Linguistic Gap Analysis: 2 Peter (English → Maithili)

Curriculum: 2 Peter Destination language: Maithili (Devanagari script) Core passage: 2 Peter 1:16–21 Status: Extends the Romans baseline (translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, doctrine_risk_registry.json); builds on analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json (2 Peter draft). All established Romans renderings are reused exactly; nothing below overrides them.

Chapter coverage confirmation: All three chapters of 2 Peter (1, 2, 3) are represented in the analysis below — chapter 1 (inspiration/virtue/Transfiguration doctrines), chapter 2 (false teachers/judgment doctrines), chapter 3 (Day of the Lord/patience/scoffers doctrines). No chapter is silently omitted.

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1. Purpose of This Analysis

2 Peter compresses an unusually high density of Critical-risk vocabulary into a short letter, and — unlike Romans, which deals mostly in soteriological categories — it repeatedly collides with three distinct regional knowledge systems at once: (a) Mithila’s Vaishnava/Shaiva devotional-narrative tradition (avatar, bhakti, myth-as-sacred-story), (b) Mithila’s formal Sanskrit śāstric/philosophical tradition (Nyāya logic, Sāṃkhya guṇa theory, Advaita Vedānta), and (c) everyday folk-cosmological idiom (fate, karma, cyclical time, planetary deities). This document maps where Maithili’s existing religious vocabulary is crowded with competing meanings that must be fenced off, where it is genuinely missing and requires coinage or descriptive paraphrase, and ranks the resulting ambiguities by risk for Phase 2 review routing.

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2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

Doctrine	Available Maithili term(s)	Weaknesses / competing semantic fields	Recommended strategy
The Reliability and Inspiration of Scripture (1:16–21, 3:15–16)	पवित्र शास्त्र (Scripture), भविष्यवाणी (prophecy), भविष्यद्वक्ता (prophet), निजी व्याख्या (interpretation), (पवित्र आत्माक द्वारा) चलाओल गेल (carried along), गढ़ल गप्प (myth)	शास्त्र alone is generic — Dharmaśāstra, Nyāyaśāstra, and the Purāṇas are all शास्त्र in ordinary usage, and Mithila is a historic śāstric-scholarship center (Darbhanga’s Navya-Nyāya pandit tradition), so an unqualified शास्त्र claim reads as “one respected treatise among many.” भविष्यवाणी risks being heard alongside भविष्यफल (astrological prediction) in casual registers. “Carried along” (φέρω) risks assimilation to oracular trance/possession phenomena at regional Devi shrines if rendered too loosely as “inspired/moved.”	Always pair शास्त्र with पवित्र (fixed). Always anchor भविष्यवाणी/भविष्यद्वक्ता to a “not of human origin / not self-generated” qualifier per 1:20–21. Render φέρω with the fuller verb phrase (not a single verb) to exclude both weak “influenced” readings and possession-trance readings. Treat every segment combining these terms as Human Theologian-routed regardless of individual term risk (per Section A note in the core glossary).
Growing in Christian Virtue (1:5–9, 3:18)	सद्गुण (virtue), ज्ञान (knowledge), संयम (self-control), धीरज (steadfastness), परमेश्वरपरायणता (godliness), भाईचारा (brotherly love), प्रेम (love), बढ़ब (grow)	गुण (unqualified) is a technical Sāṃkhya category (त्रिगुण: sattva/rajas/tamas); ज्ञान collides with jñāna-mārga (one of the three classical “paths” to liberation); संयम is a named stage in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras; प्रेम is saturated with Vidyapati’s Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa śṛṅgāra-bhakti poetic tradition, Mithila’s own celebrated literary heritage.	Use सद्गुण (never bare गुण). Present ज्ञान strictly as one link in a virtue chain added to faith, never as a stand-alone gnosis-path — a structural safeguard the list format of 1:5–7 itself provides. Gloss संयम on first occurrence (“मन आ इच्छापर काबू”). Qualify प्रेम as निःस्वार्थ प्रेम wherever the text’s committed, self-giving sense could otherwise default to a romantic-devotional reading.
False Teachers and Their Judgment (2:1–22)	झूठा शिक्षक / झूठा भविष्यद्वक्ता (false teacher/prophet), स्वामी (Master/despotēs), विनाशकारी मत (heresy), परमेश्वरहीन (ungodly), सत्यक मार्ग / धार्मिकताक मार्ग (way of truth), न्याय / दण्ड (judgment), भ्रष्टता (corruption), दास (slave), स्वतंत्रता (freedom), लम्पटता (sensuality)	गुरु — the obvious native word for “teacher” — carries near-inviolable guru-paramparā (lineage) authority; calling a गुरु “false” would read as an attack on the entire category of guru-authority, not a claim about one teacher’s doctrine. न्याय is also the name of Mithila’s own Nyāya school of logic. मार्ग evokes the “many paths, one goal” pluralist idiom (jñāna-mārga, bhakti-mārga, karma-mārga; sarva dharma sama bhāv). पाषण्ड (rejected alternative for heresy) imports a Vedic-orthodoxy insider/outsider framework. अधर्मी (rejected for ungodly) reintroduces the धर्म root the baseline systematically avoids.	Keep शिक्षक (never गुरु) for “teacher,” reserving the false/true contrast to the neutral educational term. Keep स्वामी deliberately distinct from प्रभु (already fixed for κύριος) — this is the one place स्वामी is licensed, and only for δεσπότης. Gloss न्याय/मार्ग with a translator note clarifying the specific sense (God’s moral-legal verdict; the text’s own exclusive claim) wherever ambiguity could soften the point. Retain परमेश्वरहीन (coined) rather than अधर्मी.
The Certainty of Christ’s Return (1:16, 3:1–13)	आगमन (parousia/coming), भोरक तारा (morning star), वैभव (majesty), प्रत्यक्षदर्शी (eyewitness), उपहास करएबाला (scoffer), प्रतिज्ञा (promise)	The single highest cultural-collision risk in the letter: Mithila is the Ramayana’s own geographic setting, and North Indian Vaishnava tradition additionally holds a live expectation of a future/final Kalki avatar. आगमन alone, without contrastive framing, can be silently absorbed into this existing “a god will come again” expectation. शुक्र (rejected for morning star) names an actively venerated planetary deity with weekly (Friday) observance. प्रताप (rejected for majesty) carries royal-dynastic overtones sensitive given Mithila’s own Janak-kingdom self-identity.	Gloss आगमन on first use as “यीशु ख्रीष्टक फेर सँ आगमन” and mandate a standing translator note distinguishing this single, unrepeated, bodily return of the same incarnate Son from (a) cyclical avatar-descent theology and (b) Kalki-avatar expectation specifically. Use भोरक तारा (generic descriptive), never शुक्र. Use वैभव, never प्रताप.
The Day of the Lord and Final Judgment (3:7–13)	प्रभुक दिन (Day of the Lord), विनाश (destruction), सृष्टि (creation), आकाशीय पिण्ड (elements/heavenly bodies), नव्य / नूतन (qualitatively new), न्याय / दण्ड (judgment)	Hindu cosmology’s सृष्टि-स्थिति-प्रलय cycle (creation–preservation–dissolution, repeating across kalpas, traditionally tied to Brahmā/Viṣṇu/Śiva) is deeply embedded background knowledge. सृष्टि alone risks being heard as one iteration in an impersonal repeating cycle rather than God’s single historical act of origination; प्रलय (not used, but the word every Maithili speaker will mentally supply) risks displacing the entire “Day of the Lord” concept with the cyclical dissolution-and-recreation pattern. तत्त्व (rejected for elements) is a loaded Sāṃkhya/Vedānta term for the fundamental categories of reality.	Build प्रभुक दिन directly on the fixed प्रभु root (never a bare “that day” gloss). Mandatory translator note at 3:10 and 3:13 contrasting the linear, one-time, morally decisive Day of the Lord with the cyclical pralaya/kalpa framework — this is arguably the single most necessary standing footnote in the whole letter. Use आकाशीय पिण्ड (descriptive), never bare तत्त्व. Use नव्य/नूतन for “new,” never नयका (mere numerical newness).
Patience of God’s Timing (3:8–9, 15)	सहनशीलता (patience/makrothymia), पश्चाताप (repentance), धीरज (steadfastness, ch. 1, kept distinct)	Everyday Maithili religious idiom around delay and waiting leans heavily on fatalistic/impersonal framing (प्रारब्ध-adjacent sayings: “जे होबाक अछि से होयत” — what is to happen will happen). This risks flattening God’s personal, purposive forbearance into impersonal cosmic waiting. प्रायश्चित्त (rejected for repentance) is the standard ritual-expiation term — a prescribed rite removing karmic effect, not a Spirit-wrought reorientation.	Render सहनशीलता with clear grammatical/contextual marking of God as personal agent (“परमेश्वर अपनासँ सहनशीलता देखबैत छथि” pattern), never as a passive state description that could be read fatalistically. Keep पश्चाताप strictly distinct from प्रायश्चित्त in all contexts; if a segment’s phrasing could imply repentance earns removal of guilt through the act itself, flag for Human Theologian review.
Divine Nature and Escaping Corruption (1:3–4)	दैवीय स्वभावक भागी (partakers of the divine nature), दिव्य (divine, adj.), पूर्ण ज्ञान (full knowledge/epignōsis), भ्रष्टता (corruption)	The single highest-stakes doctrinal phrase in the entire letter. Mithila’s Sanskrit scholarly tradition includes formal Advaita Vedānta study, in which the individual self (ātman) is taught to be already identical with Brahman; लीन होयब (“becoming absorbed into the divine”) is the ready-to-hand native idiom for exactly this kind of “sharing in divine nature” language, and it says something theologically opposite to what 2 Peter 1:4 means. दिव्य is standard vocabulary for a deity/avatar’s divya rūp (divine form/radiance) in Puranic and epic narrative (e.g., Krishna’s divine form in the Bhagavad Gītā), risking assimilation into that manifestation-narrative pattern.	Never render θεία φύσις participation with लीन होयब or any wording implying shared सत्ता/being with God. Mandatory standing translator note at 1:4: believers receive a share in God’s moral character (incorruptibility, holiness, love) by grace, and remain eternally creatures in relationship with their Creator — they do not become ontologically identical with God. Keep दिव्य anchored explicitly to God’s own attribute (never a bare adjective that could float toward a manifestation-of-avatar reading). Anchor पूर्ण ज्ञान to its object (“of God,” “of our Lord Jesus Christ”) every time; never let it stand alone as if naming self-realization.

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3. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

3.1 Crowded semantic neighborhoods (existing Maithili terms carry competing, syncretism-risking meanings — require fencing, not invention)

Neighborhood	Competing native concept	2 Peter terms affected	Fencing strategy
Liberation vocabulary	मुक्ति / मोक्ष (release from rebirth cycle)	उद्धार (salvation, reused), उद्धारकर्ता (savior, new)	Baseline prohibition holds; उद्धारकर्ता built only on the उद्धार root, never a मुक्ति-based coinage such as मुक्तिदाता.
Avatar-descent theology	अवतार, दिव्य रूप, Kalki expectation	देहधारण (incarnation, reused), आगमन (parousia, new), दिव्य (divine, new)	अवतार remains permanently forbidden. आगमन requires standing contrastive note (Section 2, row 5).
Cosmic-illusion metaphysics	माया (Advaita Vedānta’s cosmic illusion)	भ्रम (error/planē, new)	Never माया; भ्रम names doctrinal/moral straying, a wholly different category from a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality.
Impersonal fate/destiny	भाग्य, किस्मत, प्रारब्ध	परमेश्वरक चुनाव (election, reused), सहनशीलता (patience of God, new), परमेश्वरक विधान (providence, reused if invoked)	Fenced by baseline precedent; extend the same discipline to सहनशीलता — active divine forbearance, not passive cosmic waiting.
Goddess-power (Shakta) associations	शक्ति (active Durga/Kali worship tradition, incl. regional Ugratara shrine)	परमेश्वरक सामर्थ्य (power of God, reused)	Baseline prohibition holds; extend to all δύναμις occurrences in 1:3, 1:16.
Guru-lineage authority	गुरु, गुरु-परम्परा (paramparā)	झूठा शिक्षक (false teacher, new)	गुरु permanently avoided for διδάσκαλος in this letter; शिक्षक keeps the claim about doctrine, not about the guru institution itself.
Vedic-orthodoxy insider/outsider framing	पाषण्ड	विनाशकारी मत (heresy, new)	पाषण्ड avoided; the coined descriptive phrase keeps the claim text-internal (destructive teaching vs. apostolic teaching), not a claim about Vedic orthodoxy.
Ritual purity / expiation	शुद्धिकरण, प्रायश्चित्त, संस्कार	पवित्रीकरण (sanctification, reused), पापसँ धोयल जाएब (cleansing, new), पश्चाताप (repentance, new), अपवित्रता (defilement, new)	All four terms deliberately routed around ritual-purity vocabulary; each is moral/relational, not ceremonial.
Sāṃkhya/Vedānta technical philosophy	गुण (त्रिगुण), तत्त्व (24–25 tattvas), ज्ञान (jñāna-mārga)	सद्गुण (virtue, new), आकाशीय पिण्ड (elements, new), ज्ञान / पूर्ण ज्ञान (knowledge/epignōsis, new)	Qualify or replace bare Sāṃkhya-loaded terms as shown in Section 2; this is the densest cluster of technical-register collision in the letter, reflecting Mithila’s śāstric scholarly identity.
Planetary-deity worship	शुक्र (Śukra/Venus, Friday devotional observance)	भोरक तारा (morning star, new)	Generic descriptive phrase only; deity-name form permanently excluded.
Cyclical cosmology	सृष्टि-स्थिति-प्रलय, kalpa cycles	सृष्टि (creation, new), प्रभुक दिन (Day of the Lord, new)	Standing translator notes required at every occurrence (Section 2, row 6).
Devotional-romantic love register	प्रेम (Vidyapati’s Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa śṛṅgāra tradition), भक्ति	प्रेम (agapē, new), परमेश्वरपरायणता (godliness, new, coined specifically to avoid भक्ति)	Qualify प्रेम as निःस्वार्थ प्रेम in doctrinally load-bearing contexts (1:7); भक्ति permanently excluded from godliness/faith vocabulary per baseline precedent.
Royal/dynastic honorific register	प्रताप, राज्य-वैभव associations tied to the House of Janak	वैभव (majesty, new), परमेश्वरक राज्य (kingdom, reused)	वैभव preferred over प्रताप for divine majesty; राज्य already fenced in baseline for kingdom_of_god.
Infernal-realm cosmology	नरक (Yama’s karma/rebirth hell), पाताल (Puranic nāga nether-world)	अन्धकारमय गड्ढा (Tartarus, new)	Descriptive phrase naming no local infernal realm; both नरक and पाताल import a temporary-punishment-then-rebirth cosmology foreign to a single final judgment.

3.2 Genuinely missing vocabulary (no adequate native equivalent exists — require coinage or descriptive paraphrase, not merely fencing)

Concept	Gap description	Strategy adopted
σωτήρ (Savior, as a fixed divine title)	Maithili has no single native noun carrying both “the one who saves” and “divine title” force without either genericizing to “rescuer” or defaulting toward मुक्ति-based religious vocabulary.	Coined उद्धारकर्ता on the fixed उद्धार root; always paired with प्रभु in the fixed formula “प्रभु आ उद्धारकर्ता.”
θεία φύσις (divine nature, as a participatory phrase)	No existing phrase names “sharing in God’s moral character without ontological merger” — the two available ready-made phrases in the religious lexicon (लीन होयब; एकत्व/अद्वैत-adjacent phrasing) both assert merger, the opposite of Peter’s claim.	Coined दैवीय स्वभावक भागी + mandatory standing translator note (Section 2, row 7).
ταρταρόω (cast into Tartarus)	No native term for a temporary holding place pending a single future judgment exists that is not already a full competing cosmology (नरक, पाताल).	Descriptive phrase अन्धकारमय गड्ढा (गहींर गर्तमे बन्न कएल गेल), naming no existing infernal realm.
ἡμέρα κυρίου as a linear, final, single Day	No existing Maithili term names a single, non-repeating eschatological day of reckoning; the nearest available concept (प्रलय) is inherently cyclical.	Compound built on the fixed प्रभु root (प्रभुक दिन) plus mandatory contrastive translator note against pralaya/kalpa cosmology.
μεγαλοπρεπὴς δόξα (Majestic Glory, periphrastic divine title)	Maithili has no standing convention for a reverent circumlocution avoiding God’s direct name in narrative address (unlike, e.g., the Hebrew scribal tradition this phrase echoes).	Descriptive phrase उच्च महिमावाला परमेश्वर + mandatory translator note explaining the periphrastic-title convention itself, so translators do not flatten it to a merely descriptive clause.
ψευδοδιδάσκαλος (false teacher, as a neutral-register compound)	The natural native compound would route through गुरु, which is unusable per Section 3.1.	Compound built on the neutral educational root शिक्षक (झूठा शिक्षक), deliberately avoiding the guru-authority register entirely.
φωσφόρος (morning star, without deity association)	The one-word native astronomical term (शुक्र) is inseparably a deity name in regional practice.	Descriptive phrase भोरक तारा rather than the single-word astronomical term.
φέρω / pheromenoi (carried along by the Spirit)	No single Maithili verb captures “moved/directed by an external divine agent while retaining full use of one’s own faculties” without either understating agency (mere “influence”) or overstating it toward possession-trance imagery.	Full verb phrase (पवित्र आत्माक द्वारा) चलाओल गेल, explicitly agent-marked, deliberately not a single terse verb.

Summary judgment: 2 Peter’s gaps are overwhelmingly of the crowded-neighborhood type (existing vocabulary already carries a strong, well-formed competing meaning) rather than the pure-lexical-gap type (no word exists at all). This is the inverse of what a linguist might expect from a philosophically dense letter — Mithila’s vocabulary is not thin here, it is too rich in the wrong direction, requiring active fencing more often than invention.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Category	Decision	Examples	Rationale
Proper names (persons)	Transliterate, per established North Indian Bible-translation convention (already fixed in baseline)	यीशु, ख्रीष्ट/मसीह, पौलुस (if referenced), दाऊद	Already-settled forms; no new decision required for 2 Peter.
Sacred/liturgical formulae	Transliterate	आमीन, हल्लेलूयाह (if occurring in doxological material, e.g. 3:18)	Consistent with baseline convention; these are proper liturgical exclamations with no translatable semantic content to paraphrase.
Technical eschatological/theological terms with no safe native single-word equivalent	Paraphrase / coin a compound on an already-fixed root, do NOT transliterate	σωτήρ → उद्धारकर्ता (not “सोतेर”); θεία φύσις → दैवीय स्वभावक भागी (not “थेइया फ्यूसिस”); παρουσία → आगमन (not “पारूसिया”)	Transliterating these would (a) fail to communicate meaning to an audience with no prior exposure to Greek theological vocabulary, and (b) forfeit the opportunity to build the term on an already-fixed, doctrinally safe Maithili root (उद्धार, देहधारण, प्रभु), which is the primary strategy this Language Package uses to maintain cross-document consistency.
Names of a fabricated foreign/local mythic realm	Neither transliterate the Greek (Tartarus) nor borrow a local cosmology term	ταρταρόω → अन्धकारमय गड्ढा (descriptive, not “तर्तरस,” not नरक/पाताल)	Transliterating “Tartarus” would import an unfamiliar foreign proper noun requiring its own separate explanation; borrowing नरक/पाताल would import a full competing cosmology. A plain descriptive phrase avoids both problems and matches the Greek term’s own descriptive/verbal character (a rare verb meaning “to Tartarus-ify,” itself a coinage in Greek).
Reverent periphrastic divine titles	Paraphrase with mandatory translator note, not transliteration	μεγαλοπρεπὴς δόξα → उच्च महिमावाला परमेश्वर	The phrase’s function (reverent circumlocution) must be explained, not merely rendered; transliteration would strip the function entirely and produce an opaque, meaningless string for Maithili readers.
Astronomical/cosmological descriptive terms tied to deity names in the source culture	Paraphrase generically	φωσφόρος → भोरक तारा (not शुक्र, not a transliteration)	Neither transliteration nor the “obvious” native single word is safe; a generic descriptive phrase sidesteps the deity-name collision entirely.
Virtue-list terms already well-supplied by Sanskrit tatsama vocabulary shared with Hindi/regional philosophy	Paraphrase using a qualified or compound native term, not transliteration	ἀρετή → सद्गुण (not गुण, not “अरेते”)	These concepts are not foreign to the language — the risk is precision, not availability, so paraphrase/qualification is the correct tool, not transliteration.

General rule for this curriculum: transliteration is reserved exclusively for proper names and fixed liturgical exclamations already settled by North Indian Bible-translation precedent. Every theological concept term in 2 Peter — even where Greek supplies a distinctive technical word (parousia, tartaroō) — is rendered by paraphrase or compound-coinage on an already-fixed Maithili root, because transliteration would produce meaningless strings for an audience with no inherited Christian-Greek vocabulary, whereas root-based coinage preserves both meaning and cross-document consistency with the Romans baseline.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in 2 Peter

Ranked by (a) doctrinal centrality, (b) strength/specificity of the competing regional concept, and (c) likelihood a translator unfamiliar with this analysis would default to the wrong rendering.

1. θεία φύσις / “partakers of the divine nature” (1:4) — Highest risk in the letter. Advaita Vedānta’s Brahman-ātman identity teaching is a live, prestigious, locally “owned” scholarly tradition, and its ready-made vocabulary (लीन होयब) says the opposite of what the text means. Failure here doesn’t just blur a term — it inverts the doctrine into its theological antonym. Mandatory Human Theologian review, every occurrence, with standing translator note.

2. παρουσία / Christ’s return (1:16, 3:4, 3:12), in direct collision with Mithila’s own Ramayana setting and Kalki-avatar expectation — Second-highest risk because the region doesn’t merely have a generic competing concept but a specific, locally geographic one (Janakpur/Sita’s birthplace) plus a specific future-avatar expectation (Kalki) that could each independently absorb this term’s force. Mandatory Human Theologian review, standing contrastive note required.

3. ἡμέρα κυρίου / Day of the Lord vs. सृष्टि-स्थिति-प्रलय cyclical cosmology (3:7–13) — Every Maithili speaker’s default cosmological frame is cyclical; rendering “creation,” “the Day,” and “new heavens and new earth” without explicit linear-history framing risks the entire eschatological argument of chapter 3 being quietly re-heard as one more turn of an old wheel. Mandatory Human Theologian review at 3:4, 3:7, 3:10, 3:13.

4. ταρταρόω / the confinement of the fallen angels (2:4) — Both available native infernal-realm terms (नरक, पाताल) import an entire alternative cosmology (temporary punishment within an ongoing rebirth system) that directly undercuts the passage’s point about a single future judgment. Mandatory Human Theologian review.

5. γραφή/προφητεία + φέρω / the inspiration mechanism (1:19–21) — This is the letter’s core doctrinal passage (2 Peter 1:16–21) and its highest-density term cluster; getting “carried along” wrong in either direction (too weak = mere human inspiration/opinion; too strong = oracular possession) corrupts the entire “Reliability and Inspiration of Scripture” doctrine at its center-of-gravity verse. Mandatory Human Theologian review of the full 1:16–21 unit as a single reviewed span, not term-by-term.

6. ψευδοδιδάσκαλος / false teacher vs. गुरु-authority (2:1) — Labeling a “गुरु” false would strike at an entire, near-sacrosanct regional authority structure; getting this wrong risks either (a) needless local offense if mistranslated toward गुरु, or (b) under-communicating the text’s real alarm if over-softened away from शिक्षक’s directness. Human Theologian + Native Speaker joint review recommended.

7. σωτήρ / Savior, in the fixed “Lord and Savior” formula (throughout) — Repeated formulaically; any drift toward a मुक्ति-adjacent coinage across even one occurrence would reintroduce the rebirth-liberation frame the whole Romans baseline was built to exclude, and because the phrase recurs five times, a single slip risks looking like a pattern rather than an error. Mandatory Human Theologian review at first occurrence (1:1); spot-check remaining four.

8. δεσπότης / स्वामी vs. κύριος / प्रभु (2:1) — Low intrinsic ambiguity in Greek, but high implementation risk in Maithili because स्वामी was explicitly excluded elsewhere in the baseline; a translator working from memory of the Romans package alone (without this letter’s registry) could “correct” स्वामी back to प्रभु, erasing a deliberate distinction. Native Speaker review with explicit baseline cross-check.

9. ἐπίγνωσις / γνῶσις vs. jñāna-mārga (1:2,3,5,6,8; 2:20; 3:18) — Recurs six times across the letter; the risk is cumulative rather than single-point — repeated unanchored occurrences of “knowledge” could gradually read as commending a jñāna-path to salvation rather than one virtue flowing from faith in Christ. Human Theologian review recommended for 1:2–3 and 2:20 (soteriologically load-bearing); Native Speaker spot-check elsewhere.

10. κτίσις / creation vs. cyclical सृष्टि (3:4) — Distinct from #3 above in that this occurrence is placed in the scoffers’ mouths (“all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation”), meaning a cyclical-cosmology misreading here would ironically make the scoffers’ false claim sound more plausible to a Maithili reader than Peter intends. Human Theologian review.

11. αἵρεσις / heresy vs. पाषण्ड (2:1) — Lower frequency (single occurrence) but real risk of importing a Vedic-orthodoxy insider/outsider framework that recasts the false teachers’ error as a matter of ritual/scriptural conformity rather than destructive doctrine and conduct. Native Speaker review.

12. μετάνοια / repentance vs. प्रायश्चित्त (3:9) — Single occurrence but doctrinally load-bearing (the stated purpose of God’s patience); a ritual-expiation reading would make salvation depend on a performed rite rather than a Spirit-wrought turning. Human Theologian review.

13. φωσφόρος / morning star vs. शुक्र (1:19) — Lower doctrinal stakes than the above (an image of assurance, not a core soteriological claim), but a live risk of unintended reverential/devotional resonance if the Śukra-deity name is used even informally by a translator reaching for the “obvious” word. Native Speaker review.

14. ἀγάπη / प्रेम vs. śṛṅgāra-bhakti register (1:7) — Single occurrence, moderate stakes; risk is more about tone/register drift (romantic resonance) than doctrinal inversion, but worth flagging given Mithila’s strong Vidyapati literary association. Native Speaker review.

15. μαχροθυμία / patience of God vs. fatalistic idiom (3:9, 15) — Risk is subtle (a register/agency problem more than a lexical collision) but pervasive, since the fatalistic framing is embedded in ordinary speech patterns rather than a single competing technical term, making it easy for a fluent but undertrained translator to reach for it unconsciously. Native Speaker review, with Human Theologian spot-check at 3:9 given its centrality to the “Patience of God’s Timing” doctrine.

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6. Recommendations for Phase 2 Handoff

1. Add all Critical/High terms from assets/bible_term_registry.json (2 Peter) to translation_memory.json with a version increment before any Phase 2 segment translation begins, per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md’s glossary-update protocol.
2. Treat 2 Peter 1:16–21 (the core passage) as a single reviewed unit in Phase 2 Step 17 routing, not a set of independently scored segments — its doctrinal force depends on the terms in that span working together (eyewitness testimony vs. myth; prophecy vs. private interpretation; carried-along inspiration).
3. Attach the five mandatory standing translator notes identified above (θεία φύσις, παρουσία, ἡμέρα κυρίου, ταρταρόω, μεγαλοπρεπὴς δόξα) as reusable footnote templates so Phase 2 workers apply them consistently rather than improvising wording per occurrence.
4. Flag any Phase 2 segment where a translator substitutes गुरु for शिक्षक, लीन होयब for दैवीय स्वभावक भागी, or शुक्र for भोरक तारा as an automatic Critical-tier failure requiring re-translation, not merely a review note — these three substitutions are the most likely accidental regressions given how natural those native alternatives otherwise are.

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Cross-reference: analysis/08_core_glossary.md for the full term-by-term glossary underlying this analysis; assets/bible_term_registry.json (2 Peter) for the formal registry entries; Romans baseline translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json for all reused terms and enforcement conventions.