Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: 1 Corinthians — English → Maithili
Purpose and Method
Romans established Maithili’s core soteriological and Christological vocabulary against the region’s Vaishnava/Shaiva devotional backdrop and its Panjikaran-conscious caste-lineage social structure. 1 Corinthians is a different kind of book: it is pastoral, situational, and argumentative, addressing a specific congregation’s disorder rather than expounding doctrine in sequence. This changes the linguistic risk profile in three ways:
- New semantic territory. Resurrection of believers (not just Christ), spiritual gifts in operation, the Lord’s Supper as an ongoing practice, marriage ethics, and idol-meat casuistry all require vocabulary Romans never needed.
- Denser collision zones. Because 1 Corinthians deals with lived practice (worship conduct, sacrificial meals, marriage, bodily existence), it repeatedly lands on exactly the vocabulary Mithila’s Vaishnava, Shakta, and Advaita traditions have already claimed for their own technical use — not adjacent concepts but the same words.
- A creedal anchor (15:1-11) with almost no interpretive slack. Because this is a fixed, quotable formula (“Christ died… was buried… was raised… appeared…”), every term inside it must be locked before Phase 2 begins; ambiguity here propagates through the entire chapter’s argument.
This analysis assumes the baseline translation_memory.json is already loaded and does not renegotiate any REUSED term. It focuses on the vocabulary 1 Corinthians adds.
Section A: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the ten curriculum doctrines: what Maithili vocabulary is available, its weaknesses, and the recommended strategy.
1. The Resurrection of Christ and Believers
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| पुनरुत्थान (REUSED, resurrection) | None on its own — already fenced in Romans against पुनर्जन्म | Extend to मृतकक पुनरुत्थान for the general resurrection; keep both forms visually/lexically tied to the same root so learners see continuity |
| पुनर्जन्म (rebirth) | FORBIDDEN — names the samsaric rebirth cycle, the default frame any Maithili speaker will supply unprompted for “rising after death” | Never use; flag automatically in QA |
| अमर (deathless/immortal) | Names an inherent, timeless property of the soul (cf. Gītā 2:17-25’s अविनाशी आत्मा) rather than a future event granted to a transformed body | Reject for अविनाशी’s doctrinal use; permissible only in throwaway secular idiom, never in resurrection teaching |
| आत्मिक देह / प्राणिक देह (coined pair) | Newly coined; no prior currency, so must be introduced with definition on first use in every document | Introduce as a fixed technical pair; never let learners encounter one without the other in early lessons (15:44 requires the contrast to make sense) |
| पहिल फल (firstfruits) | Overlaps with Chhath’s Surya firstfruits-offering imagery, where direction of the gift runs from worshipper to deity | Recommended strategy: note that Christ-as-firstfruits is God’s gift to the church guaranteeing the harvest, reversing the votive-offering direction; do not let the term stand unglossed |
Overall strategy: This doctrine has the single highest concentration of Critical risk in 1 Corinthians. Recommend a standing translator-note template (see Section D) attached to every occurrence of पुनरुत्थान, मृतकक पुनरुत्थान, अविनाशी, and पहिल फल in ch. 15 and ch. 9.
2. Christian Unity versus Factionalism
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| फूट (division/schism) | Native and emotionally accurate, but also the ordinary word for any social or political rift (village faction disputes, family property splits) | Retain, but always pair with मण्डलीमे (“within the church”) to keep the theological register clear |
| विभाजन (division, more formal/administrative) | Reads as bureaucratic — a committee or territory being divided, not a body being torn | Reject as primary term; may appear in expository (non-Scripture) prose only |
| झगड़ा (quarreling/strife) | Perfectly ordinary, no theological baggage, low risk | Approved as-is |
| अंग (member/body-part, ch. 12) | See Section B — Critical, shared with Church as God’s People doctrine | See below |
Overall strategy: Medium-High. The linguistic risk here is less about false-cognate collision and more about register slippage — फूट must not read as merely a social spat needing diplomacy, but as a spiritual wound in Christ’s own body.
3. The Cross as Wisdom and Power
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| बुद्धि (wisdom) | Mithila is a historic center of Sanskrit pandit scholarship and Navya-Nyāya logical analysis; “God has made the wisdom of the world foolish” risks sounding anti-intellectual or anti-scholarly to an audience that takes regional pride in this heritage | Frame explicitly, every occurrence in ch. 1-2, as targeting self-sufficient human wisdom that excludes the cross, never learning, scholarship, or reasoned argument as such |
| ज्ञान (knowledge, γνῶσις) | Reserved separately for γνῶσις in chs. 8/13 (see below); do not conflate with बुद्धि | Keep the two Greek terms lexically distinct in Maithili even though English sometimes blurs “wisdom” and “knowledge” |
| मूर्खता (foolishness) | Could be read as an unqualified insult if unscoped | Always bound with “as it appears to…” framing |
| क्रूस (cross) | None — established transliteration | Retain as-is; Low risk |
| सामर्थ्य (power of God, REUSED) | Already fenced against शक्ति in Romans | Reinforce: ch. 1’s power/wisdom paradox depends entirely on सामर्थ्य not reading as Shakta-goddess power |
Overall strategy: High risk, but manageable through consistent scoping language rather than lexical substitution — this is a framing problem, not a missing-word problem.
4. Church Discipline and Holiness
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| मन्दिर (temple, 3:16-17, 6:19) | Strongest false-cognate risk in this doctrine cluster — मन्दिर is the ordinary, unambiguous word for a Hindu shrine housing a मूर्ति | Mandatory translator note at every occurrence distinguishing “you are God’s मन्दिर” (Spirit-indwelt metaphor) from a literal shrine-building or self-divinization claim |
| व्यभिचार (sexual immorality) | Common usage narrows this to adultery specifically; πορνεία is broader | Gloss on first use in ch. 5 to cover the full porneia range, and flag 5:1’s specific Levitical-incest background as needing cultural/historical footnoting |
| खमीर (leaven) | No native metaphorical baggage; safe | Approved as-is |
| शैतानक हाथमे सौंपब (hand over to Satan) | Risk of being heard through the lens of regional exorcism/spirit-affliction practice at Shakta shrines | Note required: restorative corporate church discipline, not curse or private imprecation |
| फसह (Passover) | Regional Shakta blood-sacrifice practice is a live comparison point | Note required distinguishing once-for-all fulfilled sacrifice from ongoing ritual offering |
Overall strategy: High risk concentrated almost entirely on मन्दिर; the rest of the cluster is manageable with standard glossing.
5. Marriage and Singleness
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| विवाह (marriage) | No lexical weakness, but massive illustrative gravity: the Sita-Ram marriage (celebrated regionally at Vivah Panchami) is the cultural template for marital devotion | Absolutely prohibit using Sita-Ram as an illustrative bridge for ch. 7’s teaching (per baseline covenant precedent); Paul’s relative preference for singleness must not be taught as devaluing marriage |
| अविवाहित (unmarried) | None | Approved |
| कुमारी (virgin) | None significant; standard term | Approved, keep pastoral non-obligatory tone in context |
| दास / स्वतंत्र (slave/free) | Overlap risk with regional caste-linked bonded-labor history | Frame 7:21-23 as a claim about spiritual standing being independent of social station, without either trivializing or overtly politicizing the historical parallel |
| अलग होएब (separate/divorce) | None significant | Approved; ensure 7:15’s qualified exception is not generalized |
Overall strategy: Medium-High. The core risk is not vocabulary but illustrative gravity — a single wrong analogy (Sita-Ram) could undo correct lexical choices.
6. Christian Liberty and Idol Meat
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| मूर्तिपूजामे चढ़ाओल भोजन (food offered to idols) | Constructed to avoid भोग | Never allow भोग to enter as a shorthand gloss anywhere downstream, including in study-guide prose |
| भोग (REJECTED alternative) | Positively sanctifies food as a deity’s blessed leftover (prasad) — the exact opposite valence Paul intends | Hard-forbidden; add to the forbidden-substitution list (Section D) |
| मूर्ति (idol) | Neutral, common word for any image/statue including revered Hindu deity images | Context-note required distinguishing Paul’s polemical “an idol has no real existence” (8:4) from a blanket dismissal of Hindu images as mere art |
| ज्ञान (knowledge, γνῶσις) | Central term of Hindu jñāna-mārga, where knowledge itself is the means of liberation | Note required: Paul’s “knowledge puffs up” directly challenges a knowledge-centered soteriology; ज्ञान without प्रेम is here declared worthless, a strong reversal of the jñāna-mārga hierarchy |
| विवेक (conscience) | Technical Advaita Vedānta term for the discriminative faculty distinguishing eternal Self from non-eternal | Scope explicitly to ordinary moral conscience — the discomfort of watching another sin against their own convictions, not metaphysical discernment |
| प्रभुक मेज / दुष्ट आत्मासभक मेज (table of the Lord / table of demons) | Directly engages live regional Shakta ritual-offering practice | Communicate genuine spiritual incompatibility, not mere social-etiquette advice |
| ठोकर (stumbling block) | Shared with ch. 1’s use for the cross as offense to unbelievers | Keep two senses distinct by context, note if needed |
Overall strategy: This is the doctrine cluster with the single highest term-density of Critical/High risk in the letter (five separate High-or-above terms), because it directly engages live, currently-practiced regional ritual life rather than distant background mythology as in Romans.
7. The Lord’s Supper
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| प्रभु भोज (Lord’s Supper) | भोज (feast) inevitably invokes Mithila’s caste-conscious communal feasting customs, where commensality rules mark social status | Note required: this meal unites all believers across caste/lineage lines; the opposite of a status-marked feast |
| देह आ लहू (body and blood) | Risk of either literal-cannibalism misreading or empty ritual-formalism | Require symbolic/memorial framing consistently |
| स्मरण (remembrance) | Low risk | Approved |
| अयोग्य रीतिसँ (unworthy manner) | Could be misheard as a sinlessness-prerequisite | Clarify: manner of participation (esp. regard for the poor), not personal moral qualification |
| देहकेँ पहचानब (discerning the body) | Ties sacramental and ecclesial senses of “body” together; risk is under-teaching this double sense | Cross-reference ch. 12’s अंग/body-of-Christ material explicitly |
Overall strategy: High but manageable — mostly a framing/notation task rather than a lexical-gap task.
8. Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| आत्मिक वरदान (spiritual gifts, REUSED) | Already fenced against वरदान alone (Puranic boon-for-austerity) | Reinforce for ch. 12/14’s extended argument |
| अन्य भाषा (tongues) | Must be clearly distinguished from ecstatic trance-possession/oracular speech associated with regional Shakta shrine practice | Note required at every occurrence in chs. 12-14 |
| व्याख्या (interpretation) | Low risk | Approved |
| अंग (members/body-parts) | CRITICAL — see Section B | See below |
| भविष्यवाणी / भविष्यद्वक्ता (prophecy/prophet, REUSED) | None new | Approved |
Overall strategy: Critical risk is concentrated entirely in अंग; the rest of the cluster is High-Medium and manageable with standard notation.
9. Love as the Greater Way
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| प्रेम (love, ἀγάπη) | CRITICAL — collides with Vidyāpati’s Rādhā-Krishna romantic/erotic (śṛṅgāra) devotional poetry, Mithila’s most cherished devotional-literary heritage; ordinary usage of प्रेम carries strong romantic connotation | Anchor every occurrence to 13:4-7’s own behavioral definition (patient, kind, not envious, not self-seeking…); forbid Radha-Krishna illustrative comparison categorically |
| स्नेह (affection) | Too weak; reads as fondness, not sacrificial willed love | Rejected as primary term, may appear in secondary paraphrase only |
| भक्ति (devotion) | Already fenced in Romans/baseline against faith; equally unsuitable here — names devotional reverence toward a chosen deity, not interpersonal self-giving | Rejected |
| ज्ञान (knowledge) | Shared with idol-meat doctrine — “if I have all knowledge but have not love” (13:2) reprises the ch. 8 jñāna-mārga challenge | Cross-reference note to ch. 8 |
Overall strategy: Critical, single highest-illustrative-gravity term in the whole curriculum. The lexical choice (प्रेम) is unavoidable — no better native word exists — so risk mitigation must happen entirely through mandatory glossing and illustration-control, not word substitution.
10. Order in Worship
| Available Maithili vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| शिर (head, literal/metaphorical) | Risk of collapsing to a purely social-authority sense divorced from Christ’s self-giving headship pattern | Retain double sense; teaching material must model 11:3’s chain (God-Christ-man-woman) through the lens of self-giving, not mere hierarchy |
| सिर ढाकब / घूँघट (head covering) | Mithila already has an entrenched purdah/ghũghaṭ custom with its own social logic (modesty, marital status marking) | Note required distinguishing Paul’s stated theological rationale (created-order symbol, 11:7-10) from the pre-existing social custom, so the passage is not read as merely endorsing existing purdah practice unreflectively |
| उन्नति (edification) | Low risk | Approved |
| व्यवस्थित रीतिसँ आ क्रमसँ (decently and in order) | Low risk | Approved |
Overall strategy: Medium-High, concentrated on the head-covering custom-collision rather than on missing vocabulary.
Section B: Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
B.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (coin or compound required)
These concepts have no existing Maithili word at all — Romans never needed them, and ordinary Maithili has no ready term. The core glossary’s proposed coinages are affirmed here as the recommended solution.
| Concept | Gap | Coined solution | Basis for coinage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spiritual (resurrection) body | No native word distinguishes a transformed body from a spirit-without-body | आत्मिक देह | आत्मिक (already established, “spiritual,” per आत्मिक वरदान) + देह (body) |
| Natural/soulish body | No native word for σῶμα ψυχικόν as a contrast term | प्राणिक देह | प्राण (life-breath) + देह; forms a visually paired contrast with आत्मिक देह |
| Firstfruits (resurrection sense) | Existing agricultural firstfruits vocabulary (Chhath) carries a votive-offering direction opposite to Paul’s usage | पहिल फल | Kept simple/plain rather than Sanskritized (rejecting प्रथम फल) so it reads as description, not liturgical borrowing from Chhath vocabulary |
| Imperishable resurrection body-state | No native word separates bodily resurrection-imperishability from the soul’s inherent immortality | अविनाशी (existing word, re-purposed with mandatory note) | See B.2 below — this is technically a crowded-neighborhood problem, not a pure gap, since अविनाशी already exists with a rival meaning |
| Food offered to idols (descriptive, non-devotional) | No neutral existing single word; भोग is available but wrongly devotional | मूर्तिपूजामे चढ़ाओल भोजन | Compound descriptive phrase built from existing words (मूर्तिपूजा + चढ़ाओल + भोजन) rather than a single loaded noun |
| Hand over to Satan (discipline formula) | No existing set phrase | शैतानक हाथमे सौंपब | Transparent compound, avoids inventing new vocabulary; relies on notation to prevent occult misreading |
| Bought with a price | No existing set phrase carrying the purchase-by-atonement sense | दाममे किनल गेलहुँ | Transparent compound using existing passive-construction convention (per baseline’s justification precedent) |
Recommendation: All seven above should be locked into translation memory before Phase 2 begins, each with its mandatory translator note pre-written (see Section D), since none can be discovered mid-translation without risking inconsistent ad hoc renderings across parallel workers.
B.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (existing vocabulary, contested meaning — needs fencing, not coining)
These are higher-risk than genuine gaps, because the word already carries a full, coherent, competing theological system in the destination culture. A translator reaching for these words will find them ready-to-hand with the wrong meaning already loaded.
| Maithili term | Competing system that already owns this word | Biblical concept needing to borrow it | Fencing strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| अविनाशी | Bhagavad Gītā 2:17-25 — the ātman’s own innate, uncreated, timeless immortality, independent of the body | ἄφθαρτος — a future, God-granted, transformed bodily state (15:42-54; 9:25) | Mandatory note at every occurrence: this is a bodily transformation granted by God through Christ’s resurrection at a future point, not an inherent property the soul already possesses apart from the body |
| ज्ञान | Jñāna-mārga — knowledge itself as the direct means of liberation (mokṣa) | γνῶσις — intellectual knowledge that “puffs up” absent love (8:1-2; 13:2,8) | Note anchoring Paul’s point as a reversal: knowledge without love is declared worthless, directly challenging a knowledge-centered path to standing before God |
| विवेक | Advaita Vedānta’s technical viveka — the discriminative faculty distinguishing eternal Self (Ātman) from non-eternal (Anātman) | συνείδησις — ordinary moral conscience, capable of being wounded (8:7-12) | Note scoping to everyday moral awareness, not the philosophical discernment-faculty |
| मन्दिर | The physical Hindu shrine housing a मूर्ति; the primary referent any Maithili speaker supplies unprompted | ναός — metaphor for the Spirit’s indwelling in the church (3:16-17) and the believer’s body (6:19) | Note at every occurrence: metaphor, not literal building, not self-divinization |
| रहस्य | Tantric/Shakta esoteric-text vocabulary (secret ritual knowledge for initiated adepts) | μυστήριον — God’s plan formerly hidden, now openly disclosed to all believers (2:1,7; 4:1; 13:2; 15:51) | Note: disclosed openly to all who believe, not secret initiate-only knowledge |
| प्रेम | Vidyāpati’s Rādhā-Krishna romantic/erotic devotional poetry — Mithila’s most cherished devotional-literary heritage | ἀγάπη — selfless, willed, sacrificial love, independent of the worthiness of its object (ch. 13) | Note anchoring every occurrence to 13:4-7’s behavioral definition; forbid Radha-Krishna illustrative comparison |
| अंग | Puruṣasūkta (Ṛgveda 10.90) — the four varṇas arising hierarchically from different body-parts of the cosmic Puruṣa; a foundational caste-theology text in this region | μέλος/μέλη — every member necessary, weaker/less-honorable members given greater honor to prevent division (6:15; 12:12-27) | Note at every occurrence: Paul’s argument runs in the opposite direction from Puruṣasūkta body-caste hierarchy |
| भोग | Prasad — food blessed by offering to a deity and redistributed as a mark of divine favor | (explicitly avoided) — the rendering for εἰδωλόθυτον must NOT be भोग | Do not permit भोग anywhere in the idol-meat material, including expository prose or footnotes, since even a passing mention risks sanctifying the practice under discussion |
| सामर्थ्य / शक्ति | शक्ति — active Durga/Kali Shakta-goddess power, concretely present in the regionally significant Ugratara shrine tradition | δύναμις θεοῦ — God’s power specifically for salvation, exemplified paradoxically in the weakness of the cross (1:18-25) | Already fenced in baseline; reinforce for 1 Corinthians’ wisdom/power argument, since this doctrine is load-bearing here in a way Romans only introduces |
| सती (adjacent to साdoctrine, not directly used in 1 Cor. glossary but relevant to ch. 7 and 11 illustration risk) | Sita’s wifely-virtue/self-sacrifice ideal | Marriage teaching (ch. 7) and headship teaching (ch. 11) risk being illustrated through this culturally dominant marital exemplar | Do not use सती-language or Sita-Ram narrative as illustrative material anywhere in ch. 7 or ch. 11 teaching, per baseline’s existing prohibition (already fenced for righteousness/saints in Romans; extend the same prohibition here) |
| भोज | Caste-conscious communal feasting customs governing who may eat with whom | The Lord’s Supper’s inclusive, unifying meal (11:17-34) | Note: unites believers across caste/lineage lines, the opposite of status-marked commensality rules |
| ghũghaṭ/purdah practice (not a single word but a live custom) | Existing regional social-modesty custom for married women | Head-covering instruction in worship (11:2-16) | Note distinguishing Paul’s stated created-order theological rationale from the pre-existing social custom, so as not to appear to simply endorse purdah as already practiced |
Key distinction for Phase 2 workers: Section B.1 items need a definition on first use (nothing exists to confuse them with). Section B.2 items need an active correction on every use (something already exists, and it is wrong).
Section C: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Maranatha (μαρὰν ἀθά) | Transliterate: मरनाता | Follows baseline’s “Abba” precedent — an ancient Aramaic liturgical exclamation loses its cross-cultural, church-wide liturgical force if reduced to a plain Maithili phrase like “प्रभु आउ” |
| Cross (σταυρός) | Transliterate: क्रूस | Already an established North Indian Bible-translation convention; Low risk; no natural Maithili word carries the specific historical referent |
| Baptism/baptized (βαπτίζω) | Transliterate: बपतिस्मा | Prevents confusion with the region’s own ritual bathing/purification customs; a native paraphrase (“water-immersion”) would risk assimilation to those customs rather than marking a distinct Christian rite |
| Passover (πάσχα) | Transliterate: फसह | Rejects the paraphrase निस्तार पर्व as less standard; established form allows a clean typological link to Christ while remaining distinguishable from regional blood-sacrifice ritual vocabulary |
| Messiah / Christ | Already settled in baseline (मसीह / ख्रीष्ट) | No change needed for 1 Corinthians |
| Idol meat (εἰδωλόθυτον) | Paraphrase, NOT transliterate or single-word-translate: मूर्तिपूजामे चढ़ाओल भोजन | No transliteration is available (this is a descriptive Greek compound, not a proper noun or liturgical exclamation); a single native word (भोग) is available but wrongly devotional, so a multi-word descriptive paraphrase is the only safe option |
| Tongues (γλῶσσαι) | Translate, not transliterate: अन्य भाषा | A transliteration (“ग्लोसा”) would be opaque to readers and would forfeit the chance to signal “other/different languages,” which is the concrete phenomenon in view; paired with a mandatory note distinguishing this from oracular trance-speech |
| Agape / Eros distinction | Do not transliterate ἀγάπη; retain native प्रेम with mandatory note | Transliterating (“अगापे”) would solve the collision-risk problem but would sound foreign and academic in a formal-register curriculum meant to read as natural Maithili prose; the note-based fencing strategy is preferred over transliteration here, unlike Maranatha/baptism, because प्रेम is a load-bearing everyday relational word the audience needs to hear used correctly, not held at arm’s length as a technical import |
| Holy kiss (φίλημα ἅγιον) | Translate: पवित्र चुम्बन, with cultural-adaptation footnote | No transliteration precedent exists; a literal translation preserves the “holy” qualifier’s importance (distinguishing this from a romantic gesture) while a footnote may suggest a culturally equivalent warm greeting for congregational practice |
| Steward (οἰκονόμος) | Translate: भण्डारी, not पंडित | पंडित already rejected in the Romans baseline for its Panjikaran-custodian association; भण्डारी (household manager/storekeeper) carries no such lineage-verification connotation and matches the household-management sense of the Greek term |
General principle applied: Transliterate (1) proper names, (2) fixed liturgical exclamations whose force depends on their foreignness/antiquity, and (3) rite-names where any native paraphrase would assimilate to an existing regional ritual. Paraphrase or translate everything else, adding mandatory notes wherever an existing native word is contested territory (Section B.2) rather than manufacturing a new transliterated technical term that would alienate the reading register.
Section D: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in 1 Corinthians
Ranked by (a) doctrinal centrality to the letter, (b) strength/liveness of the competing regional association, and (c) how load-bearing the term is for the core passage (15:1-11) or for chapters most likely to be taught as standalone lessons.
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प्रेम (love, ἀγάπη) — ch. 13. Highest-illustrative-gravity risk in the entire curriculum. Ordinary usage is saturated with Vidyāpati’s Rādhā-Krishna romantic devotional poetry — the single most cherished literary-devotional tradition in Mithila. Any teacher or translator reaching for a natural illustration will be pulled toward this exact material by cultural reflex. Mandatory mitigation: every occurrence must carry the 13:4-7 behavioral anchor; illustrative material must be audited to exclude Radha-Krishna imagery categorically, not just avoid naming it.
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अविनाशी (imperishable, ἄφθαρτος) — chs. 9, 15. Direct terminological collision with Bhagavad Gītā 2:17-25’s central teaching on the soul’s own timeless immortality. Because ch. 15 is the core passage’s chapter, and because the whole resurrection argument depends on “imperishable” naming a future bodily event, not a present metaphysical fact about the soul, a failure here does not just create confusion — it can invert Paul’s entire argument into a restatement of the Gītā’s own teaching. Mandatory mitigation: standing translator note required at every occurrence, not just first use.
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मूर्तिपूजामे चढ़ाओल भोजन / भोग collision (idol meat) — chs. 8, 10. The single greatest risk of accidentally sanctifying the very practice under discussion, because भोग is the natural word any Maithili speaker would reach for and it carries an unambiguously positive prasad-blessing connotation. Unlike most entries on this list, this risk is not about the biblical concept being misunderstood as neutral or foreign — it is about the translation actively contradicting Paul’s cautionary stance if the wrong word slips in anywhere downstream (footnotes, study questions, teacher’s guides).
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अंग (members/body-parts, μέλος/μέλη) — chs. 6, 12. Direct collision with the Puruṣasūkta’s foundational body-caste theology (varṇas arising hierarchically from Puruṣa’s body parts), a text with ongoing social authority in Mithila’s Brahmin-centered social structure. Paul’s argument (weaker members given greater honor, no division) is not merely different from this theology — it is its explicit reversal, making this among the doctrinally richest ambiguities in the letter if left unflagged.
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मन्दिर (temple, ναός) — chs. 3, 6. Extremely high false-cognate risk: मन्दिर is the unmarked, default word for a physical Hindu shrine. “You are God’s मन्दिर” risks being heard as either a literal building claim or, worse, an invitation to self-divinization (a live theological category in some regional devotional traditions), rather than Spirit-indwelling metaphor.
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ज्ञान (knowledge, γνῶσις) — chs. 8, 13. Directly engages the jñāna-mārga’s claim that knowledge is itself the path to liberation. Paul’s “knowledge puffs up… love builds up” is a pointed theological counter-claim in a region where knowledge-as-liberation has deep intellectual prestige (reinforced by the same Nyāya-logic scholarly identity noted under “wisdom”).
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विवेक (conscience, συνείδησις) — chs. 8, 10. Shares the technical Advaita Vedānta association of viveka as the Self/non-Self discrimination faculty; less severe than ज्ञान above because context (weak/wounded conscience over eating meat) more readily disambiguates the ordinary-moral-conscience sense, but still requires explicit scoping.
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पहिल फल (firstfruits, ἀπαρχή) — ch. 15. Chhath’s firstfruits-to-Surya offering runs in the opposite direction from Paul’s usage (God’s gift to believers, not an offering from them). Risk is moderated by the fact that Chhath is a seasonal, occasional festival rather than year-round devotional vocabulary, but still requires a standing note given ch. 15’s centrality.
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रहस्य (mystery, μυστήριον) — chs. 2, 4, 15. Tantric/Shakta esoteric vocabulary risk; moderated by the fact that Paul’s own usage (“mystery… now revealed”) already supplies its own built-in contrast, making misreading less likely than with अविनाशी or प्रेम, but still worth flagging given ch. 15’s use at the resurrection-transformation climax (15:51).
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प्रभु भोज / भोज commensality customs (Lord’s Supper) — ch. 11. Caste-conscious feasting-status customs are a live, practiced social reality (not distant mythology), making this a real-world behavioral collision risk in addition to a lexical one: a congregation could unconsciously reproduce status-marked seating/serving patterns at the very meal meant to abolish such distinctions.
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सिर ढाकब / घूँघट (head covering) — ch. 11. Risk is behavioral-custom collision rather than lexical ambiguity: an existing, actively practiced purdah custom could cause 11:2-16 to be read as simple endorsement of current social practice rather than engaged with its own stated created-order rationale.
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बुद्धि (wisdom) — chs. 1-3. Risk of the cross-as-foolishness argument landing as anti-intellectualism in a region proud of its Nyāya-logic scholarly heritage; moderated because the passage’s own rhetorical structure (wisdom of the world vs. wisdom of God) provides some built-in scoping.
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मृतकक पुनरुत्थान vs. पुनर्जन्म — ch. 15 generally. Listed separately from #2 because the risk here is a wrong word being substituted wholesale (a QA/vigilance risk) rather than the right word being misunderstood (a doctrinal-framing risk); still Critical because a single slip reduces Paul’s entire chapter-long argument to a restatement of the rebirth cycle it explicitly refutes (15:12-19 depends on resurrection being a one-time, not cyclical, event).
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अंग-adjacent: सती/Sita-Ram illustrative risk in chs. 7 and 11. Not a lexical-substitution risk (no wrong word is available to slip in) but an illustration-control risk: teaching material could reach for the culturally dominant Sita-Ram marriage/devotion narrative as a natural analogy, quietly reframing Paul’s teaching on marriage or headship through an achieved-virtue/duty lens the letter does not intend.
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शिर (head, κεφαλή) as source/authority — ch. 11. Lower-ranked than the covering custom because the term itself is not contested vocabulary (no rival religious system claims शिर), but the theological content it carries (headship patterned on Christ’s self-giving, not bare hierarchy) is easy to flatten in translation if the metaphorical/relational sense collapses into a purely administrative-authority sense.
Section E: Recommendations Carried Forward to Doctrine Risk Registry (Step 2)
The following require explicit risk-tier assignment and review routing in doctrine_risk_registry.json (produced separately for this curriculum) based on the analysis above:
- All Section B.2 “crowded neighborhood” terms should receive Critical or High risk tiers matching or exceeding their Romans-baseline analogues, since they represent active collisions with vocabulary Mithila’s traditions currently use, not merely historical/mythological background as several Romans terms did.
- Section D’s ranked list items 1-6 should be flagged for mandatory theologian review at every occurrence, not just first use, given the severity of potential doctrinal inversion (especially items 1-3).
- The φημή “let them be silent” (14:34), κεφαλή-as-relational-headship (11:3), and 5:1’s specific incest-prohibition background — all previously flagged in the core glossary as unresolved — should be routed to the doctrine risk registry for full doctrinal-sensitivity treatment; this document does not resolve them, only confirms they remain open.