Linguistic Gap Analysis: 2 Peter
1. Purpose and Method
This analysis identifies, for each of 2 Peter’s seven assigned doctrines, (a) what Nepali vocabulary is available, (b) the specific weaknesses/collisions each candidate term carries within Nepal’s religious linguistic landscape (Hindu, Buddhist, folk-shamanic, and post-monarchy political registers), and (c) the recommended translation strategy. It then separates the curriculum’s vocabulary problems into two distinct categories — missing vocabulary (concepts with no ready-made Nepali equivalent, requiring compounding or paraphrase) and crowded semantic neighborhoods (concepts with too many existing Nepali words, all of which import unwanted doctrinal freight, requiring active fencing). It closes with a transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision table and a ranked list of 2 Peter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 translators and reviewers.
All findings here are consistent with, and do not override, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json. Where 2 Peter reuses a baseline Critical/High term (परमेश्वर, प्रभु, पवित्र आत्मा, धार्मिकता, उद्धार, अनुग्रह, विश्वास, महिमा, पवित्र, राज्य), that entry is reused verbatim; this document addresses only the vocabulary 2 Peter newly activates or intensifies.
2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
2.1 The Reliability and Inspiration of Scripture
| Available Nepali Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| पवित्रशास्त्र (Scripture) | Minimal collision, but audience may assimilate it to a generic “sacred book” category alongside the Vedas, Purāṇas, or Buddhist sūtras unless taught as a closed, divinely-authored corpus with named human writers. | Use पवित्रशास्त्र consistently; pair first occurrence per lesson with a teaching note on its closed-canon, divinely-authored-through-human-writers character. |
| अगमवाणी (prophecy) | Baseline tier is Low, but 1:20-21 makes an explicit doctrinal claim about origin (not human will, but the Spirit) that the bare word does not carry. | Reuse अगमवाणी exactly; treat 1:19-21 as a High-risk passage even though the term itself is Low risk in isolation. |
| पवित्र आत्माद्वारा डोऱ्याइएका (carried along, φερόμενοι) | No natural Nepali equivalent for “carried along” as a technical inspiration-verb; nearest intuitive folk-religious analogue is jhākri (shaman) spirit-possession/trance-oracle phenomena, well known in Nepali folk religion and Kathmandu Valley living-oracle traditions, in which the human agent’s own mind and will are displaced. | Mandatory contrastive teaching note at every occurrence: the Spirit propelled the human writers while their own mind, personality, and literary style remained fully active — this is NOT trance possession. |
| मनगढन्ते कथा (fables/myths) | पुराण (a tempting near-synonym for “traditional sacred narrative”) is a venerated genre in Nepali Hindu religious life; using any पुराण-rooted term here would reverse Peter’s polemic and dignify the very category he denies applying to apostolic testimony. | Use मनगढन्ते कथा only; explicitly forbid पुराण-rooted renderings in the translation memory forbidden-substitution list for this curriculum. |
| आफ्नै व्याख्या (private interpretation) | Risk of pastoral misreading: a first-generation, newly-literate Nepali church could hear this as “do not read/interpret the Bible for yourself,” discouraging personal Bible engagement — the opposite of healthy discipleship. | Gloss every occurrence: this addresses the source of the original prophecy (God, not the prophet’s private insight), not a restriction on believers today reading Scripture. |
2.2 Growing in Christian Virtue
| Available Nepali Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| सद्गुण (virtue/ἀρετή) | Bare गुण is the fixed Sāṅkhya/Vedānta technical term for the three guṇas (sattva/rajas/tamas) — an impersonal quality of prakṛti (nature), not a personal moral achievement. Extremely well known across Nepali Hindu culture. | Never use bare गुण for ἀρετή. सद् qualifier is mandatory in every occurrence, without exception. |
| ज्ञान / पूर्ण ज्ञान (γνῶσις / ἐπίγνωσις) | This is 2 Peter’s single most crowded semantic neighborhood (see §3.2 below). ज्ञान alone activates two live, high-prestige liberation paths: Hindu jñāna-mārga (knowledge as the path to mokṣa) and Buddhist prajñā (liberating insight toward nirvāṇa). | Never render ज्ञान without an explicit relational object (ख्रीष्टको/परमेश्वरको) and, for ἐπίγνωσις specifically, prefer the compound ख्रीष्टको पूर्ण ज्ञान / परमेश्वरको चिनजान. Mandatory gloss on first occurrence per lesson distinguishing relational acquaintance with a personal Christ from self-attained liberating gnosis. |
| ईश्वरभक्ति (godliness/εὐσέβεια) | भक्ति is the fixed vocabulary of bhakti-mārga, the devotional path to liberation through a chosen personal deity (iṣṭa-devatā) — already rejected by the baseline for πίστις. Retaining it here for a genuinely distinct Greek concept is a calculated, not casual, risk. | Retain ईश्वरभक्ति but attach a MANDATORY teaching note at every occurrence: reverent, godward living that flows from an already-secured relationship with God through Christ, not a meritorious devotional path that itself secures standing with God. Never permit a धर्म-rooted compound as an alternative. |
| आत्मसंयम (self-control/ἐγκράτεια) | Nearest cultural analogue is tapasyā — ascetic self-discipline understood as generating spiritual merit or supernatural power (siddhi). | Clarify in teaching notes that this is Spirit-enabled self-control flowing from grace already received (1:3-4), not self-generated ascetic achievement. |
| सहनशीलता (endurance/ὑπομονή) vs परमेश्वरको धीरज (God’s patience/μακροθυμία) | Nepali has no morphological distinction between “human endurance under trial” and “God’s forbearing patience”; both could default to the same root word if not deliberately fenced. | Reserve सहनशीलता for human endurance (ch. 1) and require धीरज always paired with परमेश्वरको/प्रभुको for divine patience (ch. 3). Never interchange. |
| तत्परता (diligence/σπουδή) | Could be misheard as effort that generates merit, colliding with the shared Hindu-Buddhist karma-merit accounting the baseline already flags for grace (Romans 4, 11:5-6). | Teaching note: diligence is a response to grace already given (1:3-4), not merit-earning effort. |
2.3 False Teachers and Their Judgment
| Available Nepali Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| झूटा शिक्षकहरू (false teachers) | Risk is not lexical but contextual: Nepal’s 2017 Muluki Criminal Code contains live provisions restricting religious conversion/proselytizing. Material framing false teaching as an external interfaith polemic could read as incitement against other religious communities. | Frame consistently as internal doctrinal discernment within the Christian community, per the baseline’s evangelism/mission handling. |
| विनाशकारी शिक्षा (destructive heresies) | पाखण्ड, a tempting near-synonym, carries older Nepali connotations of “heterodoxy/hypocritical religion” from historic Hindu inter-school polemics — an unnecessary extra layer of loaded controversy. | Use विनाशकारी शिक्षा only; explicitly exclude पाखण्ड. |
| अन्धकारको बन्दीगृह (Tartarus, ताρταρώσας) | नरक — the intuitive default rendering — denotes in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmology a temporary purgatorial realm within an ongoing rebirth cycle, from which a soul eventually departs after exhausting bad karma. This is the direct inverse of Peter’s point (certain, secure, awaiting-final-judgment imprisonment). | See §4 Transliteration/Paraphrase table — descriptive paraphrase required; नरक permitted only with a mandatory distinguishing note if used at all. |
| पाप गर्ने स्वर्गदूतहरू (angels who sinned) | स्वर्ग (heaven) risks assimilation to Hindu svarga, a temporary, karma-earned heavenly abode within saṁsāra rather than the eternal, non-karmic dwelling of God and unfallen angels. | Teaching note recommended wherever स्वर्ग appears in a doctrinal (not merely descriptive) sense in this letter. |
| जलप्रलय (flood/κατακλυσμός) | प्रलय is also the fixed term for the Hindu cyclical cosmic dissolution recurring at the end of each kalpa — a repeatable cosmic event, not a single historical judgment. | Keep firmly anchored to the single historical Noahic flood in context; do not let it float toward a cyclical reading — this concern intensifies (does not merely repeat) in ch. 3’s ἡμέρα Κυρίου discussion. |
2.4 The Certainty of Christ’s Return
| Available Nepali Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| आगमन (parousia) | No single existing Nepali word captures “personal, visible, singular, future return of a specific historical person” without qualification; बिना qualification आगमन alone is generic (“arrival/coming”). | Always qualify: ख्रीष्टको दोस्रो आगमन. Absolute prohibition (per baseline pattern) on any phrasing shaded toward अवतार — a repeatable divine/royal descent, historically the Shah monarchy’s own legitimating theology until 2008. |
| वैभव (majesty/μεγαλειότης) | प्रताप, a near-synonym, carries specific overtones of Nepali royal majesty historically applied to the Shah kings. | Use वैभव exclusively; exclude प्रताप. |
| स्वर्गबाटको आवाज (voice from heaven) | Low collision risk in itself, but its doctrinal weight (validating Christ’s unique Sonship at a specific, dated, eyewitnessed event) is easily flattened into generic devotional imagery if translated loosely. | Preserve as a concrete, historical, eyewitnessed event; avoid poetic paraphrase that abstracts it. |
| पवित्र डाँडा (holy mountain) | Nepal’s religious geography treats specific Himalayan peaks as inherently sacred, permanent abodes of deities (axis mundi thinking). | Teaching note required: this mountain’s holiness derives from the redemptive-historical event that occurred there, not from any inherent sacredness of the site itself. |
2.5 The Day of the Lord and Final Judgment
| Available Nepali Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| प्रभुको दिन (Day of the Lord) | Nepal’s dominant cosmological frames (Hindu yuga-cycles culminating in pralaya; Buddhist kalpa-cycles) both understand cosmic dissolution as one recurrence within an endless series, not a single terminal event. | Mandatory teaching note wherever 3:7-13 is taught: this is a SINGLE, FINAL, LINEAR event, never one iteration in a recurring cycle. |
| तत्वहरू (elements/στοιχεῖα) | तत्व is the fixed technical term in Hindu Sāṅkhya/Vedānta metaphysics for the fundamental categories of reality (the tattva-system) — a much richer, more contested concept than “physical elements.” | Restrict strictly to the physical-cosmic sense (basic material constituents of the created order) in this context; do not let it drift toward the metaphysical tattva-system. |
| नयाँ आकाश र नयाँ पृथ्वी (new heavens and new earth) | Its underlying doctrinal shape (one final, linear re-creation after judgment) is easily assimilated to Hindu pralaya’s cyclical destruction-and-recreation pattern if not explicitly distinguished. | Frame explicitly as a one-time, final, linear renewal — never a “next cycle.” |
| धार्मिकता वास गर्छ (righteousness dwells) | Reuses baseline Critical term धार्मिकता; the collision risk (धर्म) is already fully fenced by the baseline and needs no new fencing here — but this occurrence must not be missed as a place धर्म could creep back in. | Reuse धार्मिकता वास गर्छ exactly, no deviation. |
2.6 Patience of God’s Timing
| Available Nepali Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| परमेश्वरको धीरज (God’s patience/μακροθυμία) | Without the मालिक-word pairing this risks collapse into human सहनशीलता (see §2.2); without care it can also drift toward भाग्य (fate) or an impersonal cosmic schedule if presented as simple “delay.” | Always pair with परमेश्वरको/प्रभुको; teaching note affirms this is personal, purposeful forbearance willing sinners to repent, not indefinite impersonal postponement. |
| प्रभु ढिलो गर्नुहुन्न (the Lord is not slow) | Risk of a fatalistic misreading if presented divorced from God’s stated purpose (repentance) — could sound like a general assurance that “things happen when they happen,” echoing भाग्य/कर्मको नियम, which the baseline already fences for providence and election. | Always anchor this statement to its stated purpose clause (3:9b: “that none should perish but all reach repentance”). |
| एक दिन हजार वर्ष जस्तै (one day as a thousand years) | Low collision risk; mainly a clarity issue for readers unfamiliar with the comparative idiom. | Render as a plain comparative statement; no gloss required. |
| पश्चाताप (repentance/μετάνοια) | Established Nepali Christian term; risk is minimal but worth confirming it conveys a genuine change of mind/direction rather than only emotional regret (पछुतो). | Retain पश्चाताप; avoid पछुतो as a substitute in doctrinal contexts. |
2.7 Divine Nature and Escaping Corruption
| Available Nepali Terms | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| ईश्वरीय स्वभावको सहभागी (partakers of the divine nature) | The single highest-collision phrase in the entire letter (see §3.2 ranking). Multiple live Nepali religious frameworks describe humans becoming “one with” the divine: Advaita Vedānta’s Ātman-Brahman identity, Buddhist tathāgatagarbha/Buddha-nature teaching, and Śākta/Tantric traditions of merging with a chosen deity. | Use स्वभाव (character/disposition), never तत्व (essence-category); use सहभागी (relational sharing, echoing baseline सहभागिता), never एकत्व/मिलन (union/merger) vocabulary. MANDATORY footnote at every occurrence distinguishing moral/relational participation in God’s holy character through union with Christ by grace from any ontological identity with, or absorption into, the divine essence. |
| परमेश्वरीय सामर्थ्य (divine power) | Directly parallels the baseline’s power_of_god fencing. | Reuse the baseline pattern exactly: never शक्ति, given the still-practiced Newar Tantric/Shakta tradition and the living-goddess (Kumari) cult centered in the Kathmandu Valley. |
| विनाश (corruption/φθορά) | क्षय, a tempting near-synonym, carries strong Buddhist anicca/anitya (universal impermanence) overtones — a foundational teaching pointing toward detachment and eventual nirvāṇa, an entirely different diagnosis of the human problem. | Use विनाश (moral ruin/destruction from sinful desire), never क्षय (impersonal metaphysical impermanence). |
| लालसा (evil desire/ἐπιθυμία) | वासना, a tempting near-synonym, denotes latent karmic impressions (saṁskāras) in yoga psychology and Buddhist Abhidharma that drive future rebirth — a specific technical mechanism foreign to Peter’s point. | Use लालसा only; exclude वासना. |
| अनन्त (eternal/αἰώνιος) | सनातन, a tempting near-synonym, is the self-designation of “Sanātana Dharma” — traditional Hinduism’s own term for its eternal, unoriginated religious order — carrying enormous weight in a nation constitutionally Hindu until 2007. | Use अनन्त exclusively. Propose सनातन as a new curriculum-specific forbidden substitution (see §4). |
3. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
3.1 Missing Vocabulary (concepts with no ready-made Nepali equivalent)
These require compounding, qualification, or descriptive paraphrase because no single existing Nepali word covers the concept without either (a) leaving it dangerously vague, or (b) requiring invention:
- παρουσία as a singular, certain, personal, future historical event — Nepali आगमन alone is generic “arrival”; the full theological content (visible, bodily, singular, certain return of the same historical Jesus) exists nowhere as a single word and must be built as a qualified compound (ख्रीष्टको दोस्रो आगमन), continuously distinguished from अवतार.
- θείας φύσεως κοινωνοί (“partakers of the divine nature”) as relational rather than ontological participation — Nepali has ready vocabulary for ontological merger (एकत्व, मिलन, तत्वमसि-type identity language) but no single existing term isolates “sharing in God’s moral character through relationship without essence-merger.” This must be built compositionally (स्वभाव + सहभागी) and defended with a mandatory footnote every time.
- φερόμενοι (“carried along”) as a technical description of a mode of inspiration that preserves full human authorial agency — the nearest lived Nepali religious phenomenon (jhākri trance-possession) is precisely the wrong model, since it displaces the human agent’s mind; no ready term names “Spirit-propelled but self-aware human speech,” and it must be built descriptively (पवित्र आत्माद्वारा डोऱ्याइएका) with an explicit contrast note.
- ταρταρώσας (“cast into Tartarus”) as a place of certain, non-cyclical, final pre-judgment confinement — the ready word (नरक) imports a temporary, cycle-internal frame; no existing single word conveys secure, non-recurring imprisonment awaiting a one-time final judgment, requiring a full descriptive paraphrase (अन्धकारको बन्दीगृह).
- ἰδία ἐπίλυσις (“of one’s own interpretation”) isolating the source of prophecy rather than commenting on the practice of reading Scripture — Nepali आफ्नै व्याख्या risks being heard as a general statement about interpretation-in-general; the narrower technical sense (prophecy’s origin was not any individual prophet’s private insight) has no dedicated existing phrase and requires a standing gloss.
3.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (too many existing terms, each carrying unwanted freight — require active fencing)
These concepts are the opposite problem: Nepali is rich in candidate vocabulary, but every rich candidate belongs to an established non-Christian technical system that would misdirect the reader.
- The ज्ञान/gnosis neighborhood (γνῶσις, ἐπίγνωσις — 1:2, 1:3, 1:5-6, 1:8, 2:20, 2:21, 3:18): crowded with jñāna-mārga (path of knowledge to mokṣa), prajñā (Buddhist liberating wisdom toward nirvāṇa), and विद्या (formal/sacred learning). This is 2 Peter’s single most crowded neighborhood because ज्ञान/ἐπίγνωσις recurs at both the letter’s opening (1:2-3) and its closing benediction (3:18), making it structurally unavoidable. Fencing required: never bare ज्ञान; always an explicit relational object plus periodic gloss.
- The भक्ति neighborhood (εὐσέβεια — 1:3, 1:6-7, 3:11): crowded with bhakti-mārga, the devotional path to liberation through a chosen personal deity. The baseline already excluded भक्ति for πίστις (faith); 2 Peter reopens the neighborhood because εὐσέβεια is a genuinely distinct Greek concept requiring its own decision. Fencing required: ईश्वरभक्ति retained only with a mandatory standing teaching note distinguishing devotion flowing from secured relationship versus devotion earning it.
- The गुण neighborhood (ἀρετή — 1:3, 1:5): crowded with the Sāṅkhya/Vedānta triguna system (sattva-rajas-tamas), an impersonal metaphysical-quality framework. Fencing required: मानदातो सद् qualifier mandatory, never bare गुण.
- The तत्व neighborhood (θείας φύσεως κοινωνοί’s “nature,” and στοιχεῖα’s “elements” — 1:4; 3:10, 3:12): crowded with the Vedāntic tattva reality-category system. Fencing required: स्वभाव (not तत्व) for divine “nature”; तत्वहरू permitted only in the strictly physical-cosmic sense for στοιχεῖα, with context anchoring every time.
- The नरक/प्रलय/कल्प eschatological-cosmology neighborhood (ταρταρώσας, κατακλυσμός, ἡμέρα Κυρίου — 2:4-5; 3:7-13): crowded with Hindu cyclical pralaya/yuga cosmology and Buddhist kalpa-cycle cosmology, both of which understand cosmic destruction as recurring, not final. Fencing required: descriptive paraphrase for Tartarus; explicit linear-finality teaching notes for the Flood-type and the Day of the Lord.
- The वासना/क्षय karma-mechanism neighborhood (φθορά, ἐπιθυμία — 1:4; 2:10-19; 3:3): crowded with technical Yoga/Abhidharma vocabulary for karmic imprints and universal impermanence. Fencing required: विनाश/लालसा only; क्षय/वासना excluded.
- The स्वर्ग/सनातन neighborhood (ἄγγελοι ἁμαρτήσαντες’s “heaven,” αἰώνιος’s “eternal” — 2:4; 1:11): crowded with Hindu svarga (temporary karma-earned heaven) and सनातन (Sanātana Dharma’s self-designation). Fencing required: teaching note on स्वर्ग where doctrinally load-bearing; सनातन excluded outright for अनन्त.
- The शक्ति/अवतार/भगवान neighborhood (already fully fenced by the baseline; reactivated here at 1:3, 1:16-17, throughout): no new fencing required, but 2 Peter’s concentration of Transfiguration/majesty language (1:16-18) makes this baseline fencing unusually load-bearing in this specific letter — flag for reviewers as a place where baseline discipline cannot lapse.
4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|
| Tartarus (ταρταρώσας) | Paraphrase, not transliteration | A bare transliteration (e.g., टार्टरस) would be meaningless to Nepali readers with no Greek mythological literacy. Paraphrase (अन्धकारको बन्दीगृह) conveys the sense while avoiding नरक’s cyclical-purgatory connotation. |
| Morning star (φωσφόρος) | Paraphrase, plainly | Render बिहानीको तारा. Do NOT transliterate via any Latin “Lucifer” cognate — that name later became a designation for Satan in the wider Christian tradition, which would wrongly contradict this entirely positive messianic image (cf. Revelation 22:16). |
| Parousia (παρουσία) | Paraphrase/compound, not transliteration | No established Nepali Christian transliteration exists; आगमन (qualified as ख्रीष्टको दोस्रो आगमन) is already the working convention and carries no collision if properly fenced against अवतार. |
| Despotēs (δεσπότης, “Master”) | Paraphrase | मालिक, not a transliteration, and deliberately distinct from प्रभु (κύριος) to preserve the ownership-by-purchase nuance. |
| Abba (already baseline) | Transliteration retained | Consistent with baseline: preserve अब्बा with its established brief explanatory gloss; not reintroduced by 2 Peter but relevant to note no change is needed. |
| Amen, Hallelujah | Transliteration retained | Per baseline established forms: आमेन, हल्लेलूयाह — 2 Peter uses no additional untransliterated Hebrew/Aramaic terms beyond these. |
| Christ (Χριστός) | Transliteration retained | ख्रीष्ट per the baseline’s transliteration standard; not to be replaced by मसीह in running text, consistent with 12_ai_translation_requirements.md convention. |
| Proper names: Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot, Balaam, Peter, Simon | Transliteration, established forms | नोआ, सदोम र गमोरा, लोत, बालाम, पत्रुस, सिमोन — all follow the established Nepali Bible tradition; low risk, consistency check only. |
| ἐπίγνωσις / γνῶσις | Paraphrase with mandatory gloss, not a coined loanword | Introducing a Sanskrit-loan neologism (e.g., a compound built on ज्ञान with a Christian-only prefix) would still trigger the same collision by root association; better to keep ज्ञान but permanently attach an object and periodic gloss rather than attempt to escape the root. |
| θείας φύσεως κοινωνοί | Paraphrase/compound with mandatory footnote, not transliteration | No Greek-derived transliteration tradition exists for this phrase in Nepali Bible usage; compound rendering (ईश्वरीय स्वभावको सहभागी) plus a standing footnote is the only viable path. |
5. Ranked List of 2 Peter’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision strength × frequency/structural placement in the letter):
- θείας φύσεως κοινωνοί — “partakers of the divine nature” (1:4). Highest risk in the letter: a single verse sits directly across the collision path of Advaita Vedānta (Ātman-Brahman identity), Buddhist tathāgatagarbha teaching, and Śākta/Tantric deity-merger devotion simultaneously. No existing Nepali word is safe unqualified; requires the compound स्वभाव + सहभागी rendering with a mandatory footnote at every occurrence, no exceptions.
- ἐπίγνωσις / γνῶσις across the whole letter (1:2-3, 1:5-6, 1:8, 2:20-21, 3:18). Second-highest risk not because any single occurrence is uniquely dangerous but because of structural inevitability — this term frames both the opening and the closing of the letter, meaning a lapse in fencing anywhere compounds across the entire document’s theological arc (escaping corruption, growing in virtue, the closing benediction).
- ταρταρώσας — “cast into Tartarus” (2:4). A single-occurrence but Critical-severity risk: नरक’s default availability as the “obvious” translation directly inverts Peter’s point about certain, final, non-cyclical confinement. High risk of translator/reviewer defaulting to the familiar word under time pressure.
- παρουσία and its fencing against अवतार (1:16; 3:4; 3:12). Politically as much as theologically loaded, given the Shah monarchy’s avatar-theology within living memory (abolished 2008); any softening toward repeatable-descent phrasing would be read by Nepali audiences against a very specific, recent national memory, not merely an abstract doctrinal error.
- ἡμέρα Κυρίου and the Day-of-the-Lord cluster (3:7-13), including στοιχεῖα and καινοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ γῆν καινήν. High risk because three separate cyclical-cosmology collisions (pralaya, kalpa-cycles, tattva-metaphysics) converge in a single six-verse span; a translator fencing only one of the three terms in this span leaves the doctrine vulnerable through the other two.
- εὐσέβεια rendered ईश्वरभक्ति (1:3, 1:6-7, 3:11). A deliberately retained but high-risk choice: this is the one place in 2 Peter’s vocabulary where the translation team is knowingly reusing a term the baseline already rejected (for a different Greek word), betting that the theological distinction (εὐσέβεια ≠ πίστις) is real enough to justify the risk. Requires the most consistent mandatory-footnote discipline of any Medium-frequency term in the letter.
- φερόμενοι — “carried along” by the Spirit (1:21). High risk because the most intuitive Nepali cultural analogue (jhākri trance-possession) is the precise theological inverse of what the text teaches (human agency preserved, not displaced); a translator without direct exposure to this analysis could default to trance-adjacent vocabulary without realizing the collision.
- ἰδία ἐπίλυσις — “private interpretation” (1:20). Medium-High risk, primarily pastoral rather than doctrinal: mistranslation or under-glossing here risks discouraging personal Bible reading in a young, first-generation, newly literate church — a live practical harm distinct from (though related to) the doctrinal point about prophecy’s origin.
- ἀρετή rendered सद्गुण (1:3, 1:5). Medium risk: the collision (bare गुण → triguna) is well understood and easily fenced with the सद् qualifier, but the fix must be applied with zero exceptions, since a single lapse to bare गुण anywhere in a lesson series would reintroduce the entire Sāṅkhya frame.
- αἰώνιος rendered अनन्त vs. the excluded सनातन (1:11). Medium risk, single occurrence, but politically resonant given सनातन’s status as Hinduism’s own self-designation in a nation constitutionally Hindu until 2007; low frequency but high symbolic stakes if the wrong word appears even once in printed material.
Reviewers routing Phase 2 segments should treat ranks 1–5 as mandatory human-theologian review regardless of the term’s baseline risk tier in isolation, consistent with the escalation logic already established in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
6. Summary for Phase 2 Handoff
- Seven new/extended term families (θείας φύσεως κοινωνοί, ἐπίγνωσις/γνῶσις, εὐσέβεια, παρουσία, ταρταρώσας, ἡμέρα Κυρίου-cluster, φερόμενοι) require mandatory standing footnotes/teaching notes at every occurrence, not merely first occurrence.
- One new forbidden-substitution rule is proposed for the 2 Peter-specific translation memory: never सनातन for αἰώνιος/eternal — always अनन्त.
- No 2 Peter-specific term requires abandoning the baseline Romans conventions; all extensions here are additive.
- Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are all represented in this gap analysis; no chapter is without at least one High-or-above collision risk requiring active fencing.