Executive Summary: 1 Corinthians → Maithili Language Package

Why it matters

1 Corinthians is a pastoral, situational letter addressing a fractured, status-conscious congregation — and Mithila is a fractured, status-conscious mission field in exactly the ways this letter speaks to. Its core passage (15:1-11) anchors the entire curriculum in a fixed, falsifiable resurrection creed, but the letter’s other nine doctrines (unity, the cross, discipline, marriage, idol meat, the Lord’s Supper, spiritual gifts, love, worship order) each independently collide with a currently practiced element of Maithil religious and social life — not distant mythology, as several Romans terms addressed, but live devotional poetry, live caste-lineage consciousness (Panjikaran), live ritual practice (Shakta shrine offerings), and live social custom (purdah, bhoj commensality). Getting this Language Package right is the difference between a translation that proclaims the gospel clearly and one that is quietly reabsorbed into the very frameworks it needs to confront.

Key findings

• 86 total glossary terms now govern this curriculum: 36 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 50 newly introduced by 1 Corinthians.
• 15 Critical-risk terms total (10 inherited + 5 new: resurrection_of_the_dead, imperishable, members, food_offered_to_idols, love) — every one requires mandatory, standing translator notes at every occurrence, not just first use.
• 34 High-risk terms total (14 inherited + 20 new) span wisdom/cross, church discipline, marriage, idol meat, tongues, the Lord’s Supper, and stewardship vocabulary.
• 31 distinct doctrines are tracked in the doctrine risk registry: 6 Critical, 16 High, 7 Medium, 2 Low — a materially heavier Critical/High concentration than the Romans baseline, reflecting 1 Corinthians’ unusually dense collision profile.
• 22 doctrines require mandatory human theologian review; 7 require native speaker review; only 2 are automated-only — meaning roughly 71% of all tracked doctrines in this book need theologian sign-off before Phase 2 output can be trusted.
• The single highest-density risk concentration in the whole curriculum is 1 Corinthians 15 (the core passage’s chapter): it carries the Gospel-as-received-tradition doctrine, both resurrection doctrines (Christ’s and believers’), and the highest per-chapter count of newly coined Critical-risk terms (मृतकक पुनरुत्थान, अविनाशी, आत्मिक देह/प्राणिक देह, पहिल फल) in the book.

Risks

• प्रेम (love, ch.13) — the single greatest illustrative-gravity risk in the curriculum: Vidyāpati’s Rādhā-Krishna devotional poetry is Mithila’s most cherished literary-devotional heritage, and any teacher reaching for a natural illustration will be pulled toward exactly this material by cultural reflex.
• अविनाशी (imperishable, chs. 9, 15) — direct terminological collision with the Bhagavad Gītā’s teaching on the soul’s own timeless immortality; an unflagged occurrence risks inverting Paul’s entire resurrection argument into a restatement of the very doctrine it refutes.
• मूर्तिपूजामे चढ़ाओल भोजन vs. भोग (chs. 8, 10) — the risk of accidentally sanctifying the practice Paul treats with caution, since भोग is the word any Maithili speaker would reach for by default.
• अंग (members, chs. 6, 12) — direct collision with the Puruṣasūkta’s caste-grounding body theology, a text with ongoing social authority in Mithila’s Brahmin-centered social structure; Paul’s argument is this theology’s explicit reversal and must be flagged as such every time.
• मन्दिर (temple, chs. 3, 6) — the unmarked, default Maithili word for a physical Hindu shrine; “you are God’s temple” risks a literal-building or self-divinization misreading without a standing clarifying note.
• Two open, unresolved exegetical-sensitivity items carried forward from Steps 6–8 (14:33-35 women’s silence; 11:3’s relational κεφαλή; 5:1’s Levitical-incest background) remain flagged for theologian resolution, not decided at the glossary level — a residual risk if Phase 2 processing proceeds without that resolution in hand.

Opportunities

• Five terms genuinely have no existing Maithili vocabulary at all (आत्मिक देह, प्राणिक देह, दाममे किनल गेलहुँ, शैतानक हाथमे सौंपब, मूर्तिपूजामे चढ़ाओल भोजन) — a chance to set clean, uncontested precedent rather than untangle an inherited mistranslation, consistent with Maithili’s overall “precedent-setting, not invention” translation posture noted in the Translation Landscape analysis.
• 1 Corinthians’ argument against Puruṣasūkta-style body-caste hierarchy (ch. 12) and against Panjikaran-linked status-seeking (1:26-31) gives this curriculum unusually direct, textually-grounded material for addressing caste dynamics pastorally — an opportunity Romans only gestured toward.
• The letter’s practical, situational register (marriage, worship conduct, food, discipline) is well suited to the Class 8–10 reading-level target already established in the baseline, requiring less abstraction than some of Romans’ systematic-theology passages.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json v2 and both 1 Corinthians registries before any Phase 2 segment work begins — do not process 1 Corinthians segments against the Romans-only baseline file.
2. Pre-write and lock the eight standing mandatory-note templates (अविनाशी, प्रेम, अंग, मूर्तिपूजामे चढ़ाओल भोजन, मन्दिर, रहस्य, ज्ञान, विवेक) before batch translation, since these require notes at every occurrence rather than first use only.
3. Route all 22 theologian-review doctrines through human review before publication sign-off, with explicit priority on 15:1-11 (core passage), ch.13 (love), and ch.12 (body/members) given their Critical-tier density.
4. Escalate, rather than resolve, the three open exegetical items (14:33-35, 11:3, 5:1) to a human theologian for a documented decision before Phase 2 processing touches those specific segments.
5. Audit all illustrative/pedagogical material accompanying this curriculum (study guides, teacher’s notes, sermon aids) — not just the Scripture translation itself — for inadvertent Radha-Krishna, Sita-Ram, Puruṣasūkta, or bhog/prasad imagery, since the linguistic gap analysis identified illustration-control, not lexical substitution, as the primary residual risk in several of the highest-stakes terms.