review before any segment is marked approved — no exceptions, per the escalation rules in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
2. Enforce verbatim cross-document consistency for the core passage (4:16-21) and the thesis verse (19:10), matching the rigor already applied to Romans 1:16-17.
3. Attach mandatory translator-note footnotes at every occurrence of 복이 있다, 주의 은혜의 해, 자유 (when rendering ἄφεσις), and 귀신, per the footnote requirements above.
4. Supply first-century social-background sidebars wherever 세리, 목자, 과부, or 사마리아인 occurs, since modern Korean cultural referents invert or erase the original social stigma.
5. Brief all reviewers that Luke, unlike Romans, has zero automated-only doctrines — plan theologian and native-speaker reviewer capacity accordingly before Phase 2 begins.