Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis: 2 John (English → Mandarin)
Purpose and Scope
This document executes Phase 1 Step 8 for the 2 John curriculum. It analyzes where Modern Standard Mandarin (Simplified script, CUV/和合本 神版-register baseline) has adequate, inadequate, or contested vocabulary for the four core doctrines of this letter, and produces the decision framework Phase 2 translators must apply at the sentence level. It builds directly on 07_semantic_analysis.md and 08_core_glossary.md and must not contradict any term already fixed in the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json.
2 John is a single 13-verse chapter with a narrow but doctrinally dense vocabulary. Unlike Romans, where the gap analysis spans sixteen chapters of varied register, this letter’s risk is concentrated: a handful of terms carry almost the entire doctrinal weight of the four assigned doctrines, and several of them sit in semantic neighborhoods already flagged as contested in the baseline (道, 恩, 圣, 义-adjacent religious vocabulary). Coverage below is organized by doctrine, then by gap-type, then by transliteration policy, then by a ranked ambiguity list — the four required deliverables for this step.
Section 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the four curriculum doctrines, this matrix lists the doctrine’s key English/Greek terms, the Mandarin terms currently available (whether reused from the Romans baseline or newly proposed in 08_core_glossary.md), the specific weaknesses/collision risks each available term carries, and the recommended mitigation strategy for Phase 2.
1.1 Walking in Truth and Love (2 John 1:1-6)
| Key Term(s) | Available Mandarin Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| truth (ἀλήθεια) | 真理 (zhēnlǐ) | Stable Chinese Christian term, but risks being flattened into a generic philosophical or Daoist “the Way/ultimate principle” abstraction (道) rather than specific, revealed content about Christ’s incarnation and teaching. Secular register also uses 真理 loosely for scientific/empirical “truth,” which can drain the term of its Christological specificity. | Retain 真理 (no viable substitute exists). Require a contextual anchor at first occurrence (1:1-2) explicitly tying 真理 to “the teaching about Christ” (基督的教训, cf. 1:9) so the term is never left as a free-floating abstraction. Flag for theologian review whenever 真理 appears without a Christological anchor in the surrounding sentence. |
| love (ἀγάπη/ἀγαπάω) | 爱 / 爱心 (ài / àixīn) | Mandarin’s single character 爱 covers romantic love (爱情), parental affection, and even brand loyalty (“我爱这个牌子”), diluting agapic self-giving love into a generic warm-feeling word. Confucian 仁 (rén, benevolence within a hierarchical relational duty) is a “close but wrong” neighbor: it is duty-based and status-graded, whereas ἀγάπη is unconditional and status-blind. | Use 爱心 (rather than bare 爱) wherever the text is making a doctrinal point about the quality of the love commanded, to signal “committed, active love” rather than “affection.” Teaching material must explicitly distinguish this from 仁 and from 爱情 at first occurrence (1:5). |
| walk (περιπατέω) | 照…而行 (zhào…ér xíng) | No literal single-word equivalent; a literal “walk” (走/步行) misreads as physical locomotion, a known false-friend risk with English-language interference (learners exposed to English study Bibles may expect a literal walking metaphor). | Mandate the established CUV idiomatic compound 照…而行 at every occurrence (1:4, 1:6 ×2) without variation, since this is the letter’s central conduct-verb and its threefold repetition structurally links love and commandment in 1:6. |
| commandment (ἐντολή) | 命令 (mìnglìng) | Crowded neighbor: 律法 (lǜfǎ, the baseline’s fixed term for νόμος/Mosaic Law) is the term Chinese Christian readers most readily associate with “God’s commands,” risking a conflation of this single love-command with the entire Mosaic covenant code debate that Romans addresses. | Never substitute 律法 for 命令 in this letter. Require a short gloss at first use (1:4) clarifying ἐντολή here names one specific apostolic directive (love one another), not Torah-observance. |
| know (γινώσκω) | 知道 / 认识 (zhīdào / rènshi) | 知道 defaults to bare factual awareness in colloquial Mandarin (“我知道了” = “noted”), understating the relational, participatory sense Johannine γινώσκω carries. | Prefer 认识 over 知道 wherever the verb describes the corporate church’s relational knowledge of truth (1:1), reserving 知道 only for lighter contextual uses if any arise; align with the baseline faith doctrine’s insistence on relational rather than propositional-only knowing. |
1.2 Warning against Deceivers Denying the Incarnation (2 John 1:7)
| Key Term(s) | Available Mandarin Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| deceiver (πλάνος) | 迷惑人的 (míhuò rén de) | Risk of softening toward a merely mistaken or well-meaning person (弄错的人) rather than an active, culpable agent of spiritual deception with eternal stakes. | Retain 迷惑人的 exactly; never substitute a softer term. Theologian review required at both occurrences (1:7). |
| flesh / incarnation (σάρξ / ἐρχόμενον ἐν σαρκί) | 肉身 (ròushēn), tied to baseline 道成肉身 | 道 (dào) inside the established Christian phrase 道成肉身 is also the central term of Daoist metaphysics (the impersonal cosmic Way) — the single most theologically loaded character collision in the entire Mandarin Bible-translation tradition, already flagged Critical in the baseline. 2 John 1:7 is this doctrine’s second independent attestation point in the curriculum sequence (after Romans 1:3, 8:3), raising the stakes of consistent handling. | Retain 肉身/成了肉身来的 exactly, cross-referencing the baseline’s forbidden-substitution list (never 化身, 下凡, 转世). Require the same clarifying note used in Romans wherever 肉身/道 language appears: this is the personal, eternal Son’s genuine human body, not an impersonal cosmic principle taking a temporary shape. |
| confess / does not confess (ὁμολογέω) | 承认 / 不认 (chéngrèn / bù rèn) | Shares its confessional theology with the Critical-tier Romans 10:9 Lordship confession (耶稣是主); an inconsistent rendering here could weaken the cross-curriculum thread that “confession of Christ” is a single, load-bearing biblical-theological category. | Standardize 承认 for the positive form to maintain lexical continuity with the Romans confession-language family; retain CUV’s negated 不认 for the actual clause. Escalate to theologian review at every occurrence per the baseline’s existing confession-language escalation rule. |
| antichrist (ἀντίχριστος) | 敌基督 (dí Jīdū) | Vernacular Chinese religious vocabulary has an available “close but wrong” neighbor: 妖魔/邪灵 (generic demon/evil-spirit categories from folk religion and Buddhist-Daoist cosmology used in popular fiction and film), which would generalize a precise Christological-denial category into vague supernatural malevolence. | Retain 敌基督 exactly; require a teaching note that this term names denial of Christ’s true incarnate identity specifically, not a folk-category evil spirit. |
| world (κόσμος, negative sense) | 世上 / 世界 (shìshàng / shìjiè) | Mandarin’s ordinary usage defaults to the neutral planetary/societal sense; the negative Johannine “world-system in opposition to God” sense is not lexically distinguished and must be carried by context alone. | No lexical fix available; require explicit doctrinal flagging (native speaker + theologian) wherever this negative sense is intended, so teaching notes can supply the missing distinction context otherwise fails to signal. |
1.3 Hospitality and Doctrinal Discernment (2 John 1:10-11)
| Key Term(s) | Available Mandarin Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| house / receive into house (οἰκία / λαμβάνω) | 家 (jiā); 接 / 接待 (jiē / jiēdài) | This is the single largest cultural-collision risk in the letter (as opposed to a doctrinal-vocabulary gap): Chinese hospitality norms (待客之道, 好客) and face-preservation dynamics (面子) treat refusing a guest as a serious social violation, and many readers will experience real dissonance reading an apostolic command that appears to instruct inhospitality. | No lexical substitute solves this; the strategy is scope-narrowing through teaching apparatus, not vocabulary change. Every occurrence must carry an explanatory note restricting the command to the narrow case of providing a platform/legitimizing base of operations to an itinerant false teacher actively denying Christ’s incarnation — never a general instruction against ordinary Chinese hospitality toward strangers, travelers, or the needy (which the wider NT commends elsewhere). Flag for BOTH native speaker and theologian review at every occurrence. |
| greeting withheld (χαίρειν) | 问安 (wèn ān) | Literal rendering of the underlying Greek (“say ‘Rejoice!’”) would be misread in Mandarin as forbidding a wish for someone’s happiness, rather than refusing a formal, socially loaded greeting/endorsement gesture. | Use the idiomatic equivalent 问安 exclusively; never attempt a literal “祝你喜乐”-style rendering for the withheld greeting. Teaching material should clarify that withholding 问安 in this context functions like withholding a formal letter of introduction or public endorsement, not simple rudeness. |
| share/complicit (κοινωνέω) | 有分 (yǒu fèn) | Highest lexical-trap risk in the entire letter. Shares its root with the baseline’s Low-risk positive term 团契 (fellowship) — an automated glossary system trained on the Romans translation memory could plausibly auto-substitute 团契 here, producing the theologically backwards claim that greeting a false teacher grants one fellowship rather than guilt. | Encode as a hard override rule in translation memory: κοινωνέω + negative-valence complement (evil deeds) → 有分 ALWAYS; NEVER 团契. This is the single most important technical safeguard flagged in this analysis. Critical-tier theologian review at every occurrence. |
| evil deeds (πονηρός) | 恶 / 恶行 (è / èxíng) | Low collision risk lexically, but doctrinal linkage risk: must be taught as connected to the letter’s deceiver/antichrist theme (1:7), not treated as an unrelated general-ethics warning. | Retain 恶/恶行; add teaching cross-reference linking this term back to the deceiver/antichrist doctrine so the “evil deeds” of 1:11 are read as doctrinal complicity, not merely generic wrongdoing. |
1.4 Perseverance in the Teaching of Christ (2 John 1:8-9)
| Key Term(s) | Available Mandarin Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| abide/remain (μένω) | 存 / 常守 (cún / cháng shǒu) | CUV renders the same Greek verb with two different Chinese surface forms depending on collocation (truth abiding within a person vs. a person remaining in a teaching); an automated consistency-checker could flag this as an error. | Document explicitly (as already begun in 08_core_glossary.md) that both are accepted reflexes of one Greek verb; do not force artificial lexical uniformity, but do require that both convey active, continuous persistence, not passive residence. |
| teaching (διδαχή) | 教训 (jiàoxùn) / 教导 (jiàodǎo) | 教训 as a modern colloquial verb commonly means “to scold/tell off” (“他教训了我一顿”), a connotation that could distract a contemporary reader from the noun’s dignified doctrinal sense, even though CUV’s noun usage is unaffected by this drift. | Retain 教训 for register continuity with CUV, but pair with an explanatory gloss (“使徒所传、关于基督的教导”) at first occurrence (1:9) to pre-empt the colloquial scolding association. 教导 is an acceptable modern-register alternative if the gloss route is not used. |
| go ahead / overstep (προάγω) | 越过 (yuèguò) | The single highest cultural-inversion risk in this doctrine: modern Mandarin’s most natural rendering candidate, 进步 (jìnbù, “progress/advancement”), carries strongly positive connotations in a culture that highly values progress, modernization, and advancement — using it would invert the verse’s warning into an affirmation. | Mandate 越过 (crossing/overstepping a boundary) and explicitly forbid 进步 as a rendering candidate at the translation-memory level, parallel to the baseline’s forbidden-substitution lists for other Critical/High terms. |
| have (ἔχω, absolute sense) | 有 / 没有 (yǒu / méiyǒu) | Risk of softening the stark either/or claim (“does not have God” / “has both the Father and the Son”) into a gradated claim (“does not fully know God”), weakening the exclusivity parallel to Romans’ Lordship-of-Christ exclusivity claims. | Preserve the absolute binary in translation; forbid softening qualifiers (e.g., 不完全认识神). Flag for theologian review given the doctrinal weight of an exclusivity claim about relationship with God. |
| reward / work (μισθός / ἐργάζομαι) | 赏赐 / 做工 (shǎngcì / zuò gōng) | Crowded neighbor risk on two fronts: (1) 报应 (bàoyìng, karmic retribution, already forbidden under the baseline’s sin doctrine) is a “close but wrong” neighbor for reward/consequence language generally; (2) 做工 risks conflation with the Pauline grace-vs-works soteriological antithesis (功德, forbidden under the baseline’s Critical grace doctrine) even though 2 John’s “work” is ministry-labor fruit, not works-righteousness. | Retain 赏赐/做工; require an explicit theologian-reviewed note distinguishing this ministry-reward language from both (a) karmic-ledger retribution and (b) the Romans salvation-by-grace-not-works antithesis. This doctrine is about forfeitable reward for faithful service already saved by grace, not merit accumulation toward salvation. |
Section 2: Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2 John’s translation challenges divide cleanly into two categories: places where Mandarin simply lacks a precise lexical equivalent (“missing vocabulary,” requiring paraphrase or compound construction) and places where Mandarin has too many competing candidate terms, each importing unwanted associations from Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, or folk-religious semantic fields (“crowded neighborhoods,” requiring fencing — i.e., restricting a chosen term’s use and explicitly ruling out its neighbors).
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (requires paraphrase / compound construction)
| Concept | Gap | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| ”walk” as conduct-metaphor (περιπατέω) | No single Mandarin verb captures “habitual life-conduct” as a walking metaphor without sounding like physical locomotion. | Compound idiom 照…而行 (already CUV-established); treat as a fixed multi-character unit, not a word-for-word gloss. |
| ”go ahead of / overstep” (προάγω) | No single common Mandarin verb neutrally captures “presumptuous advance beyond a boundary” without either sounding positive (进步) or requiring an added boundary-object. | 越过 + explicit boundary reference (越过基督的教训) rather than a bare intransitive verb, to make the trespass reading unambiguous. |
| ”mouth to mouth” idiom (στόμα πρὸς στόμα) | A literal rendering (口对口) collides with the modern medical/romantic idiom for resuscitation or kissing. | Idiomatic substitution 面对面 (already CUV-established); document as a required, not optional, departure from literalism. |
| χαίρειν as a withheld greeting-act (1:10-11) | No Mandarin greeting-word etymologically related to “joy/rejoice” the way Greek χαίρειν is; the wordplay linking 1:4’s rejoicing, 1:10-11’s withheld greeting, and 1:12’s joy is lexically untranslatable as a unified word family. | Accept the loss of the literary inclusio at the lexical level; recover it pedagogically via a teaching note explaining the Greek wordplay, rather than forcing an artificial Mandarin one. |
| ”elect lady” as likely congregational personification (κυρία ἐκλεκτή) | Mandarin has no established convention for signaling “this proper-noun-shaped address may be a personification of a congregation” the way English commentary brackets can. | Retain literal 太太 + 蒙拣选的 rendering; carry the personification question entirely in teaching apparatus/footnotes, not in the translation itself. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (requires fencing)
These are cases where Mandarin offers multiple plausible-looking terms, each already colonized by a competing worldview, so that choosing the correct term is necessary but insufficient — the rejected neighbors must be positively fenced off in teaching material or, where risk is Critical, in translation-memory forbidden-substitution rules.
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道 / 道成肉身 (incarnation/flesh neighborhood). 道 is simultaneously the Christian incarnation term’s root character and the central term of Daoist metaphysics (impersonal cosmic Way) and, more diffusely, of Confucian “the Way of the sages.” Every occurrence of 肉身 or 道成肉身 in 2 John 1:7 must be fenced against a Daoist-impersonal-principle reading. (Reinforces baseline Critical flag; not new to this letter, but re-triggered independently here.)
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爱 / 仁 / 爱情 (love neighborhood). 爱心 (chosen) must be fenced against both 仁 (Confucian hierarchical relational duty) and 爱情 (romantic love). Because 1:5-6 makes love the content of “the commandment,” any drift toward either neighbor changes the doctrine from unconditional Christian love into either a Confucian social obligation or a sentimental/romantic emotion.
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团契 / 有分 (fellowship vs. complicity neighborhood). This is the single sharpest fence in the letter: same root family, diametrically opposite moral valence. The fence here is not merely explanatory but must be a hard technical rule (see Section 4, Risk #1) because the two terms are lexically related enough that automated tooling built on the Romans TM could cross-contaminate them.
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命令 / 律法 (commandment vs. Law neighborhood). 命令 must be fenced against 律法, the baseline’s fixed Mosaic-Law term, so readers do not import the Romans-curriculum’s Law/grace debate into 2 John’s single love-command.
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长老 / 长老 (Buddhist monastic elder) neighborhood. 长老 is fenced against its Chinese Buddhist monastic-title sense (a senior monk’s honorific) and its secular village-elder-by-age sense; the letter’s opening self-identification (1:1) must be anchored as a specific New Testament pastoral-teaching office.
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恶 / 恶行 vs. 报应-adjacent moral-cosmology neighborhood. While 恶/恶行 itself is not a forbidden term, its doctrinal linkage (evil deeds → complicity → judgment) sits close enough to Chinese folk-Buddhist karmic-retribution thinking (报应, already forbidden under the baseline’s
sindoctrine) that teaching material must fence the reward/complicity logic of 1:8 and 1:11 away from a karmic-ledger reading. -
赏赐 / 做工 vs. 功德 (grace-vs-merit) neighborhood. As detailed in Section 1.4, 2 John’s reward-for-faithful-service language sits directly adjacent to the Romans curriculum’s Critical grace-vs-merit fence line (功德). This is a cross-curriculum fencing concern: learners moving from Romans into 2 John must not conclude that 2 John “reintroduces” merit-based salvation through the back door of ministry reward.
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知道 vs. generic factual-awareness neighborhood. Fenced by preferring 认识 for relational knowing per Section 1.1, to avoid collapse into bare informational awareness (知道了 = “noted, got it”).
Section 3: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
2 John contains very few proper nouns (no OT genealogies, no place names beyond the implicit addressees), so transliteration decisions are lighter than in Romans, but the letter’s dense theological vocabulary raises several borderline calls between transliteration, direct paraphrase, and established-compound reuse.
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Jesus, Christ | Transliterate — reuse baseline forms 耶稣, 基督 exactly | Established CUV proper-noun transliterations; no paraphrase option was ever on the table; consistency with Romans curriculum is mandatory. |
| Antichrist (ἀντίχριστος) | Compound-render, not transliterate — 敌基督 | 敌基督 is already the established Chinese Christian compound (敌 “oppose/enemy” + 基督), itself built on the transliterated proper noun 基督; a phonetic transliteration of “antichristos” would be unintelligible and duplicative. No paraphrase (e.g. “opponent of the Anointed One”) is needed since the compound already carries full sense. |
| Elder (πρεσβύτερος) | Paraphrase via existing lexeme — 长老, not a transliteration | No Greek-derived transliteration tradition exists for this common office-title noun in Chinese Bible translation; 长老 is the correct paraphrase-through-existing-vocabulary route, with fencing per Section 2.2 item 5. |
| Kyria / “elect lady” (κυρία ἐκλεκτή) | Paraphrase, explicitly NOT transliterate | A phonetic transliteration (“库里亚”) would be nonsensical to readers and would obscure the honorific-address function of the Greek; 太太 + 蒙拣选的 correctly paraphrases both the polite-address function and the election-doctrine content. Transliteration is actively rejected here because it would produce a false proper name where the text likely intends a personification. |
| Abba-type intimacy terms | Not applicable in 2 John | Unlike Romans 8:15 (阿爸), 2 John contains no Aramaic/Hebrew loanword requiring preserved transliteration; flagged here only to confirm no parallel decision is needed for this letter. |
| ”Amen”-type closing formulas | Not present in the standard text of 2 John (textually disputed final “Amen” in some manuscripts) | If a Phase 2 source text includes a trailing ἀμήν, apply the baseline’s already-fixed transliteration 阿们 without modification; no new decision required. |
| στόμα πρὸς στόμα (“mouth to mouth”) | Paraphrase (idiomatic), reject literal calque | See Section 2.1; literal calque 口对口 produces an unintended modern connotation (CPR/kissing), so idiomatic 面对面 is mandated over literal translation. |
| χαίρειν (withheld greeting) | Paraphrase (functional-equivalence), reject literal calque | ”Rejoice!” as a greeting formula has no Mandarin greeting-word cognate; 问安 is the correct functional paraphrase. |
General policy for this letter: Transliteration is reserved strictly for proper nouns already fixed in the baseline (Jesus, Christ) and for established compound-coinages built on those transliterations (敌基督). Every other term in 2 John’s vocabulary — including its most doctrinally loaded ones (deceiver, confess, abide, teaching, overstep, complicit) — is handled through paraphrase or reuse of existing Chinese Christian compounds, because 2 John introduces no new Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords and no new named entities beyond the already-transliterated Jesus/Christ.
Section 4: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
The following ranks 2 John’s translation ambiguities from highest to lowest risk, based on (a) doctrinal centrality, (b) probability of an automated or under-trained human translator selecting the wrong Mandarin candidate, and (c) severity of theological damage if the wrong candidate is selected.
1. κοινωνέω (1:11) — false-friend collision with 团契 (fellowship). Highest risk in the letter. Same Greek root as the Low-risk, positively-valenced baseline term 团契; wrong choice would invert the verse’s warning into an endorsement of fellowship with a false teacher’s evil deeds. Requires a hard technical override rule in translation memory, not merely a style guide note. Critical tier.
2. σάρξ / ἐρχόμενον ἐν σαρκί (1:7) — the 道 collision inside 道成肉身. This is the letter’s independent re-attestation of the baseline’s single most theologically fraught character (道, shared with Daoist cosmology). Because 2 John states the incarnation doctrine in its own right (not merely by cross-reference to Romans), every occurrence re-triggers the full weight of the baseline’s forbidden-substitution discipline. Critical tier.
3. ὁμολογέω (1:7) — confess/not confess Christ. Shares theological DNA with the Critical-tier Romans 10:9 Lordship confession. An inconsistent or softened rendering (e.g., treating “does not confess” as mere disagreement rather than culpable denial) would sever this letter’s warning from the curriculum’s broader confession-of-Christ theology. Critical tier.
4. οἰκία / λαμβάνω (1:10) — the hospitality command. Not a lexical ambiguity but the letter’s highest cultural-collision risk: a literal, unscoped rendering risks being read as a blanket command against Chinese hospitality norms, provoking either rejection of the text’s authority or, worse, justifying ungracious behavior toward ordinary strangers under a misapplied “doctrinal purity” banner. High tier, requiring dual native-speaker-and-theologian review.
5. προάγω (1:9) — go ahead / overstep. The clearest case of potential doctrinal inversion through a single word choice: the natural-sounding candidate 进步 (“progress”) would turn a warning into praise, given modern Mandarin’s strongly positive cultural valuation of progress and advancement. High tier.
6. ἐντολή vs. νόμος (1:4-6) — commandment vs. Law. Risk of importing the entire Romans Law/grace debate into a letter that is instead making a single, narrow point about the love-command; mistranslation here would not corrupt a Critical doctrine directly but would confuse learners moving between the two curricula. High tier.
7. πλάνος / ἀντίχριστος (1:7) — deceiver/antichrist softening. Risk of collapsing a precise, high-stakes theological category into either a vague “mistaken person” (too soft) or a generic folk-supernatural “demon” (too diffuse and disconnected from the specific Christological content of the denial). High tier.
8. μισθός / ἐργάζομαι (1:8) — reward/work vs. two adjacent forbidden-term fields simultaneously. Double-sided crowded-neighborhood risk (karmic retribution 报应 on one side, works-righteousness 功德 on the other) makes this term unusually easy to mishandle even by a translator correctly avoiding each hazard individually, since avoiding both requires holding two distinct fences in mind at once. High tier.
9. ἀγάπη/ἀγαπάω (1:1, 3, 5, 6) — love vs. 仁/爱情. Pervasive, not a single flashpoint verse, but its repeated occurrence across the letter’s opening and its centrality to the “Walking in Truth and Love” doctrine make cumulative drift toward either neighbor a serious risk if not fenced at first occurrence. High tier.
10. ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς (1:5, 1:6) — “from the beginning.” Lower doctrinal severity than the above but a distinctive Mandarin-specific ambiguity: the identical phrase 从起初 opens Genesis in CUV, and an under-explained reader could import a creation-narrative referent into a verse that is actually about the origin-point of apostolic instruction in the love-command. Medium tier, native-speaker review sufficient.
Summary and Handoff
This letter concentrates its highest risks in a small number of terms (κοινωνέω, σάρξ/incarnation, ὁμολογέω) that either directly re-trigger baseline Critical-tier doctrines or introduce a brand-new false-friend collision (团契/有分) not present anywhere in the Romans curriculum. Phase 2 tooling must treat the κοινωνέω exception as a non-negotiable hard rule, not a style preference, given the demonstrated risk that root-based automated glossary matching could silently invert this verse’s meaning. All findings here are carried forward into 08_core_glossary.md (already produced) and must inform the doctrine risk registry and AI translation requirements documents for this curriculum.