Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 — Linguistic Gap Analysis: 1 Kings (English → Mandarin)
0. Purpose and Method
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the 1 Kings curriculum. It does not re-derive term renderings already fixed in the core glossary and term registry; it diagnoses where the Mandarin lexicon itself creates translation risk — through (a) genuine vocabulary gaps requiring coinage or compounding, and (b) “crowded” semantic neighborhoods where an available Mandarin term already carries strong competing associations from Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, folk religion, or imperial political theology.
Method: every doctrine in the curriculum’s doctrine list is mapped against the Mandarin lexical field available to render it, prior Romans-baseline precedent is checked for consistency, and each candidate term is stress-tested against the destination culture’s dominant religious/philosophical traditions per the baseline’s established risk methodology. Coverage spans all 22 chapters of 1 Kings; chapters contributing no new terminology beyond what is already logged are explicitly marked “reviewed, no new terms.”
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
1.1 Solomon’s Wisdom and Its Limits
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Mandarin terms | 智慧 (wisdom), 智慧聪明的心 / 能听的心 (understanding heart), 聪明 (cleverness/intelligence, non-technical), 求 (to ask/request) |
| Weaknesses | 智慧 sits directly beside 智 (zhì), one of the Confucian Five Constant Virtues (仁义礼智信), understood as a moral capacity cultivated through study, ritual practice, and self-discipline toward sagehood. Mandarin has no ready-made lexical item that already encodes “wisdom received as an unearned gift in answer to a humble request.” Readers will default to the cultivation frame unless the narrative context (Solomon asking, not achieving) is made explicit at every occurrence. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 智慧 (consistency with wisdom entry, High risk). Require a standing teacher’s/translator’s note at first occurrence (3:9-12) making the request-and-gift structure explicit, and require ch.11 to be taught as the doctrine’s own internal corrective: the text itself narrates that a God-given gift did not secure ongoing faithfulness — this must not be flattened into a generic “wisdom failed him” reading that could be misread as the gift being defective; the limitation is Solomon’s, not the gift’s. |
1.2 The Temple as God’s Dwelling among His People
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Mandarin terms | 殿 (house/hall), 住 / 居所 / 住处 (dwell/dwelling), 名 (Name), 云 (cloud), 荣耀 (glory), 至圣所 (Holy of Holies), 容纳 (contain) |
| Weaknesses | This is the single most lexically crowded doctrine in the curriculum. 殿 is shared vocabulary with imperial palace halls (太和殿) and Buddhist temple main halls (大雄宝殿); 住/居所 for “dwelling” sits directly beside idol-consecration ritual (开光, “opening the light,” by which a spirit is believed to take up residence in a carved image) and ancestor-tablet theology (神主牌, where a name anchors a spirit for descendant-initiated feeding/appeasement). Mandarin has no native term that cleanly separates “God freely, sovereignly choosing to be locatably present without being confined” from “an object into which a spirit has been ritually installed.” |
| Recommended strategy | Preserve Solomon’s own prayer language as the corrective: 8:27’s rhetorical question (“will God indeed dwell on the earth… heaven of heavens cannot contain you”) must never be trimmed, since the biblical text is already doing the fencing work needed against a magical-indwelling misreading. Pair every dwelling-vocabulary occurrence with the transcendence language nearby. For “Name” theology (8:16-20,29 etc.), require an explicit note distinguishing God’s self-initiated presence-commitment from the reversed-direction ritual logic of 神主牌 (where humans initiate and sustain the relationship through offerings). |
1.3 The Divided Kingdom and Covenant Unfaithfulness
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Mandarin terms | 位 / 国位 / 王位 (throne), 撕裂 / 夺去 (tear the kingdom), 剪除 (cut off dynasty), 支派 (tribe), 耶和华眼中看为正/看为恶 (regnal formula), 约 (covenant) |
| Weaknesses | 位/王位 for the Davidic throne is exposed to unconscious assimilation into 天命 (Mandate of Heaven), the classical Chinese framework in which dynastic legitimacy is inherently revocable and transferable to an entirely new lineage when a ruler loses Heaven’s favor — which is structurally close enough to 1 Kings’ own conditional-discipline language (8:25; 9:4-9) to create a false-equivalence risk, yet theologically different: the Davidic covenant’s promise is unconditional to David’s specific line, even where individual kings suffer real, sometimes severe, covenant discipline. |
| Recommended strategy | Never gloss 位/王位 with 天命-adjacent vocabulary. Every occurrence of the divided-kingdom narrative (chs. 11-12) should carry a distinguishing note: the kingdom is torn (撕裂) as disciplinary judgment within an unconditional dynastic promise, not a Mandate-of-Heaven-style transfer of ultimate legitimacy away from David’s house — the text itself preserves “one tribe” (11:13,32,36) for David’s sake as proof the promise endures even through judgment. |
1.4 Idolatry and Its Consequences
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Mandarin terms | 别神 / 别的神 (other gods), 可憎的 (abomination), 邱坛 (high place), 金牛犊 (golden calf), 亚舍拉 (Asherah, transliterated) |
| Weaknesses | 邱坛 risks being read as a neutral ritual-platform term because contemporary Chinese religious life still actively uses cognate vocabulary (坛, as in 天坛, 土地坛) for ordinary, socially unremarkable altars/shrines. Mandarin lacks a term that inherently signals “illegitimate rival worship site” the way “high place” does once the Deuteronomic Temple-centralization background is understood — the negative charge is entirely contextual/theological, not lexical. |
| Recommended strategy | Never allow 邱坛 to stand alone without contextual framing establishing the single-legitimate-altar doctrine (cf. the altar entry, 祭坛). Teachers should be given the specific statistic that “high place” recurs as virtual shorthand for unfaithfulness from ch.11 forward, so that its repetition itself becomes a teaching point rather than background noise. |
1.5 Elijah and the Contest with Baal
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Mandarin terms | 巴力 (Baal, transliterated), 永生的耶和华 (living LORD), 从天降下的火 (fire from heaven), 心持两意 (limping between two opinions), 微小的声音 (still small voice) |
| Weaknesses | The doctrine’s entire rhetorical force depends on Baal being received as a specific, named, real rival claimant to lordship over rain/fire/fertility — a category with no exact Mandarin folk-religious analogue, since no single named deity in contemporary Chinese folk practice occupies an equivalently singular “storm-and-fertility lord” role contested head-to-head against a monotheistic claim. There is a real risk that translators or readers will default to treating 巴力 as a generic 偶像 (idol) label rather than a named being with an active cult and specific claimed powers. |
| Recommended strategy | Always retain the proper-noun transliteration 巴力 and never substitute a generic idol-term; supply background notes establishing Baal’s specific claimed portfolio (storm, fire, fertility) so that the Carmel contest’s proof-structure (whose god sends fire, whose god sends rain) is legible as a direct, point-by-point confrontation, not a vague morality tale about “false religion” in general. |
1.6 Prophetic Confrontation of Kings
| Element | Detail | |---|---|| | Available Mandarin terms | 神人 (man of God), 假先知 (false prophet), 说谎的灵 (lying spirit), 你就知道我是耶和华 (recognition formula), 耶和华的话 (word of the LORD) | | Weaknesses | 神人 for “man of God” is the single sharpest cross-curriculum collision in this entire language package: the Romans baseline explicitly forbids 神人 as a rendering of “Son of God” (huios theou) precisely because it suggests a deified human rather than the eternal Son. In 1 Kings, however, 神人 is the correct, standard OT idiom for an authorized human prophet with no claim to deity at all. A learner moving between the two curricula without a disambiguating note is at real risk of importing the wrong theological frame in one direction or the other. | | Recommended strategy | Mandatory disambiguating teacher’s note wherever both curricula are in active use: 神人 in 1 Kings = “a man belonging to / commissioned by God” (a human office-holder); 神人 is never an acceptable rendering for Christ’s unique Sonship anywhere in the Romans material. Recommend flagging every 1 Kings occurrence of 神人 in the segment cache with a cross-curriculum warning tag. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no close native Mandarin lexical item; compound/gloss required)
| Concept | Gap | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| שֵׁם (Name-theology, God’s self-committed localized presence) | No Mandarin noun distinguishes “a name that anchors a self-giving personal presence by the Named One’s own initiative” from “a name that anchors a spirit requiring descendant-initiated care.” | Use 名 with mandatory contextual scaffolding (see §1.2); cannot be solved lexically, must be solved through consistent doctrinal framing across every occurrence. |
| חֶסֶד (chesed, covenant-bound steadfast love) | No single Mandarin word combines “loyalty,” “love,” and “covenant obligation freely kept” the way chesed does; the nearest single-character candidate (仁) is a cultivated general virtue, not a specific bilateral covenant-keeping. | Retain 慈爱 (already fixed in glossary); supplement with the explanatory gloss “神向立约之民所守的爱” (the love God keeps toward his covenant people) at first occurrence in 8:23. |
| שׁוּב (shuv, covenant-reorientation “turning/returning”) | Mandarin 回转 is serviceable but is also used in ordinary non-religious senses (turning a car around, a business turning around); no dedicated theological term exists that is not shared with mundane usage. | Retain 回转; anchor with 向耶和华 (“to the LORD”) or 一心归向你 in every doctrinal occurrence so the object of turning is never left implicit. |
| פֹּסְחִים עַל־שְׁתֵּי הַסְּעִפִּים (Elijah’s syncretism idiom, 18:21) | No existing Mandarin four-character idiom captures “wavering between two exclusive religious allegiances” — the closest available idioms (犹豫不决, 三心二意) describe generic indecision, not idolatrous double allegiance. | Coined rendering 心持两意 (already logged); flag as a deliberately non-idiomatic construction chosen for doctrinal precision over idiomatic naturalness (per the baseline’s own instruction to avoid loaded Buddhist/Daoist four-character set phrases). |
| בָּמָה as theologically illegitimate site (vs. neutral “altar”) | Mandarin’s altar/platform vocabulary (坛, 祭坛) is not inherently marked negative. | No lexical fix available; resolved only through consistent doctrinal-context framing (§1.4). |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
| Mandarin term | Competing domain(s) already occupying this space | Fencing requirement |
|---|---|---|
| 神 | Folk generic noun for any deity/spirit (city god, kitchen god, idol) | Reinforce monotheism explicitly at every occurrence (already fenced in baseline; carried forward). |
| 灵 (bare, unqualified) | Ancestral spirits (祖灵), nature spirits, ghosts, fox-spirits (狐仙) | Never used bare for Holy Spirit (already fenced); newly relevant for lying_spirit (说谎的灵) — must never be shortened to bare 灵, and must never be confused with 圣灵. |
| 殿 | Imperial palace halls (太和殿), Buddhist temple main halls (大雄宝殿) | Consistent doctrinal framing: this 殿 is the unique house of the one God’s Name, not one hall among comparable sacred/political structures. |
| 坛 / 邱坛 | Ongoing, socially normal contemporary Daoist/folk ritual altars | Framing per §1.4; never presented as neutral. |
| 心 | Confucian moral cultivation vocabulary (存心养性, “preserving the heart, nourishing the nature”) | Wisdom/heart requests (3:9) must retain the gift-not-cultivation frame from §1.1. |
| 位 / 王位 | 天命 (Mandate of Heaven) dynastic-legitimacy discourse | Fencing per §1.3. |
| 智慧 | Confucian 智 (cultivated virtue) | Fencing per §1.1. |
| 名 | Ancestor spirit-tablets (神主牌) | Fencing per §1.2 and §2.1. |
| 回转 / 改运 (adjacent, not used) | Folk “changing one’s luck” ritual practice | Never let 回转 be read through a fortune-reversal lens; keep object (向耶和华) explicit. |
| 赦免 | Karmic-ledger discharge (报应, 功德) | Already fenced by baseline grace/salvation precedent; extend explicitly to 8:30-50’s forgiveness petitions. |
| 荣耀 | 面子 (social face), 灵气 (diffuse spiritual aura/qi) | Elevated risk in 8:11 (see term registry); must denote one specific historical theophany-event, not a general honor-attribute. |
| 律例/诫命/典章/法度 | Confucian 礼 (ritual propriety/social etiquette) | Fencing per baseline law entry, extended to the full Deuteronomic cluster. |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 巴力 (Baal) | Transliterate, never paraphrase as 假神/偶像 | Doctrinal force depends on a specific named rival; a generic idol-gloss would erase the Carmel contest’s point-by-point confrontation structure. |
| 亚舍拉 (Asherah) | Transliterate | Proper noun (deity/cultic object); no meaningful semantic content to paraphrase without importing unrelated connotations. |
| 耶洗别 (Jezebel), 何烈山 (Horeb), 便哈达 (Ben-Hadad), 米该雅 (Micaiah), 亚希雅 (Ahijah), 拿伯 (Naboth), 希兰 (Hiram), 雅斤/波阿斯 (Jachin/Boaz) | Transliterate, established CUV forms | Proper nouns; consistency with existing Chinese Bible tradition takes priority over any etymological gloss. Jachin/Boaz require a supplementary translator’s note on embedded Hebrew meaning (“he will establish” / “in him is strength”) since bare transliteration otherwise loses theologically relevant content entirely — this is a paraphrase-as-footnote, not a paraphrase-as-rendering. |
| 金牛犊 (golden calf) | Paraphrase (descriptive compound), not transliteration | The Hebrew is not a proper noun but a description; the compound must exactly match any parallel Exodus-curriculum rendering to preserve the deliberate Exodus 32 echo — transliteration is impossible and undesirable here, since the meaning (idol-image, calf, gold) is the entire point of the echo. |
| 说谎的灵 (lying spirit) | Paraphrase, never transliterate “ruach sheqer” | A descriptive theological category (a specific, subordinate created being), not a proper name; transliteration would be meaningless to readers and would forfeit the needed fencing against folk-spirit categories. |
| 心持两意 (limping between two opinions) | Paraphrase (coined idiom), not a borrowed existing Chinese idiom | See §2.1; deliberately avoids existing four-character idioms carrying Buddhist/Daoist baggage or excessive semantic weakness. |
| 微小的声音 (still small voice) | Paraphrase, plain descriptive rendering | No transliteration possible (not a proper noun); must resist substitution with the Daoist/Buddhist-loaded 清净, which would import a meditative-attainment frame. |
| 邱坛 (high place) | Paraphrase using an existing but marked CUV term | 邱坛 is already lexicalized in the Chinese Bible tradition specifically for this concept; retained rather than coining a new term, but requires the contextual fencing of §1.4/§2.2 since the term is not self-evidently negative to a general reader. |
| 耶和华 (YHWH) | Transliterate, established CUV form; kept categorically distinct from 主 | Per the term registry: 耶和华 is the OT proper covenant Name, 主 is the Romans baseline’s NT title for Christ. Both name the same God, but conflating the Chinese terms would blur the deliberate OT→NT typological arc the full TRI curriculum sequence is building. |
| 名 (Name-theology) | No transliteration possible; retain plain 名 with mandatory framing | Abstract theological technical term, not a proper noun; the risk is entirely in the surrounding folk-religious associative field (§2.1), not in the choice of character itself. |
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of collision with an entrenched Mandarin religious/cultural frame):
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[CRITICAL] “Dwell” (שָׁכַן/יָשַׁב) vs. idol-consecration ritual (开光). The core-passage doctrine itself (Temple as God’s dwelling) is most vulnerable to being read as “God’s spirit was ritually installed in this building the way a spirit is installed in an idol-image.” Mitigation: never separate dwelling-language from Solomon’s own transcendence-language (8:27); mandatory theologian review on every 8:12-13,27,30,39,43,49 occurrence.
-
[CRITICAL] “Name” theology (שֵׁם) vs. ancestor spirit-tablets (神主牌). Direction-of-initiative reversal (God initiates presence for his people’s access, vs. descendants sustaining an ancestor’s presence through ritual feeding) is theologically decisive and easy to lose in translation if 名 is treated as a merely technical label. Mitigation: fixed-phrase consistency (我的名必在那里) plus mandatory framing note at every occurrence.
-
[CRITICAL] 神人 (“man of God”) vs. the Romans baseline’s forbidden 神人 for “Son of God.” A direct, documented cross-curriculum contradiction risk: the same two Chinese characters are simultaneously the correct OT prophetic idiom here and a forbidden Christological rendering in the companion curriculum. Mitigation: mandatory disambiguating note wherever both curricula circulate; consider a segment-cache cross-curriculum warning tag.
-
[CRITICAL] 巴力 (Baal) collapsing into generic “idol/false god” (偶像/假神). If the specific named-rival force is lost, the entire Carmel-contest doctrine (Elijah and the Contest with Baal) degrades into a generic morality lesson against “idolatry in general,” undercutting the text’s actual argument structure (whose god answers by fire). Mitigation: never permit generic substitution; theologian review mandatory on chs. 17-19.
-
[CRITICAL] 心持两意 vs. the destination culture’s normalized religious syncretism (三教合一). This doctrine directly confronts a socially unmarked cultural default (blending Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and ancestral practice) rather than a marginal deviation; softened translation (e.g., 犹豫不决) would neutralize exactly the confrontation the text intends. Mitigation: retain the coined idiom; supply explicit teaching notes on the contemporary-relevance gap.
-
[HIGH] 别神 (“other gods”) softened toward “other beliefs.” Any euphemistic drift undermines the First-Commandment-level exclusivity claim running through 9:6; 11:4,10; 14:9; 16:31. Mitigation: validation-rule check for euphemistic substitutions at every occurrence, per baseline priority-order conventions.
-
[HIGH] 说谎的灵 (“lying spirit”) vs. folk spirit-cosmology (狐仙, 野鬼) or accidental conflation with 圣灵. Both directions are theologically damaging: reading it as an autonomous folk spirit loses God’s sovereign courtroom framing; any bare 灵 shortening risks confusion with the Holy Spirit. Mitigation: full compound always required; theologian review mandatory on 22:19-23.
-
[HIGH] 位/王位 (Davidic throne) vs. 天命 (Mandate of Heaven). The two frameworks are similar enough (both involve conditional divine favor and dynastic language) to produce an unconsciously syncretized reading that treats David’s line as replaceable the way a Chinese dynasty is replaceable. Mitigation: explicit “one tribe preserved for David’s sake” framing at every divided-kingdom occurrence (11:13,32,36).
-
[HIGH] 邱坛 (“high place”) read as a neutral, socially normal ritual site. Because cognate altar/platform vocabulary remains active in contemporary Chinese religious life, the term’s negative charge is entirely contextual and could silently erode across dozens of repetitions if framing notes are dropped even once. Mitigation: doctrine-level framing note attached to the first occurrence per document, re-affirmed at chapter transitions.
-
[HIGH] 荣耀 (“glory,” 8:11) vs. 面子 (social face) or 灵气 (diffuse spiritual aura). Elevated from the Romans baseline’s Medium to High specifically because this occurrence names one concrete historical theophany, not a general divine attribute; a generalized rendering would flatten a singular, verifiable event into an abstract quality. Mitigation: pair with 云 (cloud) language to keep the event-specific, embodied character of the theophany.
-
[HIGH] 慈爱 (chesed) vs. Confucian 仁 (cultivated benevolence). Structural parallel to the baseline’s own 义/righteousness caution; without an explicit covenant-bond framing note at 8:23, readers will likely default to reading chesed as a generalized virtue radiating from a moral exemplar rather than God’s specific, bilateral covenant-keeping.
-
[HIGH] 智慧 (wisdom) vs. Confucian 智 (self-cultivated virtue toward sagehood). Particularly acute because Solomon’s wisdom narrative (3:9-12; 4:29-34) is immediately followed in the book’s own structure by ch. 11’s account of its limits — a reader defaulting to the cultivation frame may misread ch. 11 as “the cultivation eventually failed” rather than “a gift can be present without guaranteeing ongoing covenant fidelity.”
-
[MEDIUM-HIGH] 回转/赦免 (turn/forgive) vs. karmic-ledger vocabulary (报应, 功德, 改运). Already substantially fenced by baseline precedent (grace, salvation), but 1 Kings 8’s sevenfold petition structure repeats these terms densely enough that a single unfenced occurrence could seed a karmic misreading across the whole prayer’s logic.
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[MEDIUM] 会众 (qahal) vs. 教会 (church, reserved NT term). Lower doctrinal stakes than the above, but consistent discipline is needed to preserve the deliberate historical distinction between the OT gathered-assembly concept and the NT ekklesia the Romans baseline already established.
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[MEDIUM] 天上 (heaven/heavens) vs. bare 天 (impersonal folk Heaven, 天意/老天爷). Lower risk than items above because the glossary already mandates the compound form, but batch-processing workers must be alerted that this is an extension of the baseline
godentry’s caution into new dwelling-place vocabulary, not a separate rule.
5. Full-Chapter Coverage Ledger
| Chapter(s) | New/notable vocabulary introduced | Gap-analysis status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 位/王位 (throne), 膏/受膏 (anoint) | Covered — §1.3, transliteration table |
| 2 | 律法 (law), 位, 剪除 | Covered — §1.3, §2.2 |
| 3 | 智慧, 智慧聪明的心/能听的心 | Covered — §1.1 |
| 4 | 智慧 (extended: administrative wisdom, no new theological terms) | Reviewed, no new terms beyond ch. 3 |
| 5 | 约 (secular treaty use, Hiram), 殿 (construction begins) | Covered — §1.2; secular-covenant use noted per glossary |
| 6 | 殿, 至圣所, 基路伯 | Covered — §1.2, §2.2 |
| 7 | 铜海, 雅斤/波阿斯, 基路伯 (furnishings) | Covered — transliteration table (Jachin/Boaz) |
| 8 (core passage) | 约柜, 荣耀, 云, 幽暗, 名, 住/居所, 容纳, 天上, 会众, 听, 心, 回转, 赦免, 审判, 承认, 外邦人, 被掳, 铁炉, 产业, 慈爱, 拣选, 分别出来 | Fully covered — §1.2 and throughout §§2-4; core doctrinal anchor |
| 9 | 荒场 (ruin heap), 律例/诫命/典章/法度 (covenant conditionality restated) | Covered — §2.2, §1.3 |
| 10 | (Queen of Sheba; wisdom’s fame — no new theological terms) | Reviewed, no new terms beyond ch. 3 |
| 11 | 别神, 可憎的, 邱坛, 亚舍拉, 外邦的妃嫔, 撕裂/夺去, 拣选 (city/tribe retained) | Covered — §1.3, §1.4, §2.2 |
| 12 | 支派, 撕裂/夺去, 金牛犊 (Jeroboam’s calves at Bethel/Dan begin here narratively, formal installation in v.28-29) | Covered — §1.3, §2.1, transliteration table |
| 13 | 神人, 证据/兆头 (sign) | Covered — §1.6, §2.2 |
| 14 | 罪, 剪除, 耶和华眼中看为正/看为恶 (regnal formula begins), 邱坛, 亚舍拉 | Covered — §1.3, §1.4 |
| 15 | 邱坛, 耶和华眼中看为正/看为恶 (Asa, Baasha) | Reviewed — recurring formula, no new lexical items |
| 16 | 别神, 邱坛, 亚舍拉, 巴力 (Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel introduces Baal cult formally) | Covered — §1.4, §1.5 |
| 17 | 永生的耶和华, 天使 (implicit provision imagery), 饥荒 | Covered — §1.5, §2.2 |
| 18 | 巴力, 心持两意, 从天降下的火, 亚舍拉 (prophets of) | Covered — §1.5, §2.1, ranked ambiguity #4-5 |
| 19 | 微小的声音, 何烈山, 热心 (zeal), 天使 | Covered — §1.5, §2.1, ranked ambiguity #10 (analogous fencing) |
| 20 | 你就知道我是耶和华 (recognition formula), 耶和华的话 | Covered — §1.6 |
| 21 | 万不可 (far be it from me), 产业 (Naboth’s vineyard, elevated risk), 血 (blood guilt) | Covered — §2.2 (产业 elevation noted) |
| 22 | 假先知, 说谎的灵, 天上的万军, 耶和华的话 | Covered — §1.6, ranked ambiguity #7 |
All 22 chapters have been reviewed. No chapter is silently omitted; chapters contributing no new terminology (4, 10, 15) are explicitly logged as reviewed against the existing vocabulary set rather than skipped.
6. Summary Recommendation for Phase 2 Handoff
The single greatest linguistic-gap risk in this curriculum is not any individual mistranslation but contextual erosion: nearly every high-risk term in 1 Kings (殿, 位, 名, 住/居所, 邱坛, 心持两意, 神人) is only correctly disambiguated by its surrounding doctrinal framing, not by the character choice itself, because the available Mandarin words are shared, active vocabulary in Buddhism, Daoism, Confucian ethics, ancestor veneration, and imperial political theology. Phase 2 processing must therefore treat the framing notes attached to each term in this document and in 08_core_glossary.md as equally mandatory as the term renderings themselves, and must flag any segment where a High/Critical term appears without its required contextual anchor for human theologian review, even if the term itself matches translation memory exactly.