1 Peter — Linguistic Gap Analysis (English → Maithili)

PRD Phase 1, Step 8

Curriculum: 1 Peter 1–5 Core passage: 1 Peter 1:3–9 (The Living Hope of the Resurrection) Companion documents: analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, assets/bible_term_registry.json Authority: Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json (baseline) — all reused terms below carry the baseline’s exact rendering, risk tier, and rejection rationale forward unchanged.

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0. Purpose and Method

This analysis identifies where Maithili’s existing religious vocabulary is (a) genuinely absent for a required biblical concept, (b) present but occupied by a competing Hindu devotional/social meaning that must be “fenced off” from the biblical sense, or (c) contested enough between two or more plausible rendering strategies that Phase 2 translators need an explicit, pre-resolved decision rather than ad hoc judgment calls.

The method follows the same cultural-collision framework the baseline established for Romans: Panjikaran lineage/caste registry, hereditary Maithil Brahmin priesthood, Vaishnava/Shaiva/Shakta devotional practice (including the regionally significant Ugratara shrine), ancestor-spirit veneration and śrāddha/piṇḍadān death-rites, sacred ritual bathing (गंगा स्नान/तीर्थ स्नान), karma/fate/destiny idiom (भाग्य, किस्मत, प्रारब्ध), and the region’s own Ramayana-based avatar and Janak-kingdom narratives. 1 Peter intensifies several of these collision points beyond what Romans required (priesthood, ritual bathing, spirits of the dead) and introduces at least one entirely new collision category (ancestor/death-rite theology) that Romans never touched.

Full-book coverage confirmation: All five chapters of 1 Peter have been reviewed for this analysis. Chapters 1–5 each contribute load-bearing new terms or doctrine-critical renderings (documented below); no chapter is without significant new-term content, so no chapter is marked “reviewed, no new terms” in this letter — unlike Romans, 1 Peter is short and doctrinally dense throughout.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

Doctrine	Available Maithili Terms	Weaknesses / Collision Risk	Recommended Strategy
The Living Hope of the Resurrection	पुनरुत्थान (baseline, reused exactly) + नव जन्म + जीवित आशा + विरासत + अविनाशी	पुनरुत्थान is baseline-secured, but the cluster around it (new birth, imperishable inheritance) sits directly on top of Vaishnava/Shaiva rebirth-and-liberation vocabulary. अविनाशी is literally the Bhagavad Gita’s word for the soul’s own indestructibility; विरासत collides with Panjikaran-verified lineage inheritance.	Keep पुनरुत्थान as the fixed anchor term and build every other hope-cluster term (नव जन्म, जीवित आशा, अविनाशी, विरासत) as a compound qualified around it, always textually tethered to Christ’s specific, historical resurrection (1:3) rather than left as free-standing abstract nouns. Mandatory translator note at first occurrence of नव जन्म and अविनाशी.
Suffering for Righteousness’ Sake	धार्मिकता (baseline) + दुःख भोगब + परीक्षा + अग्नि-परीक्षा	धार्मिकता is secure from the baseline, but “suffering for it” risks being heard through the region’s dharma-bound duty-suffering idiom (कर्तव्यक हेतु कष्ट सहब) — suffering because one failed a social/religious obligation, the near opposite of Peter’s point. परीक्षा can flatten to “academic exam” or read as karmic testing (प्रारब्ध).	Never substitute धर्म for धार्मिकता in this cluster (this is the letter’s single most exposed doctrine-naming phrase, 3:14). Always pair परीक्षा/अग्नि-परीक्षा with an explicit “for God’s sake / because of righteousness” qualifier in the same clause so the causal link cannot be reread as duty-failure or fate.
The Church as a Holy and Royal Priesthood	पवित्र पुरोहिताई + राजकीय पुरोहिताई + आत्मिक बलिदान + पवित्र राष्ट्र + परमेश्वरक निज प्रजा	The single highest-density collision zone in this curriculum. पुरोहित/पंडित is a hereditary, Panjikaran-verified caste office; “royal” (राजकीय) evokes Mithila’s own proud Janak-kingdom self-identity. Compounding “holy+royal+priesthood” in one clause (2:9) reads, absent intervention, like a claim to restore an idealized Brahmin-royal caste order rather than abolish caste-based religious access.	Retain the direct, faithful compounds (no euphemistic softening of “priesthood”) but require a mandatory translator note at every occurrence stating the office is corporate, granted by grace to all believers regardless of birth, and explicitly not lineage-verified. This is a case where paraphrase-to-avoid-risk is wrong: the text’s polemic against hereditary religious privilege is precisely the point and must not be blunted.
Submission to Authority and Christlike Endurance	अधीनता/अधीन होएब + मानवीय संस्था + सभकेँ आदर करू + सेवक	अधीनता is a functioning native word, but Mithila’s dharma-ordered household and social hierarchy (including caste- and gender-based subordination norms) supplies a ready-made, competing frame that will absorb “submission” as endorsement of existing hierarchy rather than free, gospel-motivated conduct.	Every occurrence (2:13, 2:18, 3:1, 3:5, 5:5) must retain an explicit purpose clause (“for the Lord’s sake,” “as to Christ”) in the same sentence, never left as a bare imperative. Avoid any translator gloss that reaches for the region’s household-duty (कर्तव्य पालन) vocabulary as an explanatory bridge — that bridge imports the very hierarchy-as-sacred framing the text relativizes.
Christ’s Substitutionary Suffering	पाप (baseline) + धार्मिकता (baseline) + अनमोल लहू + निष्कलंक आ निर्दोष मेमना + काठ/क्रूस compound + एक बेर…बदलामे	No single Maithili word carries “vicarious substitution” (a legal/relational category, not native to regional sacrificial idiom, where बलि/यज्ञ offerings are typically propitiatory-transactional rather than substitutionary-representative). Risk of collapsing 2:21’s “example” (आदर्श) into the only meaning of Christ’s suffering, losing the distinct substitutionary claim of 2:24 and 3:18.	Use full descriptive compounds rather than search for a single native equivalent; preserve एक बेर (once) and बदलामे (in place of) as non-negotiable grammatical anchors at every occurrence of the “once for sins, righteous for unrighteous” formula. Keep आदर्श (2:21, moral example) and the substitution formula (2:24, 3:18) textually and doctrinally distinct — never let one gloss substitute for the other.
Holiness in Conduct	पवित्र (baseline) + निर्मल आत्मिक दूध + परमेश्वरक इच्छा + मूर्तिपूजा-सहित दोष-सूची	पवित्र is baseline-secured. The exposure here is in the vice list (4:3), where मूर्तिपूजा (idol-worship) names the region’s own sincere Vaishnava/Shaiva/Shakta devotional practice as sin in the same breath as drunkenness and debauchery — theologically necessary but pastorally combustible.	Translate the vice list plainly and completely (no euphemistic omission of मूर्तिपूजा), but require accompanying study-note framing (per baseline evangelism guidance) that presents this as Peter addressing his readers’ own pre-conversion past, not a blanket denunciation delivered to outsiders in the room.
Elders and Humility	प्राचीन + परमेश्वरक झुण्डक रखवारी करू + नम्रता धारण करू + अनुचित लाभक हेतु नहि	प्राचीन avoids the two live competing options (मुखिया = village-headman social authority; पुरोहित/पंडित = hereditary caste office) but is a comparatively thin, low-frequency word in everyday Maithili and will need reinforcement through repeated contextual use, not a single definitional footnote.	Anchor प्राचीन’s meaning through its paired function-verbs (रखवारी करू, अध्यक्षता करैत) at every occurrence so the office is defined by its shepherding function, not by the bare noun. The अनुचित लाभ (shameful gain) contrast with regional दक्षिणा (ritual-fee) customs should be handled with pastoral care in study notes — factual, not polemical.
Christ’s Proclamation to the Spirits (3:18–22)	बन्दीगृहक आत्मासभकेँ प्रचार कएलनि + देहमे मृत्यु भेल, आत्मामे जीवित कएल गेला + बपतिस्मा…अखन बचबैत अछि + नीक विवेकक हेतु परमेश्वरसँ बिनती + मृतकसभकेँ सेहो सुसमाचार प्रचार कएल गेल	The single most theologically hazardous passage-cluster in the entire letter for this destination language. Every available term for “spirit,” “the dead,” and “proclamation to spirits” sits directly inside the region’s living ancestor-veneration and śrāddha/piṇḍadān death-rite system, plus widespread bhoot-pret/प्रेतात्मा folklore. There is no neutral Maithili vocabulary for “spirits in prison” that does not risk being heard as validating ongoing ritual intercession for departed ancestors.	Translate the text plainly and completely (no doctrinal softening or omission), but require mandatory translator notes at 3:19, 3:21, and 4:6 without exception, and route every occurrence to human theologian review before Phase 2 approval. Never let the qualifying clause of 3:21 (“not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience”) be separated from the “baptism now saves you” clause — they must always travel together in the same segment.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2a. Missing Vocabulary (no existing Maithili term; requires compound-building or borrowed native descriptive phrasing)

These concepts have no pre-existing single Maithili word and must be built from native morphology rather than searched for in the existing lexicon:

Concept	Gap Description	Resolution
New birth (as one-time, non-cyclical spiritual origin)	Maithili’s entire “birth happening again” vocabulary field (जन्म, पुनर्जन्म, दोबारा जन्म) is saturated by cyclical-rebirth theology; no word natively distinguishes a unique new beginning from a repeated one.	नव जन्म (built on नव, “new,” rather than पुनर्-, “again”) — compound coined for this curriculum; mandatory translator note at every occurrence.
Living hope (hope grounded in a specific past-tense historical event)	आशा is generic forward-looking expectation; Maithili has no adjective that inherently ties hope to a completed historical event rather than an ongoing devotional aspiration.	जीवित आशा, textually anchored to the resurrection clause in the same sentence (1:3), not standing alone.
Elect exiles (chosen-yet-displaced dual identity)	No single word captures both “divinely selected” and “socially displaced resident alien” simultaneously; these are two separate semantic fields in Maithili (चुनाव = selection; परदेशी = foreigner/outsider).	चुनल परदेशी — compound reusing the baseline’s election root (परमेश्वरक चुनाव) plus a native displacement term.
Living stone / spiritual house (Christ and the church as animate building materials)	Maithili has no native architectural-personification idiom (stones, in ordinary usage, are emphatically not alive); this is a genuinely foreign metaphor being imported, not a gap in an existing native image.	Literal compound rendering (जीवित पाथर, आत्मिक घर) with contextual framing rather than substitution with an unrelated native metaphor — inventing a “closer” native image risks losing the OT catena (Ps 118; Isa 28:16) the passage depends on.
Vicarious/substitutionary suffering as a single term	No native word names “suffering undergone by one person legally credited to another’s account”; regional sacrificial vocabulary (बलि, यज्ञ) is propitiatory/transactional, not representative-substitutionary.	Full descriptive compound (हमर पापकेँ अपन देहमे काठ पर उठौलनि; एक बेर…बदलामे) rather than a single-word search; treat this as a phrase-level, not word-level, translation problem throughout.
Baptism’s “appeal to God for a good conscience” (a verbal/covenantal, non-ritual sense of a washing-word)	Maithili’s washing/bathing vocabulary (स्नान, नहाएब) is entirely ritual-purification-coded; there is no existing washing-word that natively carries a non-ritual, purely covenantal-verbal sense.	Do not attempt to find a “purer” native washing-word; instead let बपतिस्मा stand as a distinct transliterated sacramental term (see §3) and carry the entire non-ritual qualification in the accompanying compound clause (नीक विवेकक हेतु परमेश्वरसँ बिनती/प्रतिज्ञा), never abbreviated.

2b. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

These concepts have multiple existing, competing Maithili/Hindi-shared terms, all of which are religiously “occupied” territory. The risk is not absence of vocabulary but contamination from a well-established competing sense:

Term / Cluster	Competing Occupants	Fencing Strategy
Grace / mercy / commendable-suffering (χάρις in three distinct senses within one letter)	अनुग्रह (baseline grace), दया (compassion), कृपा (baseline-reserved for non-salvific use only), श्रेयक बात (this-curriculum’s new “commendable” sense)	Hard-fence all four: अनुग्रह ONLY for soteriological grace (1:2, 3:7, 4:10, 5:5, 5:10, 5:12); दया ONLY for God’s compassionate disposition (1:3, 2:10) — never merged with अनुग्रह; कृपा remains off-limits per baseline; श्रेयक बात is the only acceptable rendering of χάρις at 2:19–20 — अनुग्रह must never appear there, or Peter’s plain ethical commendation will read as “suffering earns saving grace.”
Priesthood / royal / holy nation cluster	पुरोहित/पंडित (hereditary caste office), राजकीय (Janak-kingdom royal pride), जाति (caste-lineage, baseline-flagged)	जाति is permanently fenced out of this cluster (राष्ट्र used instead at 2:9, per baseline gentiles precedent). पुरोहिताई compounds are retained deliberately (not avoided) but require mandatory corporate/non-hereditary translator notes at every occurrence — this is a “fence with a sign,” not a “fence that blocks the view.”
Imperishable / unfading (eternality/indestructibility adjectives)	अविनाशी (Gita’s soul-indestructibility term), अजर-अमर (stock deity-immortality epithet, already rejected in the core glossary)	अविनाशी permitted only when grammatically bound to a specific named object (inheritance, seed, inner character) in the same clause — never used predicatively about “the soul” or “a person” in the abstract, which would collapse it into Vedantic ātman-doctrine. अजर-अमर permanently excluded.
Fear (φόβος)	भय (generic fear), श्रद्धा-भय (this curriculum’s reverent-awe compound), भूत-प्रेतक डर (superstitious ancestor/ghost dread, folk register)	Reverent fear of God (1:17) must always use श्रद्धा-भय, never bare भय alone, to prevent drift toward either servile terror or folk-supernatural dread.
Spirit(s) / soul(s) / the dead	आत्मा (baseline: Holy Spirit and generic spirit/soul), प्रेतात्मा/भूत-प्रेत (folk ghost vocabulary), पितर (ancestor-spirits receiving śrāddha offerings)	आत्मासभ is retained for “spirits in prison” and “souls” throughout, but this term-family carries the letter’s single greatest fencing burden (see §4, Rank 1 and 2 below) — पितर and भूत-प्रेत vocabulary must never appear in the biblical text itself, but the translator notes must actively and explicitly name and distinguish them, since silence invites the reader’s mind to supply the folk category unprompted.
Baptism / ritual bathing	बपतिस्मा (transliterated sacramental term), स्नान/तीर्थ स्नान (sacred purificatory bathing at holy rivers/sites)	स्नान-family vocabulary is permanently fenced out of any direct rendering of “baptism”; बपतिस्मा stands alone as a marked, distinct sacramental term precisely so it cannot be silently absorbed into the स्नान semantic field.
Submission / duty-compliance	अधीनता (this curriculum’s submission term), कर्तव्य पालन (baseline-cautioned dharma-bound duty-compliance)	कर्तव्य पालन is fenced out of all Christian-obedience/submission contexts per baseline precedent (already established for “obedience of faith” in Romans); अधीनता must always retain an explicit Christ-directed purpose clause to prevent it defaulting to the region’s household-duty frame.
Kingdom / royal identity	परमेश्वरक राज्य (baseline kingdom of God), राजकीय (this curriculum’s “royal priesthood”), Janak-dynasty royal pride	Both baseline and this curriculum’s royal-priesthood term must be read against, not with, Mithila’s own historic royal self-understanding — translator notes must explicitly relativize earthly royal pride rather than let it quietly reinforce the metaphor.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Jesus, Christ, Messiah	Transliterate (यीशु, ख्रीष्ट, मसीह)	[BASELINE REUSE]. Established North Indian Bible-translation forms; no native equivalent sought or appropriate.
Baptism	Transliterate (बपतिस्मा)	Deliberately NOT rendered with any native स्नान/bathing vocabulary (see §2b). Transliteration marks it as a distinct, non-native sacramental term, which is itself the safest strategy against absorption into sacred-bathing ritual practice.
Amen, Hallelujah	Transliterate (आमीन, हल्लेलूयाह)	Per baseline AI requirements document; established forms, no native equivalent needed.
Abba	Transliterate (अब्बा) — not directly occurring in 1 Peter but retained in the shared glossary for cross-book consistency with Romans 8:15	Preserves Aramaic filial intimacy per baseline precedent; relevant to this curriculum’s broader “adoption/heirs” language at 3:7.
New birth	Paraphrase/compound (नव जन्म), NOT transliterate	No Greek/Hebrew proper-noun status; the term must be built from native morphology specifically to avoid the पुनर्- prefix problem. Transliterating (“अनागेनेसिस”-style) would be unintelligible and would abandon the doctrinal battle for a native-feeling term entirely.
Living stone / cornerstone / spiritual house	Paraphrase (literal compound translation)	These are extended metaphors dependent on their OT catena (Ps 118, Isa 28:16), not technical single-word doctrinal terms; paraphrase-as-literal-compound preserves the intertextual argument better than any attempt at native substitution.
Holy priesthood / royal priesthood	Paraphrase (direct compound), NOT softened or substituted	See §1 above — this is a case where the risk of the direct rendering is deliberately accepted because softening would blunt the text’s actual polemical claim against hereditary religious privilege.
Spirits in prison / gospel preached to the dead	Paraphrase (full descriptive compound), NOT a single transliterated or borrowed term	No Sanskrit/Hindi loanword exists that is safely neutral in this semantic field; every available native option is already occupied by ancestor-veneration or ghost-folklore associations, so the translation must rely entirely on accompanying translator notes rather than on lexical choice alone to carry the doctrinal safeguard.
Elders (πρεσβύτεροι)	Paraphrase using an existing but low-collision native word (प्राचीन), NOT मुखिया or पुरोहित/पंडित	प्राचीन is available, native, and comparatively uncontaminated (see §1); no transliteration needed or advisable.
Messianic/Christological titles borrowed from OT (Shepherd, Cornerstone, Lamb)	Paraphrase using existing pastoral/agricultural Maithili vocabulary (रखवार, पाथर, मेमना)	These are common-noun metaphors, not technical theological proper nouns; native vocabulary already carries the needed imagery and requires only contextual framing, not transliteration.

General principle applied throughout: transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names, (b) technical sacramental/liturgical terms where no safe native equivalent exists AND creating one would risk more confusion than borrowing (baptism), and (c) established cross-curriculum forms already fixed by the Romans baseline. Paraphrase/compound-building is preferred everywhere a native morphological solution can be constructed that avoids the identified collision, even where this produces longer phrases than the source English.

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4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in 1 Peter

Ranked by combined severity of doctrinal stakes and cultural-collision proximity (1 = highest risk requiring the most translator/reviewer safeguards):

1. “Proclaimed to the spirits in prison” (3:19) — Sits directly on top of Mithila’s living ancestor-veneration and śrāddha/piṇḍadān death-rite system; the single greatest risk of the text being read as license for ritual intercession on behalf of the dead. No safe native vocabulary exists; entire safeguard load rests on mandatory translator notes and theologian review.

2. “Gospel preached even to the dead” (4:6) — Compounds the risk of #1 with genuine scholarly ambiguity in the source text itself; highest risk of being (mis)read as a warrant for post-mortem evangelism or second-chance salvation paralleling regional beliefs about ritual benefit transferable to deceased ancestors.

3. “Baptism now saves you” (3:21) — Extreme collision with sacred ritual bathing (गंगा स्नान, तीर्थ स्नान) as a means of spiritual merit/purification. The qualifying clause is not optional decoration but the doctrinal safeguard itself; any segment-splitting that separates the two clauses is a translation failure, not a stylistic choice.

4. “New birth” (1:3, 1:23) — The everyday Maithili word a Vaishnava/Shaiva-literate reader will instinctively reach for (पुनर्जन्म) is the exact forbidden term; नव जन्म is a coined solution with no independent cultural reinforcement outside this curriculum, making consistency across all Phase 2 output unusually fragile.

5. “Holy priesthood” / “royal priesthood” (2:5, 2:9) — Direct terminological collision with a still-functioning hereditary social institution (Panjikaran-verified Maithil Brahmin priesthood) in the same linguistic community receiving the translation — not a historical or abstract collision but a live, present-tense one.

6. “Christ suffered once… the righteous for the unrighteous” (3:18) — The letter’s clearest penal-substitutionary statement; risk that बदलामे (“in place of”) is softened to mere accompaniment, or that एक बेर (“once”) is lost, allowing the statement to be read compatibly with repeatable ritual sacrifice logic.

7. “Suffer for righteousness’ sake” (3:14) / doctrine-naming phrase — धार्मिकता must never drift to धर्म; this is the exact fault line the baseline identified for Romans, now load-bearing as this curriculum’s own named doctrine, raising the consistency stakes.

8. “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts” (3:15) — Combines two baseline Critical terms (प्रभु, पवित्र) applied to Christ in a text originally addressed to Yahweh (Isa 8:13); any inconsistency in honorific verb agreement here undercuts the letter’s high Christology at its most explicit point.

9. “Living hope” grounded in the resurrection (1:3) — Because this is also the curriculum’s core passage, any drift toward generalized devotional optimism (rather than a hope specifically and historically anchored in Christ’s resurrection) compromises the anchor doctrine of the entire study.

10. Imperishable / unfading vocabulary cluster (1:4, 1:23, 3:4, 5:4) — अविनाशी’s identity with Vedantic soul-language creates a slow, cumulative risk (rather than a single dramatic misreading): repeated unanchored use across the letter could gradually re-theologize “imperishable” as an innate human/soul quality rather than a gift attached to specific external realities (inheritance, word, character).

11. Idolatry named explicitly in the vice list (4:3) — Doctrinally necessary, pastorally combustible; risk is not mistranslation but reception — explicit naming of image-worship as sin in a region with sincere, widespread devotional practice requires careful pastoral framing alongside (not instead of) faithful translation.

12. “Weaker vessel” (3:7) and submission language generally (2:13, 2:18, 3:1, 3:5, 5:5) — Risk that gospel-motivated, Christ-modeled voluntary submission is silently reabsorbed into existing caste- and gender-based social hierarchy, which the surrounding culture will readily supply as the “obvious” interpretive frame if the purpose clauses are ever dropped or weakened in translation.

13. “Royal” identity language intersecting Janak-kingdom pride (2:9, kingdom-of-God baseline term) — Lower-frequency but persistent risk that “royal priesthood” and “God’s kingdom” vocabulary quietly borrows dignity from, rather than relativizes, the region’s own historic royal self-identity.

14. Love covers a multitude of sins (4:8) — Risk of being heard as a rival, merit-based atonement mechanism (human love achieving what only Christ’s blood accomplishes in 2:24/3:18), especially in a culture with strong exemplary-virtue models of achieved moral merit.

15. “Precious blood” displacing ancestral inheritance (1:18–19) — Lower dramatic risk than items above but persistent thematic risk throughout the letter’s opening chapter: the contrast between “futile ways inherited from your forefathers” and Christ’s blood must not be softened into generic anti-materialism, losing its specific challenge to ancestral-tradition authority.

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5. Summary for Phase 2 Handoff

• Twelve Critical-tier terms identified in the companion core glossary (analysis/08_core_glossary.md, Section D) all appear within the top ambiguities ranked above; these define the non-negotiable theologian-review escalation set for 1 Peter, layered on top of every baseline Critical term reused from Romans.
• The dominant new collision category introduced by this letter beyond the Romans baseline is ancestor-spirit/death-rite theology (Rank 1–2, 3 above), which has no analogue in the Romans curriculum and requires new fencing infrastructure (translator notes, theologian routing) not previously built.
• The dominant technique for managing gaps in this letter is compound-building and mandatory translator notes rather than single-word lexical substitution — reflecting the fact that most of 1 Peter’s highest-risk material consists of extended metaphors and doctrinal formulas (living stone, holy priesthood, spirits in prison, once-for-all substitution) rather than single abstract nouns of the kind that dominated the Romans glossary.
• All fencing decisions, transliteration/paraphrase choices, and ranked risks above should be incorporated directly into the expanded doctrine_risk_registry.json and translation_memory.json for 1 Peter in the next pipeline step.