Linguistic Gap Analysis — Titus | English → Marathi

PRD Phase 1 Step 8

This analysis extends the baseline Romans linguistic-gap findings to the Titus curriculum. It does not repeat baseline entries already resolved (grace, salvation, righteousness, justification, God, Jesus, Christ, Holy Spirit, faith, law, sanctification, election, peace, apostle) except where Titus introduces a new sense-collision not covered by the baseline’s notes. Its purpose is to identify (a) where Marathi has no natural equivalent and a term must be built or borrowed, and (b) where Marathi has too many neighboring equivalents, each already claimed by a rival devotional or philosophical system, requiring semantic “fencing” so the term cannot drift toward Warkari bhakti, Vaishnav avatar theology, or Navayana Buddhist categories.

Scope covers the full letter (Titus 1:1–3:15), anchored on the core passage 2:11–3:8, per the seven assigned doctrines: Grace That Trains for Godly Living; Qualifications for Elders; Sound Doctrine and Good Works; Salvation by Grace not Works; Regeneration by the Holy Spirit; Submission to Authority; Avoiding Divisive Controversies.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each assigned doctrine: the concept’s available Marathi terms, their weaknesses, and the recommended strategy (reuse baseline / coin new / paraphrase / fence).

1.1 Grace That Trains for Godly Living (Titus 2:11-12)

Element	Available Marathi Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
Grace (agent)	कृपा (baseline)	Warkari devotional कृपा (Vitthal’s favor upon a devotee) already occupies this exact word; readers may hear “grace” as one more instance of guru/deity favor granted in response to devotion, rather than the unearned, prior, Christ-specific gift Titus describes.	Reuse कृपा (mandatory, per baseline) but require a co-occurring finite/participial verb structure (कृपा…शिकवते, “grace… teaches/trains”) so grace is unmistakably the grammatical subject acting upon the believer, not a reward received for devotion.
Trains/disciplines (παιδεύω)	शिस्त लावणे (to impose discipline), प्रशिक्षण देणे (to give training), शिकवणे (to teach)	शिस्त लावणे alone can sound punitive/parental-corrective (like a stern taskmaster) rather than formative; प्रशिक्षण देणे risks sounding like a skills-based course; both, if the sentence’s grammatical subject is allowed to drift to “we,” collapse into self-discipline (स्वयं-शिस्त), which is functionally identical to the Eightfold Path’s self-cultivation ethic — the exact thing this doctrine displaces.	Require grace (कृपा) to remain the explicit subject in every rendering: “कृपा आपल्याला … शिकवते/शिस्त लावते.” Never render as a reflexive/middle construction implying the believer disciplines themselves. Flag any segment where the subject becomes ambiguous for theologian review.
Godly living outcome	संयमी (self-controlled), नीतिमान (righteous/upright), सुभक्तीने (in godliness)	These outcome-adjectives, taken alone, read as generic virtue vocabulary indistinguishable from Hindu dharmic self-cultivation or Buddhist sīla (moral precepts) — the same words could describe an ideal Warkari devotee or a lay Buddhist practitioner.	Keep outcome vocabulary (संयमी, नीतिमानपणे, सुभक्तीने) but always subordinate it grammatically to the trained-by-grace clause within the same sentence/verse unit, never let it stand as a free-floating virtue list detached from its grace-source.

1.2 Qualifications for Elders (Titus 1:5-9)

Element	Available Marathi Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
Elder / Overseer	वडील, अध्यक्ष, पर्यवेक्षक	वडील is the ordinary word for “father”/family senior and for village-council (panchayat-style) elder — risk of importing a caste-panchayat or joint-family authority image rather than a congregational teaching-and-shepherding office. अध्यक्ष reads institutionally (like “chairman/president” of a society), risking a purely administrative, non-pastoral image.	Consistent qualifying phrase required throughout: मंडळीतील वडील (“elder of the congregation”) for πρεσβύτερος, and मंडळीचा अध्यक्ष/पर्यवेक्षक for ἐπίσκοπος, always paired with a translator note that in Titus 1 these are the same office under two names, not two ranks. Never transliterate बिशप (imports post-NT institutional hierarchy).
Household/character qualifications (1:6-8)	Consolidated low/medium-risk virtue-vice list (see core glossary §6)	Individually low risk, but cumulatively this is Titus’s most extensive character list; inconsistent word choice across lessons would fragment the “measuring rod” effect the letter builds toward 1:16 and 3:8’s चांगली कामे theme.	Lock every item in translation memory verbatim (see §3 below) so the same Marathi word recurs across all elder-qualification lessons; do not allow lesson-writers to substitute synonyms for variety.
”Husband of one wife” (1:6)	एका पत्नीचा पती	Could be read narrowly as a marital-status checkbox (i.e., merely “currently married to one woman”) rather than a character trait of sexual/marital faithfulness.	Pair with a brief explanatory gloss in teaching material: marital faithfulness, not merely present marital status — this is a character qualification alongside निर्दोष (blameless), not a bureaucratic eligibility filter.

1.3 Sound Doctrine and Good Works (Titus 1:9,13; 2:1-10; 3:8,14)

Element	Available Marathi Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
Sound doctrine (ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία)	सुदृढ शिकवण, निरोगी शिकवण	निरोगी (“healthy,” bodily-health register) sounds like a calque and reads oddly applied to teaching; सुदृढ (“robust, sound”) is the better-established devotional-register choice but still needs distinguishing from two crowded neighbors: Warkari abhang poetry (treasured teaching, not claimed as God’s own word) and Ambedkar’s reinterpreted “Dhamma” writings (authoritative teaching literature with a rival claim to moral truth).	Adopt सुदृढ शिकवण per core glossary. Require a standing translator/teaching note wherever this term first occurs in each lesson series: this designates teaching that is God-breathed and life-producing, not simply “good,” “wise,” or “traditional” teaching among options.
Good works (καλὰ/ἀγαθὰ ἔργα)	चांगली कामे, सत्कर्म, पुण्यकर्म	सत्कर्म and पुण्यकर्म both carry the specific sense of karma-merit accumulation (पुण्य = merit that improves one’s karmic account/future rebirth) — precisely the works-based framework Titus 3:5 explicitly excludes as salvation’s ground. Using either would create direct doctrinal contradiction within the same letter.	चांगली कामे is mandatory (already in registry as Critical). No lesson may substitute सत्कर्म/पुण्यकर्म even as a “more natural-sounding” stylistic variant — flag any such substitution automatically at validation.
Disqualified / denies by works (1:16)	अपात्र; कृतीने नाकारतात	Low ambiguity individually, but risk of being read as a separate “merit failure” judgment rather than the same चांगली कामे standard applied negatively.	Cross-reference explicitly in teaching notes: 1:16 states the negative mirror of 2:14/3:8/3:14’s positive fruit-standard — same standard, not a second criterion.

1.4 Salvation by Grace not Works (Titus 3:4-7)

Element	Available Marathi Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
”Not because of works done by us in righteousness”	आपण स्वतः केलेली नीतिमत्त्वाची कामे	Marathi’s natural tendency toward compact, harmonizing translation could soften this into a phrase that merely de-emphasizes works rather than categorically excludes them (e.g., collapsing to “not only by our works,” a common devotional-harmonizing move in bhakti-influenced preaching that treats grace and effort as complementary).	Require the negative particle (नाही/नव्हे) to stand emphatically and untouched; forbid any softening conjunction (“only,” “merely,” “mainly”) that is not in the source. Mandatory theologian review per baseline escalation rule (grace-vs-works segments).
Mercy (ἔλεος)	दया, करुणा	करुणा is the specific technical term for the cultivated Buddhist virtue of compassion (one of the four brahmavihara), something a practitioner develops through discipline; if used for God’s ἔλεος, it would recast God’s mercy as his own attained virtue rather than his freely-initiating disposition toward the helpless — inverting the entire point of 3:5.	दया is mandatory; करुणा is fenced off entirely for this doctrinal slot (acceptable only in unrelated, non-technical contexts describing ordinary human kindness, never as a substitute for God’s saving ἔλεος).
Kindness/love for mankind (3:4)	उपकारीपणा/दयाळूपणा (kindness); मानवप्रेम (philanthropia)	मानवप्रेम risks being read through the lens of a social-reform/humanitarian-movement register (a live and honored category in Maharashtra’s public discourse, e.g. Ambedkarite social-uplift language) — implying God’s “love for mankind” is essentially a philanthropic project comparable to human uplift movements.	Retain मानवप्रेम but always anchor it grammatically as God’s own attribute “revealed” (प्रकट झाले) historically in Christ — never let it stand as a free-floating ethical ideal that could be pursued independent of that specific historical disclosure.

1.5 Regeneration by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5-6)

Element	Available Marathi Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
Regeneration (παλιγγενεσία)	नवजन्म (coined per core glossary), पुनर्जन्म, पुनर्भव	पुनर्जन्म is the single most theologically dangerous available near-synonym in this entire letter: it is the standard Marathi word for Hindu cyclical rebirth across lifetimes governed by karma — a live, load-bearing doctrine for the majority Hindu population and the doctrine Ambedkarite Buddhist conversion explicitly rejected in its Hindu form. पुनर्भव is the Buddhist Abhidharma-technical term for the impersonal arising of a new aggregate-configuration, explicitly denying a continuous self — the opposite of what regeneration affirms.	नवजन्म is mandatory and must never be abbreviated informally to जन्म alone (which could imply the rebirth debate is simply being sidestepped rather than positively resolved). Mandatory translator note on every occurrence explaining: one-time, Spirit-wrought new spiritual origin, within a continuous personal identity, in this one life — not a cycle, not a discontinuous re-arising.
Washing (λουτρόν)	स्नान, आंघोळ, स्नानविधी	स्नान/स्नानविधी risk activation of Hindu ritual-bathing-for-merit associations (tirtha-yatra bathing, e.g. at Nashik’s Kumbh Mela, believed to cleanse karmic impurity) — a repeatable, merit-earning rite, exactly opposite Titus 3:5’s one-time, already-accomplished reality.	Use स्नान but require an accompanying teaching note in every lesson: this washing is the outward sign of a completed inward reality (regeneration), not a repeatable purificatory rite performed to earn merit.
Renewal (ἀνακαίνωσις)	नूतनीकरण, नवीनीकरण	नवीनीकरण can sound bureaucratic (e.g., “license renewal”) in contemporary usage.	नूतनीकरण preferred (per core glossary) for its more literary/devotional register; keep grammatically distinct from नवजन्म (one-time) as the Spirit’s ongoing work — teach the two terms as a deliberate pair, not synonyms.
Poured out (ἐκχέω)	ओतणे, ओतले जाणे	Low risk; standard verb. Some risk of under-translating the abundance/generosity nuance if rendered too flatly (e.g., simply “given”).	ओतणे (poured), retaining the liquid-abundance image; avoid the flatter दिले (given), which loses the Pentecost-echoing generosity.

1.6 Submission to Authority (Titus 2:5,9; 3:1)

Element	Available Marathi Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
Submission (ὑποτάσσω)	अधीन राहणे, अधीनता, दुय्यम असणे	दुय्यम असणे (“being secondary/subordinate”) risks sounding ontological — as if the submitting party is of lesser worth or nature — rather than describing a voluntary, role-based ordering. This risk is acute given caste hierarchy’s own vocabulary of permanent, birth-fixed subordination, which Ambedkarite conversion explicitly rejected.	अधीन राहणे/अधीनता mandatory; दुय्यम असणे fenced off entirely. Every occurrence across the three domains (wives 2:5, slaves 2:9, civil rulers 3:1) must be taught with an explicit note: this is a voluntary, gospel-motivated posture chosen in specific relational contexts, never a statement of unequal worth, birth-status, or unchangeable social destiny.
Civil rulers/authorities (ἀρχαὶ καὶ ἐξουσίαι)	अधिकारी आणि सत्ताधीश, राज्यकर्ते	राज्यकर्ते (“rulers of the realm”) can sound narrowly monarchical/political in a way that undersells the passage’s broader “any governing authority” scope for a contemporary parliamentary-democracy readership.	अधिकारी आणि सत्ताधीश preferred as more inclusive of the modern administrative-and-political spectrum; consistent with baseline’s Romans 13 authority-passage handling. Route for native-speaker (not merely automated) review given political sensitivity.
Household slave / master (δοῦλος/δεσπότης, 2:9)	दास/गुलाम; धनी	Direct historical mapping onto Maharashtra’s own caste-based labor and servitude history (a painful, living memory for Dalit and Ambedkarite Buddhist communities) risks the text being read as implicit endorsement of caste servitude structures, rather than as first-century household-code instruction addressed to a now-obsolete social institution.	Mandatory teaching/translator note distinguishing the Greco-Roman household-slavery context from India’s caste-based servitude systems; the passage instructs conduct within a now-abolished social institution, and must never be applied by extension to endorse caste-based labor hierarchy today.

1.7 Avoiding Divisive Controversies (Titus 3:9-11)

Element	Available Marathi Terms	Weaknesses	Recommended Strategy
Foolish controversies (μωραὶ ζητήσεις)	मूर्ख वाद-विवाद, निरर्थक वाद	निरर्थक वाद (“meaningless disputes”) is slightly softer than the source’s sharper μωρός (“foolish”), and may under-convey Paul’s evaluative force.	मूर्ख वाद-विवाद preferred to retain the source’s direct evaluative bluntness; contrast explicitly with सुदृढ शिकवण in teaching material.
Divisive/factious person (αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος)	फूट पाडणारा मनुष्य, पाखंडी	पाखंडी is the standard modern Marathi word for “heretic” in the later doctrinal-deviance sense (associated with formal excommunication controversies) and risks anachronistic over-reading — Titus 3:10 targets a person who persistently causes sectarian division, not necessarily one teaching formal heresy.	फूट पाडणारा मनुष्य mandatory; पाखंडी fenced off for this verse specifically (may be appropriate terminology in other NT letters dealing with formal doctrinal heresy, but flagged out-of-scope here).
Genealogies (γενεαλογία)	वंशावळी	Maharashtra’s live caste-genealogy and lineage-purity discourse (jaat/kul lineage claims) makes वंशावळी a term already carrying social weight; readers could wrongly extend Paul’s warning into devaluing ancestry-identity concerns unrelated to the text.	Retain वंशावळी but require a clarifying teaching note: Paul warns against speculative, divisive genealogical disputation used to inflate teacher-status, not against valuing one’s ancestry/identity as such, nor against OT covenant-genealogy affirmations (cf. baseline’s seed_of_david).

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no natural Marathi equivalent; term must be built)

Concept	Why Marathi Has No Ready Equivalent	Resolution
παλιγγενεσία as personal, one-time, non-cyclical re-origination	Marathi’s existing rebirth-family vocabulary (पुनर्जन्म, पुनर्भव, जन्म) is built entirely around cyclical or aggregate-based frameworks; there is no pre-existing single word for “a definitive, once-for-all new beginning of a continuous person” outside a rebirth cosmology.	Coin नवजन्म as a fixed technical compound (नव = new + जन्म = birth), deliberately distinct in form from both existing options, always glossed on first use per lesson.
ἐπιφάνεια spanning both a past historical disclosure and a future certain return	Marathi devotional vocabulary for divine “appearing” is dominated by अवतार (periodic avatar-descent, repeatable) and दर्शन (the devotee’s act of viewing/beholding a deity, e.g. at a temple) — neither captures a two-part, once-in-history-then-once-more-at-the-end pattern tied to a single unrepeatable person.	Coin/adopt प्रकट होणे (verb)/प्रकटीकरण (noun) as the fixed technical rendering, explicitly fenced from both अवतार and दर्शन; teaching material must state the twofold (grace’s past appearing / glory’s future appearing) structure explicitly rather than assuming readers infer it.
σωτήρ as a title shared identically by Father and Son	Marathi has titles for a savior-figure in a devotional sense (e.g., “तारणहार,” “मुक्तिदाता”) but none pre-loaded with the specific doctrinal freight of a title predicated identically of two persons of the Trinity to imply co-equal deity.	Build तारणारा on the already-established तारण root (baseline) rather than reaching for a devotionally loaded alternative; require the Granville Sharp construction of 2:13 to be rendered with unbroken single-referent grammar (आपला महान परमेश्वर व तारणारा येशू ख्रिस्त) so the shared-title argument is visible in Marathi syntax, not just in a footnote.
A neutral, non-caste term for household “master/slave” relationship instruction (2:9-10)	Available Marathi vocabulary for master-servant relationships (मालक-नोकर, धनी-दास, जमीनदार-मजूर) is saturated with contemporary labor-hierarchy and historically with caste-linked servitude associations that the first-century Greco-Roman institution does not map onto cleanly.	No single word solves this; resolution is procedural, not lexical — mandatory teaching note fencing the historical referent (see §1.6) rather than searching for a “cleaner” Marathi word that does not exist.

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (too many options, each claimed by a rival system — fencing required)

Marathi Term/Root	Competing Claimants	Fencing Strategy
कृपा (grace)	Warkari bhakti’s devotional grace (Vitthal’s कृपा upon a devotee who has undertaken the wari pilgrimage)	Fence via mandatory grammatical-subject rule (§1.1); grace must always be textually prior to and independent of any devotional act described in context.
भक्ति-family (सुभक्ति/godliness, भक्तिनिष्ठ/hosios)	Bhakti devotion to Vitthal or any chosen personal deity (Ishta-devata); Warkari sant-poet reverence	Always require an explicit possessive/object phrase anchoring the devotion to “the one true God revealed in Christ” (एकमेव खऱ्या परमेश्वराची सुभक्ति) rather than leaving भक्ति-rooted words to float as a generic transferable virtue.
दास (slave/servant, both positive देवाचा दास and negative वासनांच्या दास्यत्वात)	Warkari self-designation as “दास of Vitthal/Pandurang” (cf. Tukaram’s abhangs); also caste-labor देवाचा दास/गुलाम historical baggage	Fence with a standing translator note (already logged in registry) distinguishing total, purchased bond-belonging to the sovereign God (1:1) from (a) devotional bhakti self-submission to a chosen personal deity and (b) caste-based servitude history (2:9-10). Never let the same footnote silently cover both senses — the positive (1:1) and negative (2:3;3:3) senses must be visually/contextually distinguished in every lesson.
करुणा vs दया (mercy/compassion)	Buddhist brahmavihara-compassion as a cultivated practitioner virtue	Fence: दया exclusively for God’s ἔλεος in salvation contexts; करुणा permitted only in non-technical, human-relational contexts unrelated to the doctrine of salvation.
पुण्य/सत्कर्म vs चांगली कामे (good works)	Hindu/Buddhist karma-merit economy (पुण्य accumulated toward future rebirth or liberation)	Hard fence: पुण्य and सत्कर्म are forbidden substitutions for चांगली कामे in every occurrence (1:16; 2:7,14; 3:1,8,14); validated automatically at Phase 2 QA per baseline’s forbidden-substitution mechanism.
स्नान (washing)	Hindu ritual bathing for merit (tirtha-yatra, Kumbh-associated snan)	Fence via mandatory accompanying note (§1.5); never let स्नान stand alone without the “sign of an already-accomplished reality, not a repeatable merit-rite” clarification.
अधीन राहणे (submission) vs दुय्यम असणे	Caste-hierarchy vocabulary of fixed, birth-based subordination	Hard fence: दुय्यम असणे is disqualified outright for ὑποτάσσω in Titus; only अधीन राहणे/अधीनता permitted, always taught as voluntary and role-specific.
वंशावळी (genealogies)	Maharashtra’s live caste/lineage (jaat-kul) discourse	Fence via clarifying note distinguishing Paul’s target (speculative disputation) from ancestry-identity concerns and from OT covenant genealogies.
पाखंडी vs फूट पाडणारा मनुष्य (divisive person)	Later church-historical “heretic” controversies (doctrinal deviance judged by councils)	Fence: पाखंडी disqualified for Titus 3:10 specifically; reserve it (if ever used elsewhere in the curriculum) only for contexts of formal doctrinal deviance, not sectarian troublemaking.
मानवप्रेम (philanthropia)	Ambedkarite/social-reform “मानवसेवा”-style humanitarian movement vocabulary	Fence via grammatical anchoring rule (§1.4): always God’s own attribute historically revealed in Christ, never a free-floating ethical ideal.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Savior (σωτήρ)	Paraphrase/compound (तारणारा), NOT transliteration	Builds on established तारण root; a transliterated “सोतर” would be unintelligible and would forfeit the doctrinal connection to तारण that the whole curriculum depends on.
Regeneration (παλιγγενεσία)	Coined compound (नवजन्म), NOT transliteration, NOT existing rebirth vocabulary	A transliteration (“पलिन्गेनेसिया”) would be theologically safe but pastorally useless — Class 8-10 reading-level target audience needs a word that carries meaning on first encounter, with the coined compound’s built-in fencing (नव = new, avoiding the पुनर् = “re-/again” prefix that both पुनर्जन्म and पुनर्भव share, which is itself part of what makes those words risky).
Epiphany/appearing (ἐπιφάνεια)	Paraphrase (प्रकट होणे/प्रकटीकरण), NOT transliteration	”एपिफनी” is unintelligible to the target reading level and carries no inherited meaning; प्रकट होणे is native, transparent Marathi and can be fenced away from अवतार/दर्शन through teaching notes more easily than an opaque loanword could be explained.
Abba (cross-reference from Romans)	Transliteration retained (अब्बा)	Consistency with baseline; not a Titus-specific decision but noted for completeness since Titus 3:6-7 sits near Romans 8’s adoption/Spirit theme.
Amen, Hallelujah (liturgical closings, cf. 3:15 grace benediction)	Transliteration retained (आमेन)	Per baseline AI requirements naming table; consistency across curricula.
”Trustworthy saying” formula (πιστὸς ὁ λόγος)	Paraphrase (हे वचन विश्वसनीय आहे), NOT a fixed single-word calque	This Pastoral Epistle formula has no single-word Marathi equivalent; a full clause preserves its function as a doctrinal-summary marker for the reader, consistent with the register target (newspaper-editorial clarity).
Elder / Overseer (πρεσβύτερος / ἐπίσκοπος)	Native words + qualifying phrase (मंडळीतील वडील; मंडळीचा अध्यक्ष), NOT transliteration (no “प्रेस्बिटर”/“बिशप”)	Transliterating either would import later ecclesiastical-hierarchy connotations (especially बिशप = “bishop,” a rank Titus 1 does not describe) that the source text does not support; native Marathi words with disambiguating qualifiers are safer and more accessible.
Genealogies (γενεαλογία)	Native word (वंशावळी), NOT transliteration	Already a common, transparent Marathi word; transliteration would add no clarity and would strip the useful (if double-edged) cultural resonance that the teaching note needs to actively address.
Household-code terms (δοῦλος, δεσπότης)	Native words with mandatory teaching note, NOT transliteration and NOT euphemistic substitution	Neither transliteration nor a euphemistic substitute (e.g., “कर्मचारी”/employee, which would anachronistically modernize the relationship) is appropriate; the historical institution must remain visible in the text so the teaching note can properly fence it from caste-servitude application.

General transliteration policy for Titus: Proper names and already-fixed liturgical forms (येशू, ख्रिस्त, पौल, तीत — Titus’s own name, established as तीत in Marathi Bible tradition) are transliterated per baseline convention. All doctrinal/theological concept vocabulary favors native paraphrase or compound-coining over transliteration, because the reading-level target (Class 8-10) cannot absorb new loanwords without built-in meaning, and because every transliteration option considered above (Savior, regeneration, epiphany) would in each case sound safely foreign but teach nothing — the opposite of what a first-generation-convert or new-believer audience needs.

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4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Titus

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision likelihood × audience vulnerability), highest first:

1. नवजन्म / πα λιγγενεσία — Regeneration (Titus 3:5). The single highest risk in the letter. Any drift toward पुनर्जन्म would align Titus with the caste-Hindu karma-rebirth doctrine that Ambedkarite Buddhist conversion explicitly rejected; drift toward पुनर्भव would deny the continuous-personal-identity claim the doctrine makes. Mandatory theologian review + translator note on every occurrence, no exceptions.

2. आपण स्वतः केलेली नीतिमत्त्वाची कामे — “not by works done by us in righteousness” (Titus 3:5). Highest risk of unintentional theological softening through natural Marathi harmonizing tendencies (turning an absolute exclusion into a “not only” qualification). This is the letter’s most direct collision with both the Hindu karma-merit economy and the Buddhist Eightfold Path’s self-cultivation ethic — the two frameworks the baseline repeatedly flags as this audience’s dominant alternative soteriologies.

3. कृपा शिक्षण देते — Grace as the trainer, not the believer’s self-discipline (Titus 2:11-12). Grammatical-subject drift here would collapse the letter’s central pastoral doctrine (“Grace That Trains for Godly Living”) into indistinguishable Buddhist self-cultivation or Hindu tapasya-style ascetic discipline — silently reversing the doctrine while every individual word remains “correct.”

4. आपला महान परमेश्वर व तारणारा येशू ख्रिस्त — the Granville Sharp deity-of-Christ construction (Titus 2:13). Marathi’s flexible relative-clause and conjunction structures make it easy to accidentally produce a two-referent reading (“our great God, and [also] our Savior Jesus Christ” as two figures) rather than the single-referent identification the Greek requires. Given this is one of the NT’s clearest deity-of-Christ texts, any ambiguity here has maximal doctrinal cost.

5. देवाचा दास (Titus 1:1) vs. Warkari bhakti’s दास-of-Vitthal self-designation. Because this phrase opens the letter and frames Paul’s entire apostolic authority claim, an uncorrected collision here colors the reader’s frame for everything that follows — risk is amplified by its structural position, not just its lexical content.

6. स्नान — washing (Titus 3:5) vs. Hindu ritual-purification bathing. High collision likelihood given how physically concrete and ritually embedded bathing-for-purification practices are in Maharashtra’s devotional landscape (river/tank bathing at pilgrimage sites); without the accompanying note, this is among the most visually suggestive false-friend risks in the letter.

7. अधीन राहणे — submission (2:5,9; 3:1) vs. caste-based fixed subordination. Risk is heightened specifically because it recurs across three different relational domains in the same short letter; a single unfenced rendering early in the lesson series could imprint a fatalistic reading that then colors all three later occurrences.

8. दास/गुलाम — household slave (2:9-10) vs. India’s caste-based servitude history. Highest pastoral-sensitivity risk in the letter (not necessarily highest doctrinal-content risk): mishandling here risks real relational harm to Dalit and Ambedkarite Buddhist believers if the historical household-code context is not clearly fenced from caste-servitude application.

9. सुदृढ शिकवण — sound doctrine vs. Warkari abhang / Ambedkarite Dhamma teaching-authority claims (1:9,13; 2:1). Risk is subtler than most items above because the collision is about source of authority (God-breathed vs. revered-teacher-authored) rather than about a single vivid image; it requires positive explanation more than negative fencing.

10. वंशावळी — genealogies (3:9) vs. Maharashtra’s live caste-lineage discourse. Lower doctrinal centrality than items above (a minor warning-clause term, not a load-bearing doctrine of the letter) but flagged for its potential for real-world social misapplication if left unglossed.

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5. Summary and Handoff Notes

• Six terms in this analysis require coined or newly-built Marathi vocabulary with no adequate prior equivalent: नवजन्म, तारणारा, प्रकट होणे/प्रकटीकरण, आपला महान परमेश्वर व तारणारा येशू ख्रिस्त (fixed clause), शिस्त लावणे/प्रशिक्षण देणे (as grace’s action), and चांगली कामे (deliberately plain, non-merit-loaded phrase).
• Nine Marathi lexical neighborhoods are identified as crowded and requiring active fencing via mandatory translator/teaching notes rather than lexical substitution alone: कृपा, भक्ति-family, दास (both senses), करुणा/दया, पुण्य/सत्कर्म, स्नान, अधीन राहणे/दुय्यम असणे, वंशावळी, and पाखंडी/फूट पाडणारा मनुष्य.
• All findings here are consistent with and extend (never contradict) the baseline Romans package and the Titus core glossary (08) / bible_term_registry.json extensions already produced; no baseline rendering is altered.
• This document must be loaded alongside 08_core_glossary.md and the updated bible_term_registry.json before Phase 1 Step 9 (doctrine risk registry extension) and before any Phase 2 segment translation of Titus begins.