Executive Summary: Ephesians → Marathi Translation Requirements

Why it matters

Ephesians stages the sharpest, most concentrated grace-versus-works argument in the New Testament (2:8-10) directly inside a Marathi-speaking mission field shaped by two live, distinct religious frameworks: Warkari bhakti devotion (which has its own warm but karma-shaped grace vocabulary) and Navayana Ambedkarite Buddhism (which explicitly and painfully renounced the caste-Hindu doctrine that birth status reflects past-life karma). Get “grace,” “works,” “children of wrath,” and “predestination” wrong here, and the curriculum’s core passage — the very anchor Bible study leaders will teach first — either collapses into a merit economy or reopens a wound the 1956 Ambedkarite conversion was founded to close. This Language Package extends the proven Romans baseline so Phase 2 translation can proceed with the same discipline that already protects तारण, नीतिमत्त्व, and देहधारण.

Key findings

• 113 enforced glossary terms now govern Ephesians translation: 33 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 80 newly identified across all six chapters.
• Term-level risk: 15 Critical-risk terms and 59 High-risk terms (74 combined) require mandatory human theologian review on every occurrence — nearly two-thirds of the entire glossary.
• Doctrine-level risk: of 24 Ephesians-specific/intensified doctrines, 5 are Critical and 16 are High (21 total requiring theologian review), with 3 requiring native speaker review and none automated-only — a materially heavier review burden than Romans’ comparable profile.
• One deliberate, narrow exception was required to the Romans baseline: “church ≠ मंदिर” is suspended only for the fixed phrase पवित्र मंदिर at Ephesians 2:21, where Paul intentionally invokes the OT Jerusalem Temple.
• Full six-chapter coverage confirmed: every chapter of Ephesians contributes load-bearing vocabulary; none is silently omitted.

Risks

• ἔργα (“works”) → कर्म is the single highest-stakes lexical trap in the whole curriculum: rendering Ephesians 2:9-10’s “works” with the technical Hindu/Buddhist karma-doctrine term would import exactly the merit-based framework Paul excludes. Mitigated by a hard forbidden-substitution rule (कामे only).
• “By nature children of wrath” (2:3) risks being heard as an echo of the caste-Hindu birth-karma doctrine Ambedkarite communities explicitly rejected — the highest social/pastoral sensitivity in the letter.
• Household codes (5:21-33; 6:5-9) risk being taught or back-translated as unqualified patriarchal hierarchy or caste-servitude endorsement if the mutual-submission frame (5:21), the husband’s sacrificial-love obligation (5:25), and the slaves/masters translator note (6:9’s impartiality climax) are ever detached from the surrounding instruction.
• Spiritual warfare and cosmic powers (2:2; 6:10-18) risk assimilation into Maharashtra folk-religious frameworks (village spirits, black-magic counter-ritual, bhagat/mantrik mediation) if the armor-of-God metaphor is not consistently anchored to truth, righteousness, gospel, faith, salvation, Scripture, and prayer.
• Predestination and election language (1:4-5, 1:11) risk sliding toward fate/karma vocabulary (नशीब, दैव, कर्मफळ) absent disciplined enforcement, given Marathi’s lack of a native term for “personal, loving prior determination.”

Opportunities

• “Dividing wall of hostility” and “one new humanity” (2:11-22) have unusually strong positive real-world resonance in Maharashtra, where the breaking of caste-linked social barriers is recent living memory (the 1956 Ambedkarite mass conversion) — this curriculum can teach these passages with full, undiluted force rather than softening them.
• The sevenfold unity formula (4:4-6), once locked as a fixed, memorized phrase, gives the curriculum a second high-value consistency anchor alongside Romans 8:28 and 10:9-10, reinforcing cross-document theological coherence for learners moving between studies.
• A disciplined redemption/salvation distinction (उद्धार/खंडणी vs. तारण) lets the curriculum teach substitutionary payment and resulting deliverance as two connected but distinct truths, closing a gap the Romans baseline did not need to address as explicitly.

Recommended actions

1. Load and enforce assets/translation_memory.json (this document’s Step 9 output) and the merged bible_term_registry.json before any Phase 2 Ephesians segment is processed.
2. Route every segment touching the 5 Critical doctrines (Salvation by Grace through Faith, Election and Predestination in Christ, The Church as God’s Temple and Dwelling Place, Redemption through Christ’s Blood, Grace Contrasted with Works) to mandatory human theologian review with no exceptions.
3. Attach the standing translator notes specified in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md at Ephesians 2:3, 2:9-10, 2:21, 5:21-33, 6:5-9, 6:10-18, and 6:12 before any segment in those ranges is marked approved.
4. Lock the Ephesians 2:8-10 core-passage wording and the 4:4-6 sevenfold unity formula as verbatim-fixed strings before Phase 2 batch processing begins, per the same consistency discipline already applied to Romans 8:28 and 10:9-10.
5. Brief all human theologian reviewers on the comparative-theology findings (04_comparative_theology.md) specific to Warkari bhakti and Navayana Buddhism before review begins, given how directly Ephesians 2 and 6 intersect both frameworks.