Executive Summary: 1 Peter Nepali Language Package

Why it matters

1 Peter is a full-book extension of the existing Romans Nepali Language Package, built for a curriculum centered on 1 Peter 1:3–9 — the “living hope” of the resurrection. Nepali already carries hard-won, baseline-established defenses against the most dangerous Hindu- and Buddhist-coded mistranslations (उद्धार not मुक्ति/मोक्ष/निर्वाण; पुनरुत्थान not पुनर्जन्म; देहधारण not अवतार; परमेश्वर not भगवान). 1 Peter forces that same discipline into new, harder terrain: a doctrine of new birth that shares resurrection’s rebirth-collision risk; a holy and royal priesthood doctrine expressed in a word (पूजाहारी) rooted in the very caste-linked ritual specialism the text is refuting; a suffering-for-righteousness theme that runs directly against the shared Hindu/Buddhist karma-suffering explanatory framework; and an exegetically disputed proclamation to spirits in prison passage sitting a short conceptual distance from active Nepali folk-religious spirit-mediumship practice. Getting this letter right for Nepali readers is not incremental — it requires extending the baseline’s risk discipline into five new high-stakes zones at once.

Key findings

• Full-book coverage confirmed: all 5 chapters of 1 Peter analyzed verse-range by verse-range; no chapter contributes zero doctrinal content (see analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md Section C).
• 25 curriculum doctrines identified across the whole letter, reconciled identically across assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json and analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md: 10 Critical, 10 High, 4 Medium, 1 Low.
• 92 total glossary terms now govern Phase 2 translation (assets/translation_memory.json v2): 31 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 61 newly introduced by 1 Peter’s distinct vocabulary.
• Two new forbidden-substitution collisions not present in the Romans baseline: (1) नयाँ जन्म (“new birth”) must independently avoid पुनर्जन्म, alongside पुनरुत्थान’s existing prohibition; (2) आत्मा must never render ψυχή (“soul”) — प्राण is required — to protect पवित्र आत्मा’s doctrinal exclusivity.
• The letter’s single highest-risk term is the holy/royal priesthood doctrine (2:5, 2:9): पूजाहारी shares its root with पूजा, Nepal’s ordinary word for caste-linked Hindu/Buddhist ritual worship, directly inverting the text’s own casteless-access claim unless mitigated by mandatory teaching notes at every occurrence.
• Nepal’s caste-legal history (the Muluki Ain, in force until 1963) and its current legal environment (the 2017 Muluki Criminal Code’s conversion restrictions) are load-bearing context for at least four doctrines: submission to authority, chosen race/holy nation, priesthood, and public Christian self-identification (4:16) — this is a materially higher real-world-stakes overlay than the Romans baseline required for most of its doctrines.

Risks

• Critical + High risk terms requiring mandatory human theologian review: 56 of 92 total glossary terms (18 Critical + 38 High), per assets/bible_term_registry.json.
• Critical + High risk doctrines requiring mandatory human theologian review: 20 of 25 total doctrines (10 Critical + 10 High), per assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json.
• Highest-severity single ambiguity: the आत्मा root’s triple collision (Holy Spirit / human disposition at 3:4 / disembodied “spirits in prison” at 3:19) — a careless default rendering anywhere in this cluster risks either deifying a human disposition or implying the Holy Spirit was imprisoned.
• Second-highest risk: जाति’s caste-classification history colliding with 2:9’s “chosen race/holy nation,” risking the church being read as a new caste rather than a caste-transcending people — compounded by the same-root, opposite-valence use of अन्यजाति (“the Gentiles”) elsewhere in the same letter.
• Exegetically irreducible risk: 3:18-22 (spirits in prison) and 4:5-7 (gospel preached to the dead) are among the NT’s most disputed passages; translation must preserve interpretive openness for teachers rather than resolve the dispute — a standing risk that cannot be fully eliminated by glossary discipline alone and requires theologian sign-off at every occurrence.
• Live legal/social risk, not merely translation risk: accurately translating 4:16’s “Christian” identity label and the letter’s evangelism-adjacent language carries genuine contemporary exposure for Nepali readers under the 2017 Muluki Criminal Code’s conversion provisions — this must be handled pastorally in surrounding teaching material, not softened in the translation itself.

Opportunities

• Lived resonance, not just accuracy: 1 Peter’s “sojourners and exiles” identity (1:1, 1:17, 2:11) and its سsuffering-forged सहभागिता (4:13) map with unusual directness onto the Nepali church’s own recent history of illegality (pre-1990) and ongoing legal caution — this is curriculum content that can land with more lived weight in Nepali than in many other destination languages in this pipeline.
• Agrarian/pastoral vocabulary is a natural fit: “living stone,” “shepherd,” “flock,” and “Chief Shepherd” imagery (2:4-8, 2:25, 5:2-4) translate vividly and accessibly into Nepal’s own agrarian and herding culture without requiring transliteration or heavy paraphrase.
• A ready-made teaching wedge against caste hierarchy: 2:9-10’s chosen-people doctrine, properly fenced, gives Nepali teachers a direct, textually-grounded way to address the still-felt legacy of the Muluki Ain’s caste codification — turning a translation risk into a discipleship opportunity if the mandatory teaching notes are consistently applied.
• Reusable footnote infrastructure: four recurring collision points (suffering vs. dukkha, sacrifice vs. bali ritual, अक्षय vs. Akshaya Tritiya, Christian-identity legal exposure) justify building standing footnote templates now, reducing Phase 2 translator workload across the letter’s many repeated occurrences.

Recommended actions

1. Adopt assets/translation_memory.json v2 and analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md v2.0 as mandatory Phase 2 preflight loads alongside the existing Romans baseline artifacts; do not run any 1 Peter segment translation without both.
2. Route all 20 Critical/High doctrines and 56 Critical/High terms to human theologian review before Phase 2 sign-off, with automatic escalation (not optional flagging) for 1 Peter 1:3-9, 2:4-10, 2:13-3:7/3:22/5:5, 2:21-25/3:18, 3:18-22, 4:1-6, 4:12-19, and 5:1-9 per the escalation rules.
3. Pre-draft the six standing footnote templates identified in analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md Section G before Phase 2 begins, to avoid ad hoc, inconsistent handling of the letter’s most frequently recurring collision points.
4. Lock the rendering of 1 Peter 1:3-9 and 2:9 as verbatim-consistent across every downstream document, matching the same consistency discipline the baseline already requires for Romans 1:16-17, 8:28, and 10:9-10.
5. Brief all reviewers explicitly on the two new dual-usage validation rules (शक्ति permitted only for created powers at 3:22, never for God’s own power at 1:5; आत्मा reserved exclusively for the Holy Spirit, never soul/disposition/imprisoned-spirits) before any back-translation review begins, since these context-sensitive rules are more error-prone than the baseline’s simpler single-referent forbidden terms.