Linguistic Gap Analysis: Philemon

English → Kurdish (Kurmanji) | Phase 1, Step 8

Source language: English Destination language: Kurdish (Kurmanji dialect, Latin script) Curriculum: Philemon (single chapter, vv. 1–25) Core passage: Philemon 1:8–21 Doctrines in scope: Forgiveness and Reconciliation; Christian Brotherhood across Social Status; Slavery and the Gospel’s Transforming Power; Intercession and Appeal on Behalf of Another; Grace-Motivated Obedience

This analysis extends, and does not contradict, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json and this curriculum’s own 08_core_glossary.md and bible_term_registry.json (Philemon). It answers four questions for Phase 2 planning: (1) what does the Kurdish doctrinal vocabulary matrix look like for this letter’s five doctrines; (2) where is vocabulary genuinely missing versus merely crowded by competing associations that need “fencing”; (3) where should the AI transliterate rather than paraphrase, and vice versa; (4) which specific ambiguities in this short, densely rhetorical letter carry the highest mistranslation risk, ranked.

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Part 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the five assigned doctrines: the available Kurdish term(s), their specific weaknesses, and the recommended mitigation strategy for Phase 2.

1.1 Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Available Kurdish terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
Lêborîn (forgiveness, native compound: “to pass over/by”)	Generic; carries no inherent legal-debt structure and can read as mere emotional pardon, missing Paul’s bookkeeping metaphor (ἐλλογάω, ὀφείλω, ἀποτίνω) that structures 1:18–19.	Use Lêborîn for the general concept but always pair it in this letter with the debt-transfer vocabulary already fixed in the glossary (Deyn/Deyndar bûn, Li ser min bihesibîne, Dayîn/Vegerandin) so the forensic, substitutionary shape of Paul’s offer is not lost to a generic-pardon gloss.
Hevpar (partner, κοινωνός, 1:17)	Risk of collapsing into baseline’s noted “heval” (comrade) political-solidarity echo if the more common Heval were used instead; Hevpar avoids this but is a rarer, more formal word that may need a one-time gloss for readers unfamiliar with it in this sense.	Retain Hevpar exactly as fixed in the Philemon term registry; do not substitute Heval.
Qebûl kirin (receive/welcome, προσλαμβάνω, 1:17)	Adequate but flat; does not by itself carry the weight of “receive as you would receive me” — the equal-standing force must come from surrounding syntax, not the verb alone.	Ensure translated syntax explicitly preserves the “as you would receive me” comparison; do not let the verb carry that weight alone.
Li ser min bihesibîne (charge to my account, ἐλλογάω, 1:18)	Not a single natural Kurdish word — a compound clause built on the hesibandin root. Risk: translators unfamiliar with the deliberate cross-reference to justification vocabulary may simplify it to a generic “I will pay it” and lose the imputation echo.	Retain the full compound exactly as fixed; do not compress to a simple future-payment verb. Footnote the deliberate echo of Wek adil hatin hesibandin / Adaleta ku tê hesibandin for theologian review.

Gap assessment: No missing vocabulary here — Kurdish has adequate native resources for forgiveness-as-pardon (Lêborîn) and for debt/reckoning (hesibandin root, already load-bearing in the baseline). The risk is entirely one of under-connection: without deliberate compounding and footnoting, Phase 2 output could render 1:17–19 as ordinary interpersonal reconciliation language and miss that Paul is modeling substitutionary satisfaction of a debt — the letter’s central typological payload for teaching the doctrine of reconciliation through Christ.

1.2 Christian Brotherhood across Social Status

Available Kurdish terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
Bira / Xwişk (brother/sister, ἀδελφός/ἀδελφή)	Extremely strong pre-existing semantic field: Kurdish aşîret (tribal-confederation) social organization makes “bira” one of the most loaded kinship-loyalty words in the language, tied to blood lineage, land inheritance, and marriage-alliance obligation. Philemon’s argument requires this word to cross exactly the blood-lineage line it normally protects.	Do not avoid “Bira”/“Xwişk” — their very weight is rhetorically useful — but every occurrence in the core passage (1:16 especially) requires an explicit teaching gloss that this brotherhood is constituted by union with Christ, not blood or clan, deliberately overriding the normal aşîret referent.
Hezkirî (beloved, ἀγαπητός, 1:1 & 1:16)	No inherent weakness, but a consistency risk: if translators vary the rendering between the two occurrences (e.g., a more casual synonym for Onesimus at 1:16 than for Philemon at 1:1), the letter’s rhetorical parallel — master and former slave called by the identical term — is destroyed.	Lock Hezkirî as the single rendering at both 1:1 and 1:16 without variation; flag any deviation for revision.
Kole (slave, δοῦλος) — see also 1.3 below	Directly collides with the brotherhood doctrine at 1:16 (“no longer as a slave but… a brother”).	See section 1.3; the two doctrines are inseparable at this verse and must be translated as a single deliberate contrast, not two independent word choices.

Gap assessment: No missing vocabulary — the gap is conceptual-cultural, not lexical. Kurdish has rich brotherhood vocabulary; the problem is that it is too well-supplied with a competing, blood-based referent. This is a fencing problem (see Part 2), not a missing-term problem.

1.3 Slavery and the Gospel’s Transforming Power

Available Kurdish terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
Kole (slave, chattel-status, δοῦλος)	Correctly carries the legal-social weight of ownership Paul’s argument requires as its starting premise, but the region’s shared Ottoman-era, Sunni-majority Islamic legal heritage includes an elaborate, religiously virtuous manumission (freeing-a-slave) tradition. This creates a strong pull to read Philemon as Paul counseling pious manumission — a partial, works-adjacent good deed — rather than Paul’s actual, more radical claim that the master-slave category itself is transcended by new family identity in Christ.	Retain Kole exactly (never soften to Xulam, “servant,” which was already rejected in the core glossary for blurring legal status). Every occurrence must be paired with explicit teaching that distinguishes Paul’s argument from mere manumission ethics: Onesimus’s legal status may or may not formally change, but his relational status is definitively and permanently transformed regardless. Human theologian review required at every occurrence (per registry).
Bêkêr / Kêrhatî (useless/useful, 1:11)	Purely descriptive; low independent risk, but the underlying wordplay on Onesimus’s own name is entirely invisible in Kurdish transliteration.	Use a single consolidated translator’s note (not repeated at each of the three wordplay occurrences: 1:10 name, 1:11 adjectives, 1:20 verb) explaining the Greek name-pun once, at first occurrence, cross-referenced forward.
Li gorî laş (“according to the flesh,” social-physical sense, σάρξ, 1:16)	Genuine collision risk within Kurdish Christian usage itself: the same underlying word family (laş / a bare beden-type gloss) is used elsewhere for the Romans “flesh vs. Spirit” moral-conflict sense of σάρξ. A reader moving between Romans and Philemon curricula could import the wrong sense.	Retain the periphrastic Li gorî laş (rather than a bare noun) specifically in Philemon to visually and grammatically distinguish this social-status sense from the moral-conflict sense; flag for cross-document consistency review per baseline Theological Consistency Rules.

Gap assessment: This is the letter’s single genuine missing-vocabulary problem: Kurdish (like most modern languages) has no term that denotes “a status is legally unresolved but relationally is already conclusively overturned in Christ” — the precise, paradoxical claim of 1:16. No single word can carry this; it must be handled through explicit doctrinal exposition around the fixed terms Kole, Bira, and Li gorî laş rather than through lexical innovation. Recommend against coining a novel compound term for this nuance; risk of an artificial neologism outweighs the benefit.

1.4 Intercession and Appeal on Behalf of Another

Available Kurdish terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
Lava kirin (appeal/plea, παρακαλῶ, 1:9–10)	Distinct from, but easily confused with, baseline’s existing Handan kirin (encourage) / şîret kirin (admonish) already fixed for Romans’ broader παρακαλέω usage. Risk of translators defaulting to the more familiar baseline term rather than this letter-specific nuance.	Enforce Lava kirin exactly at 1:9–10 as fixed in the Philemon registry; do not substitute the Romans-context terms. Cross-reference note explaining the distinction (authority-relinquishing personal entreaty, not general encouragement/admonition) should accompany the first occurrence.
Wêrekî (boldness/standing, παρρησία, 1:8)	Adequate, but the doctrinal weight depends entirely on the reader perceiving the contrast with 1:9’s appeal — the word itself carries no risk in isolation.	Ensure translated discourse markers (e.g., “though I could… yet I…” structure) are preserved so the rhetorical pivot from 1:8 to 1:9 is not lost.
Hevleşker (fellow soldier, συστρατιώτης, 1:2)	High risk: Kurdish military/struggle vocabulary (leşker, soldier; cognates of şervan, fighter) is saturated with live, real-world resonance from Peshmerga service and decades of guerrilla/political armed struggle across all four host states. A reader could hear this as literal or coded political-military language.	Retain Hevleşker (per registry) but require an immediate, explicit figurative-language anchor at first occurrence (“a spiritual metaphor for shared gospel labor, not military or political struggle”) — this is one of the letter’s most acute fencing needs (see Part 2).
Girtî / Hevgirtî (prisoner/fellow-prisoner, δέσμιος/συναιχμάλωτος)	Same category of risk as Hevleşker: Kurdish “political prisoner” (girtiyê siyasî) is a vivid, emotionally load-bearing category across all four states.	Anchor explicitly to gospel-suffering, not political captivity, at every occurrence, while permitting (per registry) a pastoral acknowledgment that the resonance with real suffering-for-conviction is not wholly inapt — this is a case where the “crowded neighborhood” is partly an asset if carefully bounded.

Gap assessment: No missing vocabulary. The entire risk surface in this doctrine is crowded-neighborhood interference from Kurdish political/military/incarceration vocabulary — see Part 2 for the fencing strategy required.

1.5 Grace-Motivated Obedience

Available Kurdish terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
Kerem (grace, χάρις, 1:3, 1:25; root of χαρίζομαι, 1:22)	Already Critical/High risk per baseline (Sufi keramet — elite, hierarchical miracle-grace for advanced spiritual figures). Philemon’s use is structurally unusual: grace brackets the entire letter (opens 1:3, closes 1:25) rather than appearing in a single doctrinal argument as in Romans.	Reuse Kerem exactly per baseline; because Philemon’s grace-framing is inclusio-structured rather than argument-structured, recommend a single cross-referencing footnote at 1:3 flagging that the same term recurs at 1:25 and functions as a deliberate envelope, so translators do not treat the two occurrences as independent and vary tone or emphasis.
Bi dilxwazî / Bi zorê (voluntary/by compulsion, ἑκούσιον/ἀνάγκη, 1:14)	The sharpest and most explicit statement of this doctrine anywhere in the letter; the surrounding Sunni-majority religious culture’s core organizing category (îslam itself meaning “submission”) creates strong gravitational pull toward reading any call to right action as compelled duty rather than free response.	This verse pair is the highest-value teaching moment in the letter for this doctrine; require human theologian review (per registry) and explicit cross-teaching with 1:21’s Guhdarî (obedience) so the whole letter’s obedience vocabulary is read through the voluntary lens established at 1:14, not the reverse.
Guhdarî (obedience, ὑπακοή, 1:21)	Built on the same root as baseline’s Critical compound Guhdarîkirina Baweriyê (“obedience of faith”); bare Guhdarî without qualification risks reverting to generic submission/compliance sense.	Do not leave Guhdarî unqualified at 1:21; the surrounding clause (“confident of your obedience… you will do even more than I say”) must make clear this is anticipated free response to love, not command-compliance. Consistent with baseline’s forbidden-substitution logic for obedience vocabulary.

Gap assessment: No missing vocabulary; this doctrine’s risk is entirely conceptual-framing (crowded neighborhood with Islamic submission theology), addressed through required exposition rather than lexical choice.

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Part 2: Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

2.1 Genuinely missing vocabulary (lexical gap)

Only one clear case emerges from the full-letter review:

• The “relationally-settled-though-legally-unresolved” status at 1:16. Kurdish has no single term for a social status that is simultaneously legally ambiguous and relationally already overturned. Verdict: do not coin a neologism. Handle through required doctrinal exposition around the three fixed terms (Kole, Bira, Li gorî laş), not through a new compound. Coining an artificial term here would itself become a translation risk (an unfamiliar word inviting misreading) worse than the gap it tries to solve.

Beyond this, Kurdish is not vocabulary-poor for Philemon — every other doctrinal concept in the letter has an adequate native or established Kurdish Christian term. The letter’s translation risk profile is dominated by the second category:

2.2 Crowded semantic neighborhoods requiring active fencing

These are terms where Kurdish vocabulary is available and correct but sits inside a semantic field already strongly occupied by a competing cultural, political, or religious association. Each requires an explicit “fence” — a footnote, anchoring clause, or required teaching point — rather than a different word choice.

Term	Competing neighborhood	Fencing requirement
Kole (slave)	Islamic manumission piety (freeing a slave as a religiously virtuous act)	Fence: explicitly distinguish Paul’s transcend-the-category argument from manumission ethics.
Bira / Xwişk (brother/sister)	Aşîret blood-kinship loyalty structures	Fence: explicit teaching that this brotherhood crosses blood-lineage lines entirely, especially at 1:16 where it also crosses the master-slave line simultaneously.
Hevleşker (fellow soldier)	Peshmerga / guerrilla / armed political-struggle vocabulary, live and current across all four host states	Fence: immediate, explicit statement that this is spiritual-metaphorical language, never literal or political — the single highest cultural-safety fencing requirement in the letter (see Part 4, #1).
Girtî / Hevgirtî (prisoner / fellow-prisoner)	Kurdish political-prisoner (girtiyê siyasî) category	Fence: anchor to gospel suffering; permit but bound the pastoral resonance with real suffering-for-conviction.
Guhdarî (obedience)	Regional Islamic submission-as-core-religious-category default	Fence: read through 1:14’s voluntary/compulsion framing; never rendered as compelled duty.
Evîn (love, ἀγάπη)	Kurdish classical Sufi mystical lover/beloved poetic register (Melayê Cizîrî, Ehmedê Xanî)	Fence: anchor to ethically active, socially transformative love (freeing a wrong, receiving a slave as brother) — not generalized romantic-mystical devotion.
Ferman kirin (command, ἐπιτάσσω)	Historical tribal/state decree authority (“ferman”)	This is a productive crowded neighborhood rather than a hazard: the historical weight of “ferman” usefully reinforces exactly the authority Paul chooses to lay aside at 1:8–9. No fencing needed beyond ensuring the following verse’s contrast is clearly rendered; flag as an asset, not a risk.
Cîhê Mêvanan / Mêvandarî (hospitality, ξενία, 1:22)	Kurdish mêvanperwerî, an exceptionally strong positive cultural value	Also a productive neighborhood/asset, comparable to the baseline’s note on Aştî (peace); no fencing required, may be leaned into for warmth.
Hevpar (partner, κοινωνός) vs. Heval (comrade) vs. Hevaltî (fellowship)	Kurdish leftist/nationalist “comrade” political-solidarity register (already flagged in baseline for hevaltî)	Fence: retain the registry’s distinct term choices (Hevpar for concrete partnership at 1:17, Hevaltî for abstract fellowship at 1:6); do not let either drift toward Heval’s political-solidarity connotation.
Girtî vs. Mizgînî (prisoner vs. gospel)	Political captivity vs. gospel-motivated suffering	Fence: 1:13’s genitive construction (“imprisonment for the gospel”) should always be rendered so Mizgînî functions as the explicit stated cause of Girtî, closing off a possible political misreading at the clause level, not just via footnote.

General principle for Phase 2: where a term sits in a crowded neighborhood with a negative interference risk (Kole, Bira/Xwişk, Hevleşker, Girtî, Guhdarî, Evîn), the fence must be an explicit, non-optional anchoring clause or footnote at first occurrence, escalated to human theologian review per the doctrine risk registry. Where the crowded neighborhood is positive (Ferman kirin, Cîhê Mêvanan), no defensive fencing is required — Phase 2 may lean into the resonance for rhetorical and pastoral effect.

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Part 3: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

3.1 Transliterate (retain the source/Greek form, do not translate the concept away)

Item	Decision	Rationale
Proper names (Pawlos, Tîmotêyos, Filêmon, Apfiya, Arkîpos, Onesîmos, Epafras, Marqos, Arîstarkos, Dêmas, Lûqa, Mesîh, Îsa, Xwedê)	Transliterate per established Kurdish Christian Bible forms (per core glossary Part D)	Consistency with existing Kurdish Christian Bible tradition; no translation decision needed, only correct established-form retrieval.
Onesîmos name itself, despite its Greek meaning (“useful”)	Transliterate the name; do not attempt a meaning-translation (e.g., do not rename him “Kêrhatî” in-text)	A translated name would be a far greater fidelity violation than an invisible wordplay; the correct remedy is a translator’s note, not renaming a historical person.
Theological proper nouns already fixed in baseline (Amîn, Hallelûya) — not present in Philemon’s text but retained as a standing rule	Transliterate	Consistency across the full curriculum per baseline transliteration standards.

3.2 Paraphrase / periphrastic compound (no single native word suffices; build a phrase)

Item	Decision	Rationale
ἐλλογάω (charge to account, 1:18)	Paraphrase as the fixed compound Li ser min bihesibîne	No single Kurdish verb captures the bookkeeping-imputation sense; the compound deliberately reuses the baseline’s justification-vocabulary root for typological consistency.
σπλάγχνα (heart/inmost affection, 1:7, 1:12, 1:20)	Paraphrase as Dil (heart), per baseline idiom-handling rule; do not attempt a literal “bowels” rendering	A literal anatomical rendering would be jarring and inappropriate in formal Kurdish register; “dil” is the accepted idiomatic substitution, with the acknowledged cost of softened visceral intensity flagged for translator awareness, especially at 1:12.
ἑκούσιον / ἀνάγκη (voluntary/compulsion, 1:14)	Paraphrase as the fixed adverbial pair Bi dilxwazî / Bi zorê rather than seeking single-word nominal equivalents	Kurdish naturally expresses this contrast adverbially; forcing single abstract nouns would read as unnatural and reduce clarity on the letter’s sharpest doctrinal point.
The 1:16 “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother” construction	Paraphrase with full syntactic parallelism preserved, not compressed	The rhetorical force depends on the full contrastive clause structure; compressing to a shorter Kurdish equivalent would flatten the doctrinal climax of the letter.

3.3 Established compound reuse (neither fresh transliteration nor fresh paraphrase — pull the existing baseline-established phrase)

Item	Decision	Rationale
Church (gathered sense), 1:2	Use baseline-established Civata Mesîhî, not Dêr	Baseline already resolved this building-vs-people distinction; Philemon 1:2’s literal house church makes this the correct, not merely available, choice.
Guhdarî (1:21) as related to but distinct from Guhdarîkirina Baweriyê	Reuse the shared root rather than inventing an unrelated synonym	Preserves cross-document lexical consistency per baseline’s Theological Consistency Rules, even though Philemon’s context is narrower than the full Romans compound.

3.4 Explicit rejection: do not transliterate or borrow Arabic/Islamic-register loanwords where a native option exists

Consistent with the baseline’s general preference for native Kurdish vocabulary over Arabic loanwords: no term in Philemon requires reaching for an Arabic-derived religious loanword (e.g., no equivalent of the baseline’s Namûs-for-law problem arises in this letter). This is recorded for completeness — the letter poses no new transliteration-vs-loanword collision beyond those already resolved in the baseline.

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Part 4: Ranked List of the Letter’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of cultural misreading), for Phase 2 review prioritization. All items below require human theologian review per the doctrine risk registry unless otherwise noted.

1. 1:16 — “no longer as a slave but… a brother” (Kole / Bira contrast). The letter’s doctrinal climax and the point of maximum collision between three separate risk vectors at once: Critical-risk slavery vocabulary, High-risk brotherhood vocabulary, and the Critical-risk Xudan (Lord) contrast in the same verse (“in the flesh and in the Lord”). A flattened or softened rendering here damages three doctrines simultaneously. Highest priority for theologian review.

2. 1:2 — “fellow soldier” (Hevleşker). Uniquely dangerous not because of doctrinal complexity but because of live political-safety stakes: military-struggle vocabulary is not an abstract cultural association in Kurdish but active, current, sometimes legally sensitive real-world vocabulary across all four host states. A poorly fenced rendering risks reader safety and/or political misreading of the entire document, not merely theological confusion.

3. 1:1, 1:9, 1:10, 1:13, 1:23 — “prisoner” (Girtî / Hevgirtî). Runs through the whole letter (Paul’s self-designation) and carries the same political-resonance risk as #2, compounded by frequency; every occurrence needs consistent anchoring, and inconsistency across occurrences would itself create confusion.

4. 1:14 — voluntary vs. compulsion (Bi dilxwazî / Bi zorê). The letter’s single clearest didactic statement of grace-motivated obedience, sitting in direct tension with the regional Islamic submission-as-obedience default; mistranslation here would invert the letter’s central ethical argument.

5. 1:18 — “charge it to my account” (Li ser min bihesibîne). Low surface visibility (an obscure bookkeeping metaphor) masking high doctrinal payload (typological echo of imputed righteousness); the risk is not mistranslation into error so much as translators failing to preserve or flag the deliberate cross-reference, causing it to be lost entirely rather than corrupted.

6. 1:10 — “whose father I became” (Zayîn, spiritual begetting). Directly engages the Critical-risk adoption doctrine’s core regional obstacle (Quranic adoption restriction + aşîret blood-lineage default) in miniature narrative form; if under-flagged, this vivid illustration of adoption theology could be read as merely figurative praise language rather than a substantive doctrinal claim paralleling Romans 8.

7. 1:8–9 — boldness deliberately laid aside for appeal (Wêrekî → Lava kirin). Risk is subtler: not a single mistranslatable word but the discourse-level contrast between the two verses. If Phase 2 processes verses independently without preserving the “though I could… instead I…” linkage, the letter’s entire rhetorical strategy — modeling grace-motivated appeal over authoritative command — is undermined even if every individual word is correct.

8. 1:12 — “I am sending my very heart” (Dil, elevated to High risk specifically here). Risk of flattening an unusually intense personal identification (Paul calling a formerly enslaved convert his own “heart”) into a generic expression of affection, losing the force of the intercession doctrine’s most personal moment in the letter.

9. 1:6 vs. 1:17 — Hevaltî (abstract fellowship) vs. Hevpar (concrete partner). Risk of translator drift toward a single convenient word for both if reviewers are not alert to the deliberate distinction the core glossary and registry establish; a Medium-severity but easily-overlooked consistency risk given the two terms’ surface similarity in English (“fellowship”/“partnership”).

10. 1:16 — Li gorî laş cross-document confusion with Romans’ σάρξ. Lower immediate doctrinal stakes than items 1–9, but a real risk for any student moving between the Romans and Philemon curricula: the same underlying word family carrying two theologically distinct senses (social status here vs. moral conflict in Romans) if not periphrastically distinguished.

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Summary for Phase 2 Planning

• No net-new missing vocabulary crisis: Kurdish’s lexical resources are adequate across all five doctrines; the letter’s translation difficulty is overwhelmingly about fencing existing, correct vocabulary against competing cultural/political/religious associations, not filling lexical gaps.
• Two crowded neighborhoods (military/political-struggle vocabulary; Islamic manumission and submission theology) carry safety and doctrinal stakes simultaneously and should receive the most Phase 2 reviewer attention.
• Two crowded neighborhoods (hospitality; historical decree/“ferman” authority) are genuine assets and Phase 2 should be permitted to lean into them rather than defensively neutralize them.
• The letter’s structural features (inclusio on Kerem at 1:3/1:25; the σπλάγχνα motif at 1:7/1:12/1:20; the Onesimus name-wordplay at 1:10/1:11/1:20) require cross-verse awareness, not just per-verse correctness — Phase 2 segment-by-segment processing must not lose these letter-spanning patterns.
• All Critical and High risk items identified here are already captured in 08_core_glossary.md and the Philemon bible_term_registry.json; this document adds no new terms but reclassifies risk by cause (missing word vs. crowded neighborhood vs. cross-verse discourse structure) to guide Phase 2 reviewer training and prioritization.

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This document extends, and does not contradict, the baseline Romans Language Package and this curriculum’s own 08_core_glossary.md and Philemon bible_term_registry.json. See those files for the full term-by-term risk data underlying this analysis.