Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Acts (English → Mandarin)
Curriculum: Acts 1–28 Core passage: Acts 2:1–41 Doctrine set: The Holy Spirit and Pentecost; The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles; Repentance and Baptism; The Church as Community; Apostolic Authority and Miracles; Persecution and Bold Witness; Conversion of Paul; Justification apart from the Law; The Great Commission Fulfilled
Governing authority: This analysis extends, and never contradicts, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json, and is consistent with 08_core_glossary.md (Acts). All risk tiers, forbidden substitutions, and established renderings from those documents are treated as fixed constraints here, not open questions.
Purpose: To identify (1) where Mandarin has adequate vocabulary for Acts’ doctrine set and where it does not, (2) which semantic neighborhoods are dangerously crowded with false-friend alternatives drawn from Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Daoism, and 20th-century political vocabulary, (3) where transliteration is preferable to paraphrase (and vice versa), and (4) which specific ambiguities carry the highest risk of doctrinal distortion if mishandled in Phase 2.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
| Doctrine | Available Mandarin Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Holy Spirit and Pentecost | 圣灵, 五旬节, 风, 如火的舌头, 被圣灵充满, 别国的话, 浇灌, 所赐的圣灵 | 风 overlaps with 气 (forbidden qi-energy term) and 风水 geomancy; 被圣灵充满 overlaps with mediumistic spirit-possession (被灵附身/附体); 别国的话 is vulnerable to silent substitution with generic 方言 (ecstatic speech/regional dialect); 五旬节’s 节 (“festival”) can be absorbed into generic folk-festival semantics without OT background teaching. | Retain all compounds exactly as recorded in bible_term_registry.json; require a standing teaching note at every occurrence of 风 and 被圣灵充满 distinguishing sign-from-substance and benevolent-indwelling-from-possession; never permit 方言 as a substitute for 别国的话 in Acts 2. |
| The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles | 外邦人, 虔诚的, 敬畏神的人, 归化犹太教的人, 不偏待人, 俗物/洁净 | 虔诚的 is usable of devotion to any deity; 俗物/洁净 collides with ongoing folk dietary-purity practice (斋戒吃素积德); 敬畏神的人 as a sociological bridge-category (God-fearer) has no native Chinese equivalent and can be misread as a full convert. | Anchor 虔诚的/敬畏神的人 to the one true God in every occurrence; teach 俗物/洁净 (Acts 10) as symbolic of the Jew-Gentile barrier’s removal, not a general dietary teaching; explicitly gloss 敬畏神的人 as “a Gentile sympathizer, not yet a full convert” on first use per document. |
| Repentance and Baptism | 悔改, 受洗/洗礼, 罪得赦免 | 悔改 sits near the forbidden Buddhist ritual-confession term 忏悔; 受洗/洗礼 risks being read as a generic ceremonial-defilement washing rite; Acts contains three distinguishable “baptisms” (John’s repentance-baptism, Christian baptism in Jesus’ name, Spirit-baptism) that Mandarin does not lexically distinguish. | NEVER use 忏悔 for 悔改 under any circumstance; disambiguate every 受洗/洗礼 occurrence by context (whose baptism, what agent, what name invoked) rather than relying on the noun alone to carry the distinction. |
| The Church as Community | 教会, 团契, 凡物公用, 服事, 加添/添了, 长老/监督/牧养, 基督徒 | 凡物公用 collides heavily with 20th-century Chinese political-economic vocabulary (公有, collectivization); 服事 risks being read as a lesser administrative role beneath “ministry of the word”; 长老 must be disambiguated from its distinct use for Jewish council elders. | Attach an explicit anti-anachronism teaching note to every occurrence of 凡物公用 (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35) clarifying voluntary, Spirit-motivated, local, temporary generosity, not a political-economic mandate; clarify 服事 (Acts 6) is Spirit-and-wisdom-qualified ministry, not a demotion. |
| Apostolic Authority and Miracles | 使徒, 神迹奇事, 按手, 主的使者 | 神迹奇事 sits in a crowded neighborhood alongside 邪术 (condemned sorcery) and 法力/法术 (accepted folk ritual-practitioner power); 按手 risks being read as a transferable, purchasable power given Simon Magus’s attempt to buy it (Acts 8). | Consistently mark 神迹奇事/神的大能 as God’s own authenticating acts, never earned or purchasable, and sharply distinct from 邪术; every 按手 occurrence involving impartation should carry the “given through prayer, never purchased” clarification, especially Acts 8:18-20. |
| Persecution and Bold Witness | 逼迫, 放胆, 见证/作证, 罗马公民 | 逼迫 must not blur into generic hardship (苦难); 放胆 must not connote recklessness (莽撞); 见证/作证 risks softening toward the modern secular/therapeutic sense of “sharing a personal testimony” (分享见证). | Retain 逼迫 as hostility specifically because of identification with Christ; retain 放胆 as Spirit-produced confidence, not defiance; retain 见证/作证 as authoritative eyewitness testimony to the risen Christ, especially at Acts 1:8, 2:32, 7:58-60. |
| Conversion of Paul | 这道, 蒙召的, 呼召, 从天上来的异象 | 这道 is the single highest collision-risk term in the entire curriculum, sharing its head character with 道家/道教 (Daoism) and general “one path among several” readings; 从天上来的异象 risks being read as generic mysticism rather than a specific divine summons. | Never let 这道 stand alone without an anchoring clause naming exclusive allegiance to the risen Lord Jesus, at every occurrence (9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22); treat 从天上来的异象 consistently as an instance of baseline’s High-risk “calling” doctrine, not generic vision-language. |
| Justification apart from the Law | 称义, 义, 律法, 恩典, 轭, 许愿, 将来的审判 | 义 inherits the baseline’s Critical Confucian-virtue collision; 许愿 collides with the transactional temple-bargain sense of vow-making common in Chinese folk religion; 将来的审判 must not blur into impersonal karmic retribution (报应). | Apply the same footnote discipline already mandated in the baseline for 义/称义 to every Acts occurrence (13:39; 15; 24:25); teach 许愿 (18:18; 21:23-26) explicitly as cultural accommodation with zero bearing on Paul’s own justification, not leverage for divine favor. |
| The Great Commission Fulfilled | 神的国, 宣教, 直到地极, 没有人禁止 | 直到地极 risks echoing 天下 (“all under heaven,” the classical unified-dominion ideal already forbidden under baseline’s kingdom_of_god entry); 宣教 carries residual association with the historic 洋教 (“foreign religion”) stigma. | Frame 直到地极 (Acts 1:8) consistently as the spread of a saving message, never territorial dominion; frame 宣教/proclamation language throughout in terms of witness and invitation rather than foreign imposition, especially in chapters 13, 14, 22, 26. |
2. Missing Vocabulary — Concepts With No Ready-Made Mandarin Equivalent
These are cases where Mandarin lacks a natural, pre-existing single term and a constructed compound, paraphrase, or heavily-anchored existing term is required. Each carries elevated risk precisely because no established Chinese Christian consensus term yet exists for some of these (unlike, e.g., 福音 or 恩典 in the baseline).
| Gap | Why No Ready Equivalent Exists | Adopted Solution | Residual Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tongues as real, unlearned foreign languages (Acts 2:4, 6, 8, 11) vs. tongues as ecstatic utterance (1 Cor 12–14, outside this curriculum but referenced by later readers) | Standard modern Chinese Christian vocabulary uses one word, 方言, for both phenomena, collapsing a distinction Luke’s narrative depends on. | Paraphrase 别国的话 (“the speech of other nations”), never 方言, for Acts 2 specifically. | Readers who have prior exposure to 方言 from other church contexts may mentally substitute it; Phase 2 must flag every Acts 2 tongues segment for native speaker review regardless of risk tier. |
| Benevolent, personal, non-coercive Spirit-indwelling (Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 9:17; 13:9, 52) | Chinese religious vocabulary’s closest lexical neighbor is spirit-possession by mediums (附身/附体), an involuntary trance phenomenon with a completely different theology of agency. | Retain compound 被圣灵充满 exactly, resisting any drift toward 附身/附体 vocabulary even in casual paraphrase. | The passive construction 被…充满 (“being filled by”) linguistically parallels 被…附身 (“being possessed by”) closely enough that teaching materials must supply an explicit contrast, not just a glossary entry. |
| Sociological “God-fearer” bridge category — Gentile sympathizer with Jewish monotheism, not a full convert (Acts 10:2, 22; 16:14) | No traditional Chinese religious category matches a partial-affiliation non-convert sympathizer; Chinese folk religious practice does not typically distinguish degrees of formal conversion in this way. | Paraphrase 敬畏神的人 with mandatory first-use gloss distinguishing from 归化犹太教的人 (full proselyte) and from Christian conversion. | Risk of collapse into “an ordinary Gentile believer” if the gloss is dropped in abridged lesson materials. |
| Voluntary, non-mandated, temporary community-of-goods sharing (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35) | Modern Mandarin’s available vocabulary for shared/common property is dominated by 20th-century collectivist political usage, which did not exist as a live semantic field when the CUV tradition’s core vocabulary was set. | Retain 凡物公用 with a mandatory anti-anachronism teaching note in every occurrence. | Even with the note, learners under ~50 may default to reading this through a modern political lens absent deliberate teacher intervention. |
| ”The Way” as an exclusive, technical self-designation for the Christian movement (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22) | 道 is already deeply claimed by Daoist metaphysics and by generic “a path/method” usage in modern Mandarin; there is no unclaimed synonym carrying the same “way of life and belief” register without importing a different problem (e.g. 教 imports “a religion/teaching” in a way that flattens ἡ ὁδός’s implicit exclusivity claim). | Retain 这道 but require a contextual anchor clause on every occurrence. | Highest-risk unresolved gap in the entire curriculum; see Ranked List, Item 1. |
| Nazirite-type voluntary OT ritual vow observed for cultural accommodation, not merit (Acts 18:18; 21:23-26) | Chinese vow-vocabulary (许愿) is overwhelmingly transactional/bargaining in register; there is no register-neutral Chinese word for “a voluntary religious pledge with no bearing on one’s standing before God.” | Retain 许愿 with mandatory clarifying note distinguishing Paul’s cultural accommodation from a temple bargain. | Even native Chinese-speaking believers may instinctively supply the bargaining frame; flag for native speaker review at both occurrences. |
3. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
Unlike the gaps in Section 2, these are neighborhoods where Mandarin has too many candidate terms, several of which are false friends already documented in the baseline or newly identified for Acts. Each requires an explicit “never use” fence, not just a preferred-term recommendation.
3.1 The 灵 (“spirit”) neighborhood — Critical
Crowded with: 圣灵 (correct) / 祖灵 (ancestral spirit, forbidden by baseline) / 灵媒, 附身, 附体 (mediumistic possession vocabulary) / 占卜的灵 (the demonic spirit of divination, Acts 16:16 — a different, condemned referent that must never be confused lexically with 圣灵). Fence: 圣灵 is never abbreviated to 灵 alone (per baseline); 占卜的灵 must always retain “占卜的” as a distinguishing modifier so it is never mistaken for any legitimate spiritual entity.
3.2 The 道 (“way/dao”) neighborhood — Critical
Crowded with: 这道 (Christian self-designation, correct) / 道家, 道教 (Daoism) / 道成肉身’s 道 (already fenced in baseline for a different, related reason) / generic 一条路/一种方法 (“a path/a method,” implying relativism). Fence: never allow 这道 to appear without a clause naming Jesus as Lord; never gloss 这道 as “the Chinese religious tradition of Daoism” in any teaching aid, even by way of contrast, without immediately clarifying no genealogical relationship exists.
3.3 The confession/penance neighborhood — High
Crowded with: 悔改 (correct, Spirit-enabled reorientation) / 忏悔 (Buddhist ritual confession reducing karmic consequence, forbidden). Fence: 忏悔 is never used for μετανοέω under any circumstance in any Acts document (2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20).
3.4 The merit/reward neighborhood — Critical
Crowded with: 恩典, 罪得赦免, 所赐的圣灵 (all correct, all unmerited) / 功德, 阴德 (forbidden Buddhist merit-accounting) / 造化 (forbidden). Fence: reinforced from baseline; Simon Magus’s attempted purchase of the Spirit’s gift (Acts 8:18-20) is the key narrative anchor making this fence pastorally, not just lexically, necessary.
3.5 The supernatural-power neighborhood — Critical
Crowded with: 神迹奇事, 神的大能 (correct, God’s own authenticating acts) / 邪术 (correct term for condemned sorcery) / 法力, 法术 (folk ritual-practitioner power, not automatically read as evil by Chinese readers) / 神通 (Buddhist/Daoist cultivation-attained supernatural ability, forbidden per baseline). Fence: 邪术 must never soften into neutral 魔术 (“magic trick/illusion”); teaching must state plainly that 法术-practitioners in the reader’s own cultural context fall under the same condemnation as Simon (Acts 8) and Elymas (Acts 13), not that the category is neutral.
3.6 The divination/prophecy neighborhood — High
Crowded with: 预言, 先知 (correct, God-inspired) / 占卜的灵 (correct term for the condemned spirit, Acts 16:16) / 占卜, 占卦 (temple/I Ching divination, forbidden per baseline) / 抽签 (used for both the apostles’ bounded, one-time lot-casting at Acts 1:26 AND for drawing a temple fortune-stick 求签). Fence: 抽签 at Acts 1:26 requires an explicit note that this is not a repeated or normative decision-method, contrasted with the Spirit’s direct guidance from Acts 13 onward, precisely because the same verb is used in the fortune-stick practice.
3.7 The ritual-purity neighborhood — High
Crowded with: 圣洁 (correct, moral/relational set-apartness) / 洁净 / 俗物 (correct for Acts 10’s ceremonial-food referent) / 清净 (Daoist/Buddhist ritual-meditative purity, forbidden per baseline) / 斋戒吃素积德 (folk vegetarian-fasting-for-merit practice). Fence: Acts 10’s vision must be taught with its real referent (the Jew-Gentile barrier) foregrounded, not treated as a general statement validating or invalidating any dietary practice.
3.8 The human-deification neighborhood — High
Crowded with: 神 (used correctly of the true God) / the recurring narrative pattern in Acts 14 (Zeus/Hermes at Lystra) and Acts 28 (Paul at Malta) where humans wrongly conclude a person is a god — 以为他是神. This sits close to the live Chinese cultural pattern of apotheosis of extraordinary humans (人成神: Guan Gong, Mazu, and others venerated as having become deities). Fence: Luke’s corrective narrative function (the apostles’ refusal of worship) must be preserved with full force in every occurrence; teaching aids must not draw a positive structural parallel to Chinese apotheosis without equally strong emphasis on the text’s rejection of the pattern.
3.9 The family/lineage religious-identity neighborhood — Medium-High
Crowded with: 你和你的全家 (correct, Acts 16:31, 34) / the broader Chinese cultural expectation that religious identity, like ancestor veneration, is transmitted and held at the family/lineage-unit level rather than individually. Fence: household salvation must always be taught alongside the narrative detail that each household member individually believed; never imply that the head-of-household’s faith automatically confers salvation on dependents, echoing the baseline’s caution against 过继-style instrumental family religious arrangements.
3.10 The political-economic neighborhood — High
Crowded with: 凡物公用 (correct, voluntary Spirit-motivated sharing) / 公有 (state/public ownership) / other 20th-century Chinese collectivization vocabulary not directly quoted here but culturally adjacent. Fence: see Section 2 above; every occurrence requires the anti-anachronism note without exception.
4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Item | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Pentecost | Established calque/paraphrase (五旬节, “fifty-day festival”), not transliteration | Already a fixed CUV-tradition term; transliterating “Pentēkostē” phonetically would sever the Feast-of-Weeks/Shavuot background entirely and gain nothing. Paraphrase retained, but always paired with explicit OT harvest-feast teaching. |
| Zeus / Hermes | Transliteration (丢斯 / 希耳米) | These are specific named pagan deities from a foreign pantheon; paraphrasing as generic “gods” would erase the historical specificity Luke’s narrative requires and risks accidental substitution with a Chinese deity name. Transliteration signals “this is a foreign, historically specific figure,” which is the correct signal to send. |
| Artemis | Transliteration (亚底米) | Same rationale as Zeus/Hermes; the term must read as a foreign proper noun, not a generic “goddess” title that could be filled in with a local deity by the reader’s imagination. |
| Areopagus | Transliteration (亚略巴古) | Proper geographic/institutional noun; no theological content to paraphrase, low risk either way, transliteration is standard practice for place names throughout the CUV tradition. |
| The Way (ἡ ὁδός) | Paraphrase using an existing character (这道), NOT transliteration | Transliterating “hodos” phonetically would produce an opaque, meaningless string with zero mnemonic value for the reader and would forfeit the term’s function as an evocative self-designation. The paraphrase route is correct despite its collision risk (Section 3.2); the collision must be managed by contextual anchoring, not avoided by an artificial transliteration that would strip the term of meaning entirely. |
| Nazirite vow | Partial transliteration + paraphrase (拿细耳人的愿) | “Nazirite” itself is transliterated (拿细耳人) since no native Chinese equivalent institution exists, while “vow” is paraphrased using existing vocabulary (愿) with mandatory clarifying teaching (Section 2). |
| Sanhedrin | Functional paraphrase (公会), not transliteration | A transliteration (“Sanhedrin” rendered phonetically) would be opaque to readers with no prior exposure; the functional paraphrase is intelligible immediately but requires the disambiguating note in Section 1 to prevent confusion with the modern secular “trade guild” sense of 公会. |
| Christian (Χριστιανός) | Morphological construction on existing transliteration (基督徒 = 基督 “Christ” + 徒 “follower/disciple”), not phonetic transliteration of “Christianos” | Fully naturalized in modern Chinese Christian usage; no ambiguity, low risk, matches baseline pattern for 使徒 (“apostle,” also built on 徒). |
| Abba (not present in Acts core text but referenced in baseline for cross-document consistency) | N/A for Acts — confirmed absent from Acts 1-28 text; no decision required | Included here only to note explicitly that this baseline transliteration decision is reviewed and found not applicable to Acts, per full-book coverage mandate. |
General principle governing future transliteration decisions in Acts: transliterate proper nouns naming foreign, non-Christian religious/cultural entities (deities, place names, institutional names with no functional Chinese equivalent) so that the foreignness itself is preserved as a signal; paraphrase using existing vocabulary for theological concepts and titles that must communicate meaning directly to the reader, managing any resulting semantic collision through mandatory contextual anchoring rather than through opaque phonetic transliteration.
5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Acts
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision risk × frequency of occurrence), for Phase 2 review-routing priority.
| Rank | Term/Phrase | Doctrine | Nature of Ambiguity | Risk Tier | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 这道 (the Way) | Conversion of Paul | Shares its head character with Daoism (道教/道家) and with generic “one path among many” relativist readings; occurs 5+ times as the movement’s own self-designation. | Critical | Mandatory anchoring clause naming Jesus as Lord at every occurrence; flag every instance for theologian review regardless of surrounding context. |
| 2 | 被圣灵充满 (filled with the Holy Spirit) | Holy Spirit and Pentecost | Passive construction linguistically parallel to mediumistic spirit-possession (被…附身); risk of readers assimilating Pentecost to a trance-possession phenomenon. | Critical | Explicit possession-vs-indwelling contrast note at every occurrence; theologian review mandatory. |
| 3 | 所赐的圣灵 / 恩典 in Simon Magus narrative | Apostolic Authority and Miracles / Gospel to Jews and Gentiles | The Spirit’s gift as purchasable power (Acts 8:18-20) directly stages the grace-vs-merit collision at its most concrete and narratively memorable. | Critical | Theologian review; cross-reference baseline’s grace entry explicitly in teaching notes. |
| 4 | 邪术 vs 神迹奇事/神的大能 | Apostolic Authority and Miracles | Chinese folk religion’s accepted category of ritual-practitioner power (法术) may not register to readers as morally condemned, unlike the text’s own clear condemnation. | Critical | Never soften 邪术 to 魔术; explicit moral framing required in every occurrence (Ch. 8, 13, 19). |
| 5 | 别国的话 vs 方言 (tongues) | Holy Spirit and Pentecost | Standard modern Chinese Christian vocabulary (方言) collapses a distinction (real foreign language vs. ecstatic utterance) the Acts 2 narrative depends on. | High | Never substitute 方言 for Acts 2; flag for native speaker review even though baseline tier is High, not Critical, given the acute substitution risk. |
| 6 | 风 (wind of the Spirit) | Holy Spirit and Pentecost | Collides with 气 (forbidden qi-energy term) and with fengshui (风水) cosmology. | High | Explicit sign-vs-substance note; wind accompanies, is not identical to, the Spirit. |
| 7 | 悔改 vs 忏悔 (repent) | Repentance and Baptism | 忏悔’s Buddhist ritual-confession/karma-reduction connotation is a near-neighbor false friend for a term occurring at the heart of nearly every apostolic sermon. | High | Absolute prohibition on 忏悔 in any Acts document; automated validation check required in Phase 2. |
| 8 | 俗物/洁净 (clean/unclean) | Gospel to Jews and Gentiles | Collides with ongoing Chinese folk dietary-purity/merit practice (vegetarian fasting for merit); real subject (Jew-Gentile barrier) risks being missed in favor of a generic dietary reading. | High | Explicit symbolic-referent note at every occurrence (Ch. 10, 11, 15). |
| 9 | 凡物公用 (held all things in common) | The Church as Community | Collides with 20th-century Chinese political-economic vocabulary (公有, collectivization) — the single most historically loaded collision in this curriculum outside explicit doctrinal vocabulary. | High | Mandatory anti-anachronism note at every occurrence (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35); native speaker review at minimum, theologian review recommended given the political sensitivity. |
| 10 | 以为他是神 (deification of men) | Apostolic Authority and Miracles / Persecution and Bold Witness | Strong structural parallel to Chinese apotheosis of extraordinary humans (人成神: Guan Gong, Mazu); Luke’s corrective intent could be lost if the parallel is drawn without equal emphasis on the text’s rejection of it. | High | Preserve the apostles’/Paul’s explicit refusal of worship in full force at every occurrence (Ch. 14, 28). |
| 11 | 许愿 (vow) | Justification apart from the Law | Chinese folk-religious register for vow-making is overwhelmingly transactional/bargaining; Paul’s cultural-accommodation vow could be misread as leverage for divine favor, undermining justification-by-faith-alone teaching in the very same document. | High | Explicit “not a bargain, no bearing on his justification” note at both occurrences (18:18; 21:23-26); theologian review given proximity to justification doctrine. |
| 12 | 你和你的全家 (household salvation) | Repentance and Baptism / Church as Community | Risk of assimilation to the Chinese cultural pattern of family/lineage-unit religious identity, implying collective salvation apart from individual faith. | Medium-High | Explicit individual-belief clarifying note at Acts 16:31, 34; native speaker review. |
| 13 | 末后的日子 (last days) | Fulfillment of Prophecy / Holy Spirit and Pentecost | Chinese apocalyptic/millenarian new religious movements have exploited “end of the age” vocabulary for date-setting and manipulation. | High | Anchor as an already-inaugurated era beginning at Pentecost, not a future countdown; theologian review. |
| 14 | 抽签 (casting lots) | Church as Community / Apostolic Authority | Same verb used for temple fortune-stick divination (求签); risk of the apostles’ one-time bounded decision being read as an endorsement of divinatory decision-making generally. | Medium | Explicit “not repeated, not normative” note at Acts 1:26, contrasted with the Spirit’s direct guidance from Acts 13 onward. |
| 15 | 直到地极 (to the end of the earth) | The Great Commission Fulfilled | Risk of echoing 天下 (the classical unified political-dominion ideal), already forbidden under the baseline’s kingdom_of_God entry. | Medium | Frame consistently as message-spread, never territorial rule; consistency check against baseline’s kingdom_of_God fencing. |
6. Handoff Notes for Phase 2
- Items ranked 1–4 above are Critical tier and require mandatory theologian review on every occurrence in every Phase 2 document, with no exceptions for otherwise low-context segments.
- Items ranked 5–11 are High tier and require, at minimum, native speaker review; theologian review is recommended wherever the segment also touches a Critical-tier baseline doctrine (e.g., grace, justification, deity/sonship of Christ) in the same passage.
- The 这道/道 fencing (Rank 1) and the 被圣灵充满/spirit-possession fencing (Rank 2) should be treated as a linked pair in reviewer training materials, since both concern the risk of Acts’ distinctly personal, relational categories being absorbed into impersonal or trance-based Chinese religious categories — the same underlying collision pattern the baseline already documents for 天/天意/天命.
- No new Critical-risk term identified in this analysis lacks an existing baseline analog pattern; all fencing strategies here are extensions of, not departures from, the baseline’s established methodology (name the false-friend explicitly, require a contrastive teaching note, never allow silent substitution).
- This document supersedes no baseline entry; where an Acts term overlaps with a baseline entry (e.g., 义, 义 in justification contexts; 圣灵; 神的大能), the baseline’s forbidden-alternatives list and risk tier remain governing without modification.
This analysis is drawn from full-book review of Acts 1–28; chapters not separately itemized in Sections 1–5 (e.g., portions of Acts 12, 18, 20–23, 25, 27 not otherwise flagged) were reviewed and found to introduce no new load-bearing vocabulary beyond what is already captured in 08_core_glossary.md and this document.