Executive Summary — Hebrews Language Package (English → Marathi)

TRI Phase 1, Step 11

Curriculum: Hebrews 1–13 · Core passage: Hebrews 9:11–28 · Destination: Marathi (Devanagari)

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Why it matters

Hebrews brings the highest-stakes translation vocabulary yet assigned to this Language Package. Its subject matter — priesthood, blood sacrifice, the Holy of Holies, covenant, propitiation — sits far closer to living Marathi ritual practice (Vedic/Hindu यज्ञ, Hindu प्रायश्चित्त self-penance, Warkari पिलgrimage) than Romans’ more forensic-legal vocabulary did. Getting this wrong doesn’t just blur a doctrine — it risks having Marathi readers hear Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice as one more instance of a familiar, repeatable ritual category the book explicitly says he ended.

Key findings

• 25 doctrines documented, spanning all 13 chapters with zero gaps: 7 Critical, 14 High, 3 Medium, 1 Low risk. 21 of 25 require mandatory human theologian review.
• 68 Critical/High-risk terms now enforced in translation memory (41 new to Hebrews, 27 inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline) — 10 Critical + 31 High new terms, plus 12 Critical + 15 High inherited terms.
• The core passage, Hebrews 9:11–28, converges six doctrines (four Critical) in a single 18-verse unit — every clause is flagged for mandatory theologian review with no exceptions.
• Vocabulary exists for every concept; no genuinely missing terms were found. The battle is almost entirely one of fencing against prestigious, familiar competing vocabulary — chiefly यज्ञ (Vedic sacrifice), प्रायश्चित्त (self-performed Hindu penance), and यात्रेकरू (Warkari pilgrim).

Risks

• सacrifice/यज्ञ collision (highest-stakes single fence in the package): यज्ञ is a Marathi speaker’s default word for “sacrifice” and is prestigious, not derogatory — translator drift is a recurring, not one-time, risk across six chapters (5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13).
• Propitiation subject-reversal: प्रायश्चित्त करणे’s normal Marathi grammar pulls toward “the guilty party performs penance.” Hebrews requires the reverse — Christ performing it for others — a sentence-level check, not a word-level one.
• Mercy seat / दयासन appeasement misreading: risks sounding like humans ritually pacifying an angry deity (folk navas/shanti pattern) rather than God’s own gracious provision.
• Levitical priesthood argument (ch. 7) and caste adjacency: the hereditary-priesthood-superseded argument must stay narrowly OT-scoped, or it risks unintended overlap with caste-critique discourse Ambedkarite Buddhist-background readers have already, and rightly, settled for themselves.
• Apostasy warnings (five passages) and karma-ledger misreading: Hebrews’ severest material must retain full pastoral force while never sounding like an accumulating karmic tally of offenses.
• Strangers/pilgrims (11:13) false friend: यात्रेकरू would import the Warkari wari’s self-earned merit-journey framework into a doctrine about God-given, circumstance-imposed sojourner identity.

Opportunities

• Marathi already has adequate, workable vocabulary for every Hebrews doctrine — no coinage crisis, unlike some target languages facing this curriculum.
• The baseline Romans package’s fencing discipline (Critical forbidden-substitution lists, doctrine-risk routing, dual Warkari/Navayana Buddhist awareness) transfers directly, requiring extension rather than redesign.
• Hebrews’ “access to God” and “rest” doctrines offer a strong constructive bridge for both target communities: an invitation into relational nearness and settled rest that neither Warkari devotional striving nor Buddhist self-cultivation currently offers on the same terms.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json (version 2) and analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md before any Phase 2 Hebrews segment work begins; treat the Hebrews-specific forbidden-substitution list as equally non-negotiable as the inherited Romans list.
2. Route the entirety of Hebrews 9:11–28 to human theologian review as a single non-severable block; do not permit automated or native-speaker-only approval for any clause in this passage.
3. Fix single consistent renderings now (जवळ येणे for “draw near,” अढळ याजकपद for “permanent priesthood”) to prevent drift across the five and two respective widely-separated occurrences.
4. Brief all human theologian reviewers specifically on the propitiation subject-check and the Levitical-priesthood caste-adjacency scope-check before review begins, since both are sentence-level and context-level judgments that a term-matching check alone will not catch.
5. Carry forward the Romans baseline’s dual-tradition discipline (Warkari bhakti + Navayana Buddhist awareness) into every Hebrews lesson note, since this curriculum’s ritual vocabulary sits closer to both traditions’ living practice than Romans’ did.