Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: 2 John — English → Malay
Purpose and Scope
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the 2 John curriculum. It identifies where the Malay language lacks a clean lexical equivalent for a doctrine in this letter, where available Malay vocabulary is crowded by competing religious traditions (chiefly Islam, and secondarily Malay folk-Islamic and Hindu-Buddhist-substrate practice) requiring deliberate semantic “fencing,” and where transliteration is preferable to paraphrase (or vice versa). It closes with a ranked list of this letter’s highest-risk ambiguities to guide Phase 2 review routing.
This analysis extends, and does not contradict, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json, and builds directly on analysis/08_core_glossary.md and the 2 John-specific entries already added to assets/bible_term_registry.json.
Full-letter coverage confirmation: 2 John is a single chapter of 13 verses. Every verse has been reviewed for this analysis. Verses 1–3 (authorial/addressee framing and greeting) and 12–13 (closing) contribute vocabulary but no doctrinally load-bearing new risk beyond what is catalogued below; they are explicitly noted as reviewed, not silently omitted. Verses 4–11 (the core passage) carry the letter’s doctrinal weight and receive the bulk of this analysis.
| Verse range | Content | Coverage status |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1–2 | Author (elder), addressee (elect lady/church), shared knowledge of truth | Reviewed — see Elder, Elect Lady, Known the Truth entries |
| 1:3 | Three-part greeting: grace, mercy, peace; Father and Son | Reviewed — see Grace, Mercy, Peace, Father, Son of God entries |
| 1:4–6 | Walking in truth; the commandment to love; love defined as obedience | Reviewed — core passage; see Truth, Love, Commandment, Walk entries |
| 1:7–8 | Warning against deceivers denying the incarnation; watchfulness; reward | Reviewed — core passage; see Deceiver, Antichrist, Confess, Incarnation, Came in Flesh, Watch Yourselves, Reward entries |
| 1:9–11 | Perseverance in the teaching of Christ; hospitality and doctrinal discernment; refused greeting; participation in evil works | Reviewed — core passage; see Abide, Does Not Have God, Goes Ahead, Teaching of Christ, Receive into House, Refused Greeting, Participate in Evil, Evil Works entries |
| 1:12–13 | Closing: face-to-face fellowship, joy fulfilled, benign greeting, sister church | Reviewed — see Mouth to Mouth, Joy Fulfilled, Greets (Benign), Sister entries |
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the four curriculum doctrines, this matrix records the available Malay term(s), their specific weaknesses in this letter’s context, and the recommended handling strategy. Terms already governed by the baseline or the core glossary are cited, not re-derived.
1.1 Walking in Truth and Love
| Available Malay term(s) | Weakness in this doctrine’s context | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Kebenaran (truth) | Lexical collision: the same Malay word already carries the baseline’s Critical-risk forensic sense (“righteousness,” right standing before God) from Romans. In 2 John, ἀλήθεια is a different sense entirely — fidelity to apostolic gospel content, a body of revealed doctrine one can “know,” “walk in,” and “abide in.” Malay has no separate common lexeme that would preserve this distinction natively. | Reuse Kebenaran (no viable alternative exists in standard register), but mandate the qualifying gloss “kebenaran (ajaran benar Injil)” on first occurrence per lesson, and require every lesson plan to state explicitly which of the two senses (forensic-legal vs. doctrinal-fidelity) is active. This is a structural gap, not a translation error — flag prominently for reviewers moving between the Romans and 2 John curricula. |
| Hidup (menurut/dalam…) (walk/conduct) | Literal “berjalan” (to walk) is available but reads as physical locomotion, not moral conduct; loses the whole-of-life idiom entirely. | Use established Bible-Malay idiom hidup (to live) rather than berjalan, consistent with Alkitab convention (cf. Yohanes 8:12 and similar). No transliteration option; this is a paraphrase-for-idiom decision (see §3). |
| Kasih (love) | No lexical gap — Kasih is well-established, low-syncretism-risk Christian vocabulary. The gap is doctrinal-clarity, not lexical: everyday Malay usage (and romantic/sentimental Malay literature) primes readers to hear Kasih as feeling rather than John’s explicit behavioral definition (“this is love, that we walk according to his commandments,” v.6). | No substitute term needed. Teaching material must foreground John’s own operational definition on every occurrence rather than assuming Kasih self-evidently conveys it. |
| Perintah (commandment) | Available and adequate, but sits in a crowded neighborhood adjacent to Hukum Taurat (Mosaic Law, baseline High-risk term) and to Islamic hukum/syariat vocabulary for religious law generally. | Fence Perintah explicitly away from Hukum Taurat: this is a New Testament relational directive from the Father (the command to love), never part of, or a replacement for, the Mosaic legal code. See §2 for fencing detail. |
Overall assessment: No missing vocabulary for this doctrine — every needed concept has an available, established Malay rendering. The risk is entirely in a crowded semantic neighborhood (Kebenaran’s double duty) and in doctrinal-clarity drift (Kasih read as sentiment). Both require teaching-note discipline rather than new lexical creation.
1.2 Warning against Deceivers Denying the Incarnation
| Available Malay term(s) | Weakness in this doctrine’s context | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Penyesat (deceiver) | Shares its root with ajaran sesat, a formal, currently operative legal-religious designation used by Malaysian state Islamic authorities (JAKIM, state fatwa councils/Majlis Fatwa) to classify groups judged heretical relative to state-sanctioned Sunni orthodoxy. Using Penyesat without qualification risks readers hearing an implicit claim that the AI translation system is invoking, or piggybacking on, that specific state-administrative apparatus. | Retain Penyesat (no adequate synonym conveys the “leading astray” dimension as precisely — Penipu alone is too weak, denoting only “liar/cheat”). Mandatory explicit teaching-note disambiguation on first use: this is a general biblical category (one who leads others from apostolic truth), not an invocation of Malaysia’s state fatwa-council apparatus. |
| Antikristus (antichrist) | The structurally closest available Malay-Islamic parallel concept is Dajjal (al-Masih ad-Dajjal), a prominent, formally taught Sunni end-times false-messiah figure in Malaysian Islamic education. Genuine gap: Malay has no native equivalent term for this specifically Johannine theological category; “Dajjal” is tempting precisely because it is closer in register, which makes it the more dangerous option, not the safer one. | Transliterate as Antikristus (see §3), exactly paralleling the baseline’s Kristus/Al-Masih non-substitution discipline. Never gloss or explain using Dajjal-derived vocabulary. Teach the two figures/traditions as structurally distinct rather than equivalent — this is a missing-vocabulary case resolved by transliteration, not by borrowing a semantically adjacent Islamic term. |
| Penjelmaan / datang dalam keadaan manusia (incarnation / came in the flesh) | Reused Critical-risk baseline doctrine term. The available paraphrase avoids the trap of the baseline-rejected “menyamar sebagai manusia” (disguised as human) and the equally rejected “diangkat naik ke syurga tanpa mati” (no-death ascension) patterns, but the underlying heresy in view (docetic/Gnostic denial that Christ was truly, permanently physical) is NOT the same heresy mainstream mainstream Malay-Islamic theology holds (which already affirms Jesus’ full, real humanity). | No missing vocabulary; the risk is a misdirected-target risk rather than a lexical gap. Teaching material must state precisely which denial 2 John 7 addresses (docetic denial of Christ’s physical humanity) so the warning is not mistakenly recast as a general argument against Islamic Christology, which in fact already agrees on this specific point. |
| Mengaku (confess) | No lexical gap; shares its verb family with the Romans 10:9 “Yesus adalah Tuhan” confession. | Render consistently with Mengaku across both curricula so learners connect the negative diagnostic (failure to confess) in 2 John 7 with the positive confession pattern already established in Romans. |
Overall assessment: The core vocabulary gap here is genuinely a missing-term case (no native Malay word for “antichrist” as a theological category), resolved cleanly by transliteration. The remaining risks are crowded-neighborhood risks (Penyesat/ajaran sesat) and misdirected-target risks (incarnation denial vs. Islamic Christology), not vocabulary gaps.
1.3 Hospitality and Doctrinal Discernment
| Available Malay term(s) | Weakness in this doctrine’s context | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| menerima (dia) masuk ke dalam rumah (receive into the house) | No single Malay lexeme captures the specific formal-sponsorship sense of λαμβάνειν εἰς οἰκίαν (hosting/endorsing a traveling teacher) as distinct from ordinary social welcome. Malay adat (customary) hospitality norms — reinforced by Islamic teaching on honoring guests (memuliakan tetamu) — are a deeply held cultural value, creating real risk that this verse could be heard as instructing rudeness or a breach of adat toward any visitor. | Use the descriptive phrase (no single-word equivalent exists — this is a genuine phrase-level, not word-level, gap). Mandatory human theologian review with explicit teaching distinction: ordinary social courtesy toward all people is not prohibited; formally sponsoring/platforming a traveling teacher who denies the incarnation is what is prohibited. Route to human theologian review, paralleling the baseline’s evangelism-passage routing for pastoral and cultural-sensitivity reasons. |
| jangan alu-alukan dia (refused greeting, χαίρειν) | This is the letter’s single highest-stakes missing-vocabulary problem. Malay has no neutral one-word greeting-refusal term that avoids both of the two crowded, religiously loaded neighborhoods surrounding “greeting” vocabulary: (a) Salam, an Arabic-derived, religiously marked greeting term at the center of live Malaysian legal/political controversy over non-Muslim usage; (b) any selamat-rooted phrasing, which shares the exact root already Critical-flagged in the baseline for keselamatan (salvation), risking the instruction being subconsciously heard as “do not wish him salvation” rather than “do not extend a social greeting of endorsement.” | Genuinely missing vocabulary — Malay lacks a pre-existing idiom for “refuse a customary greeting as a doctrinal act.” Resolve by paraphrase using a neutral welcome/reception verb (alu-alukan, “to welcome”) that shares no root with either Salam or Selamat: “jangan alu-alukan dia” (“do not welcome him”) or “jangan sambut dia dengan mesra” (“do not receive him warmly”). Mandatory human theologian review for every occurrence — this is the letter’s single most consequential lexical decision. |
| turut serta (dalam) (participate in evil, ironic κοινωνέω) | Greek wordplay (κοινωνέω is the verb form of the same root as κοινωνία/fellowship) has no reproducible Malay equivalent, since Persekutuan is already fixed to its established positive Christian-fellowship sense by the baseline and must not be extended to this ironic negative use. | Accept the loss of wordplay (a genuine untranslatable-pun gap) and use a semantically distinct verb phrase (turut serta dalam / mengambil bahagian dalam). Teaching notes should explain the Greek wordplay explicitly, since the Malay rendering cannot reproduce it. |
Overall assessment: This doctrine contains the letter’s most severe missing-vocabulary case (the refused greeting) and its most severe crowded-neighborhood case (Salam/Selamat double jeopardy). Both require paraphrase strategies specifically engineered to avoid two distinct, independently dangerous lexical roots.
1.4 Perseverance in the Teaching of Christ
| Available Malay term(s) | Weakness in this doctrine’s context | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Tinggal (abide/remain) | Established Alkitab rendering (cf. Yohanes 15:4) but an extremely common everyday word meaning simply “to live/reside” — risks flattening the doctrinal weight of Spirit-sustained perseverance into casual physical staying-put. No missing vocabulary, but a significant register/weight gap. | Reuse Tinggal (no better alternative exists in established usage) but require explicit teaching emphasis distinguishing doctrinal “abiding” from everyday residential “staying,” on every occurrence. |
| Ajaran Kristus (teaching of Christ) | Bare ajaran shares its root with ajaran sesat (see Penyesat above), the same state-administrative “deviant teaching” designation. | Always pair with “Kristus” — never leave bare. This is a fencing decision, not a vocabulary gap: the qualifier itself resolves the risk. |
| Tidak memiliki Allah (“does not have God”) | No missing vocabulary — the phrase is compositional and straightforward in Malay. The risk is entirely doctrinal-political weight: this ties the letter’s sharpest exclusivist Trinitarian claim directly to Allah, already Malaysia’s single most legally and politically contested religious term (2013 Court of Appeal ruling; 2021 Kuching High Court ruling). | No lexical substitute is appropriate or available; softening (e.g., “an incomplete view of God”) is explicitly rejected as doctrinally unfaithful. Mandatory human theologian review for every occurrence, with teaching material addressing both the tawhid collision and the term’s independent legal sensitivity. |
| melangkah melampaui (Ajaran Kristus) (goes ahead/beyond) | No lexical gap, but a structural-resonance risk: the rhetorical shape of “claiming a later, more advanced revelation supersedes an earlier one” bears some resemblance to the Islamic doctrine of Qur’anic finality superseding earlier scriptures. | Teach strictly as an internal warning against abandoning Christ’s own apostolic teaching; explicitly flag in teaching notes that this verse must not be repurposed into a general interfaith argument about the sequence of revelations, which would derail into unintended polemics beyond the text’s scope. |
| Upah (reward) | Risk of being heard within an amal-ledger (deeds-earn-standing) framework — the same works-merit framework the baseline already guards against for kasih kurnia versus rahmat/amal soleh. Also shares its root with Romans 6:23’s “upah dosa” (wages of sin), same lexeme, opposite moral valence. | No missing vocabulary; a fencing and cross-reference issue (see §2). Teach as reward for perseverance/fruitfulness for those already secure in Christ by grace, never as the ground of justification. |
Overall assessment: No missing vocabulary for this doctrine. All risks are either register-weight risks (Tinggal), crowded-neighborhood risks requiring qualifiers (Ajaran Kristus, Upah), or compounded legal-political weight on an already-established Critical term (Allah, in “does not have God”).
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
This section separates the letter’s risks into two distinct categories, since they require different mitigation strategies: missing vocabulary (no adequate Malay term exists at all, requiring transliteration or newly coined phrase-level paraphrase) versus crowded semantic neighborhoods (an adequate Malay term exists but shares a root, register, or conceptual space with a competing religious tradition’s vocabulary, requiring explicit “fencing” — qualifying phrases, teaching notes, or deliberate avoidance of a tempting near-neighbor).
2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (resolved by transliteration or phrase-level paraphrase)
| Concept | Why no native term exists | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Antichrist (ἀντίχριστος) | No native Malay theological category for “one who opposes/falsely substitutes for Christ specifically by denying his incarnation”; the nearest available concept (Dajjal) belongs to a different, non-equivalent tradition. | Transliterate: Antikristus. |
| Refused greeting as a doctrinal act (χαίρειν withheld, 1:10–11) | No pre-existing Malay idiom for “declining a customary greeting as a formal act of doctrinal non-endorsement”; both native greeting-vocabulary neighborhoods (Salam-rooted, Selamat-rooted) are independently disqualified. | Coin phrase-level paraphrase avoiding both roots: jangan alu-alukan dia. |
| Formal hospitality-as-endorsement (λαμβάνειν εἰς οἰκίαν, 1:10) | No single Malay word distinguishes “ordinary social welcome” from “formal sponsorship/endorsement through hospitality”; Malay adat hospitality vocabulary does not natively carry this distinction. | Phrase-level descriptive paraphrase: menerima (dia) masuk ke dalam rumah, disambiguated entirely through teaching notes rather than lexical choice. |
| Ironic κοινωνέω wordplay (1:11) | Malay has no root that simultaneously carries positive “fellowship” and can be repurposed ironically for “complicity in evil” the way Greek κοινωνέω/κοινωνία does; the positive root (Persekutuan) is already fixed by the baseline. | Accept the wordplay loss; use a semantically distinct phrase, turut serta (dalam), with an explanatory teaching note. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
| Malay term/root | Competing occupant of the same space | Fencing strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Kebenaran (truth, 2 John’s sense) | Same lexeme as the baseline’s Critical-risk Kebenaran (righteousness, Romans’ sense) | Qualifying gloss on first use per lesson: “kebenaran (ajaran benar Injil)”; teaching notes must state which sense is active in each passage. |
| Penyesat (deceiver) | Ajaran sesat, Malaysia’s formal state Islamic-authority designation for heretical/deviant teaching (JAKIM, state fatwa councils) | Explicit teaching-note disambiguation on first use: general biblical category, not an invocation of the state-administrative apparatus. |
| Ajaran (bare “teaching”) | Same root as ajaran sesat | Never use bare; always qualify as Ajaran Kristus. |
| Salam (rejected for refused greeting) | Arabic/Islamic-loaded greeting term, live Malaysian legal/political controversy over non-Muslim usage | Excluded entirely from 1:10–11; retained safely for the benign 1:13 greeting (menyampaikan salam), where no doctrinal-refusal risk is present. Teaching notes must explicitly flag this deliberate contrast between vv.10-11 and v.13. |
| Selamat-rooted phrasing (rejected for refused greeting) | Shares the exact root as the baseline’s Critical Keselamatan (salvation) | Excluded entirely from the refused-greeting rendering to prevent “do not greet him” being subconsciously heard as “do not wish him salvation.” |
| Belas kasihan (mercy) vs. Rahmat | Rahmat operates within an Islamic deeds-and-mercy judgment framework where final standing remains undetermined until Judgment Day | Belas kasihan selected specifically to keep this triad (grace/mercy/peace, 1:3) distinct from Islamic rahmat theology, paralleling the baseline’s existing Kasih kurnia/rahmat fence for χάρις. |
| Upah (reward) | (a) Islamic amal-ledger (deeds-earn-standing) framework; (b) Romans 6:23’s “upah dosa” (wages of sin), same root, opposite valence | Teach as post-justification reward for perseverance, never the ground of standing; cross-reference the Romans 6:23 occurrence explicitly to prevent moral-valence confusion. |
| Persekutuan (fellowship) | Must not be extended to render 1:11’s ironic negative κοινωνέω | Reserve strictly for positive sense; use turut serta (dalam) for the negative case (see §2.1). |
| Antikristus | Dajjal (al-Masih ad-Dajjal), the mainstream Sunni Islamic false-messiah eschatological figure | Never gloss or explain using Dajjal-derived vocabulary; teach as structurally distinct traditions. |
| Puan pilihan (elect lady) | Possible unintended resonance with devotional expectations surrounding Maryam (Mary) in Malay-Muslim religious culture, given the honorific address of a woman of standing | Teaching material should clarify this is an ordinary or corporately personified church member/congregation, not a venerated devotional figure. |
| Perintah (commandment) | Hukum Taurat (Mosaic Law, baseline High-risk term); broader Islamic hukum/syariat vocabulary | Keep strictly distinct: Perintah is a NT relational directive from the Father, never part of or a replacement for Mosaic law or Syariah. |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Antichrist | Transliterate — Antikristus | Established Alkitab convention; no adequate native paraphrase exists that would not risk drawing on Dajjal-adjacent vocabulary. Parallels the baseline’s Kristus (not Al-Masih) transliteration discipline. |
| Refused greeting (χαίρειν) | Paraphrase, deliberately avoiding two disqualified roots | No transliteration is possible (this is not a proper noun or fixed theological term); the risk is entirely in root-selection among native Malay options, not in the choice between transliteration and paraphrase. |
| Came in the flesh (ἐρχόμενον ἐν σαρκί) | Paraphrase — datang dalam keadaan manusia | A literal gloss (“daging,” flesh) is available as a secondary literal rendering but the doctrinal content (real, permanent, bodily human nature) is better conveyed by the descriptive paraphrase than a bare literal noun, consistent with the baseline’s general instruction to preserve doctrinal content over literal wording. |
| Mouth to mouth (idiom, 1:12) | Paraphrase — berhadapan muka | Literal “mulut ke mulut” reads oddly and risks unintended physical connotation; convey meaning per the baseline’s general idiom-handling rule. |
| Elder (πρεσβύτερος) | Established term, not transliteration — Penatua | Existing Malay ecclesiastical vocabulary already conveys the NT office sense adequately; no gap requiring transliteration. |
| Elect lady (ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ) | Paraphrase preferred, transliteration flagged as secondary option — Puan pilihan (primary); Kyria (transliterated as a possible proper name, secondary) | Genuine exegetical ambiguity (individual vs. personified church) means the translation choice is inseparable from an interpretive decision; both options must be preserved in translator notes for human theologian review rather than resolved unilaterally at the glossary stage. |
| Abba-style retained transliteration (baseline precedent) | Not applicable in 2 John — no Aramaic term of this kind occurs in this letter | Noted for completeness; the baseline’s Abba-retention precedent has no parallel case to apply here. |
| Truth / Kebenaran | Reuse existing term, not new transliteration or paraphrase | No untranslated-loanword or paraphrase option would resolve the underlying double-duty collision with Romans’ “righteousness” sense; the fix is contextual qualification, not a different lexical strategy. |
General principle applied: Transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names and (b) theological categories with no adequate native equivalent and a real risk of a tempting-but-wrong native substitute (Antikristus vs. Dajjal being the clearest case). Paraphrase is used wherever the concept is expressible in ordinary Malay but requires careful root-selection to avoid crowded neighborhoods (the refused greeting) or where literal word-for-word rendering would mislead (came in the flesh, mouth to mouth).
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in 2 John
Ranked by combined severity of (a) doctrinal centrality to this letter’s core passage, (b) syncretism/collision risk with Malaysia’s dominant religious and legal-political context, and (c) likelihood of an AI translation system defaulting to an unsafe rendering without explicit guardrails.
-
Refused greeting (χαίρειν, 1:10–11) — “jangan alu-alukan dia.” The single highest-risk item in the letter: two independently disqualifying root-collisions (Salam’s live legal/political charge; Selamat’s shared root with Critical-tier keselamatan) converge on one short, high-frequency instruction. A default or careless rendering could either import forbidden Islamic-greeting vocabulary or accidentally instruct readers to withhold wishing someone salvation. Mandatory human theologian review, every occurrence.
-
“Does not have God” (θεὸν οὐκ ἔχει, 1:9) — Tidak memiliki Allah. Ties the letter’s sharpest exclusivist Trinitarian claim directly to Malaysia’s single most legally and politically contested religious term (Allah), compounding tawhid-collision risk with active legal-political sensitivity. Any softening is doctrinally unfaithful; any rendering must proceed with full awareness of both risk layers simultaneously. Mandatory human theologian review, every occurrence.
-
Truth / Kebenaran (ἀλήθεια, throughout, esp. 1:1–4). A structural, unavoidable lexical collision with the baseline’s Critical-risk “righteousness” sense of the same Malay word. Because this term appears five times in thirteen verses and anchors the letter’s entire theme, mishandling it risks systemic doctrinal confusion across the whole curriculum, not just a single verse.
-
Antichrist (ἀντίχριστος, 1:7) — Antikristus. Genuinely missing native vocabulary sitting directly adjacent to a formally taught, structurally similar Islamic eschatological figure (Dajjal). High risk of an AI system, or a well-meaning human teacher, reaching for the more familiar Dajjal-adjacent framing to “help” readers understand, precisely the move this Language Package must forbid.
-
Came in the flesh / Incarnation denial (ἐρχόμενον ἐν σαρκί, 1:7). Critical doctrine, but with an unusual secondary risk: the specific heresy in view (docetic/Gnostic denial of Christ’s real humanity) is not the heresy mainstream Malay-Islamic theology holds (which affirms Jesus’ full humanity already). Real risk of the warning being misdirected at the wrong target audience/theology if teaching notes are not precise.
-
Receive into the house (λαμβάνειν εἰς οἰκίαν, 1:10). Direct collision with deeply held Malay adat hospitality norms reinforced by Islamic guest-honoring teaching. Risk that the passage is heard as licensing generalized inhospitality or rudeness rather than the narrow, doctrinally specific prohibition (formal endorsement of an incarnation-denying teacher) actually intended.
-
Mercy / Belas kasihan vs. Rahmat (ἔλεος, 1:3). New term forced by this letter’s unusual three-part greeting; must be held distinct from both grace (Kasih kurnia) in the same verse and from Islamic rahmat theology. Moderate risk of translators defaulting to the more natural-sounding rahmat under time pressure.
-
Elect lady (ἐκλεκτῇ κυρίᾳ, 1:1, 1:5, 1:13). Genuine, unresolved exegetical ambiguity (individual vs. personified congregation) compounded by a secondary, lower-weight cultural resonance risk with Maryam-devotional expectations in Malay-Muslim culture. Requires translator’s note and human theologian review before any single rendering is fixed.
-
Goes ahead/beyond (προάγω, 1:9) — melangkah melampaui. Structural rhetorical resemblance to the Islamic doctrine of Qur’anic finality superseding earlier revelation. Risk is not lexical but framing: careless teaching material could inadvertently generalize this verse into unintended interfaith polemic about the sequence of revelations.
-
Deceiver / Penyesat (πλάνος, 1:7) and Teaching of Christ / Ajaran Kristus (διδαχή, 1:9–10). Both share a root with Malaysia’s formal state Islamic-authority “ajaran sesat” (deviant teaching) designation. Lower individual severity than items 1–9 because the fencing solution (explicit qualification and teaching notes) is straightforward and already specified, but flagged due to the frequency of the shared root across the passage.
5. Summary Recommendations for Phase 2
- Load this document alongside
analysis/08_core_glossary.md,assets/bible_term_registry.json, and the baseline Romanstranslation_memory.jsonbefore any Phase 2 segment translation of 2 John. - Apply the same Critical/High → human theologian review and Medium → native speaker review routing established in the baseline
doctrine_risk_registry.json, extended to the 2 John-specific doctrines and terms catalogued here. - Treat the four items ranked 1–4 above as requiring mandatory theologian sign-off before any segment containing them is marked approved, regardless of otherwise passing automated validation.
- Where this analysis identifies a genuine missing-vocabulary gap (Antikristus, the refused greeting, hospitality-as-endorsement, the ironic κοινωνέω wordplay), do not allow Phase 2 automated processing to “fill the gap” with an unreviewed ad hoc rendering; escalate immediately per the baseline’s “new theological term” protocol.
This document extends, and must be read alongside, analysis/08_core_glossary.md for full term-level detail and assets/bible_term_registry.json for the enforced registry entries.