Executive Summary: 1 Corinthians — English → Marathi Translation Requirements

Why it matters

1 Corinthians is being added to an existing Marathi Bible-translation Language Package (Romans, Matthew). This letter pushes into theological territory the baseline never had to cover — resurrection appearances as eyewitness testimony, idol meat and idolatry as live ethical questions, love as a technical term distinct from devotion, and caste-resonant unity-versus-faction language — against a Marathi religious landscape shaped by two distinct traditions: Warkari bhakti devotion and Navayana (Ambedkarite) Buddhism. Getting this wrong risks either quietly re-importing a rejected caste-karma framework or flattening the letter’s most distinctive doctrines into devotional vocabulary that already means something else.

Key findings

• 108 glossary terms are now locked in assets/translation_memory.json: 39 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 69 newly introduced by this letter.
• 18 terms are Critical risk (absolute enforcement, zero deviation) and 41 terms are High risk — 59 of 108 terms (55%) require theologian-level vigilance, concentrated in chs. 1-3 (wisdom/cross), 8 & 10 (idol meat/idolatry/demons), 11-12 (headship, Lord’s Supper, body of Christ), 13 (love), and 15 (resurrection, the core passage).
• 30 doctrines are tracked in assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json: 10 Critical, 16 High, 3 Medium, 1 Low. 25 of these 30 doctrines require mandatory human theologian review; 4 require native speaker review; 1 is automated-only.
• Three newly identified Critical-risk collision zones not present in the Romans baseline: (1) दर्शन (“darshan”) as a forbidden false-friend for resurrection appearances (15:5-8), (2) नैवेद्य/प्रसाद as forbidden false-friends for idol meat (8, 10), (3) प्रेम/भक्ति as forbidden false-friends for ἀγάπη love (ch. 13).
• The core passage, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, alone activates 10 of the 30 registry doctrines, 9 of them Critical or High tier — the single densest doctrinal unit in the curriculum.

Risks

• ज्ञान (wisdom/knowledge) has no clean Marathi equivalent split and is identical to the word for Gita jñāna-mārga and Buddhist prajñā — both self-attained insight, the opposite of Paul’s disclosed, cross-centered wisdom. This recurs in chs. 1-3, 8, 12-13 and cannot be fixed lexically, only through mandatory contrastive teaching notes.
• अविनाशी (imperishable, 15:42-54) parallels Hindu ātman-eternality; without explicit framing, readers could hear “the body is transformed and made imperishable” as “an eternal soul escapes a discarded body” — inverting Paul’s actual argument.
• फूट (division) and ख्रिस्ताचे शरीर (body of Christ) touch the single most politically live sensitivity in this language: caste and the 1956 Ambedkarite Buddhist conversion. Both must be handled with the specific historical weight already documented in analysis/04_comparative_theology.md.
• 11:3-16 (headship) and 14:34-35 (women keep silent) sit inside a live, unresolved complementarian/egalitarian interpretive debate that translation choice cannot and must not pre-resolve; both require mandatory linked theologian review.
• मंदिर, मूर्ती, भूत are the exact everyday vocabulary Hindu neighbors use for their own devotional practice — not slurs or neologisms — meaning under-framed usage risks quiet syncretism rather than obvious mistranslation.

Opportunities

• 1 Corinthians 15 gives this curriculum an unusually strong platform to teach bodily resurrection positively for both Hindu- and Buddhist-background readers, rather than merely rejecting पुनर्जन्म/पुनर्भव — building the doctrine up rather than only fencing it.
• 12:22-27’s “less honorable members receive greater honor” is a rare case where the biblical text’s own argument directly and explicitly dismantles caste-hierarchy logic; this can be taught as an affirmation rather than only a correction, resonating with both Warkari-Hindu and Ambedkarite Buddhist readers’ lived experience.
• The letter’s sustained wisdom/foolishness argument (chs. 1-3) offers a natural teaching bridge for jñāna-mārga- and prajñā-literate readers: not a rejection of their category of “wisdom” as such, but a claim about where true wisdom is found.

Recommended actions

1. Lock assets/translation_memory.json (108 terms) and assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json (30 doctrines) as the enforced Phase 2 baseline before any segment translation begins.
2. Route all 25 theologian-review doctrines — and especially the 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 core passage, treated as a single review unit — through mandatory human theologian sign-off before approval.
3. Fix प्रीती as the sole rendering of ἀγάπη everywhere in this curriculum, with zero tolerance for drift to प्रेम or भक्ति, given its role as ch. 13’s definitional anchor.
4. Enforce the three newly identified forbidden substitutions (दर्शन, नैवेद्य/प्रसाद, प्रेम/भक्ति) at the automated validation layer, not only through reviewer training.
5. Carry the 11:3-16 / 14:34-35 pairing forward as a single linked review item in Phase 2 Step 17, per the doctrine registry’s explicit instruction not to resolve their tension unilaterally.