Executive Summary — Ephesians (Nepali) Language Package

Why it matters

Ephesians extends the Nepali Romans package into new theological territory — election, cosmic powers, mystery, headship, and household relationships — that Romans’ forensic/legal register never required. The core passage, Ephesians 2:1-10, contains the single highest-stakes lexical decision in this entire pipeline: whether “works” (ἔργον) is rendered काम or कर्म. Get this wrong and the passage’s central grace claim collapses into a philosophical statement about karma rather than a declaration of unmerited salvation. Nepal’s living memory of a state Hindu monarchy, its still-practiced Newar Tantric traditions, its 1963-abolished caste code, and its 2000/2008-abolished bonded-labor systems all intersect directly with specific verses in this letter — more densely than in Romans.

Key findings

• 61 individual terms are tagged Critical (13) or High (48) risk across the Ephesians term registry — nearly double the term-level density of comparable Romans chapters, because Ephesians’ doxological register (chs. 1, 3) repeatedly brushes against Hindu/Buddhist devotional and Tantric vocabulary that Romans’ legal register never touched.
• 31 of 36 tracked doctrines (3 Critical + 28 High) require mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence; only 3 are automated-only and 4 need native-speaker review.
• The grace/works antithesis (Eph 2:9-10) is elevated to Critical status specifically for this curriculum: कर्म must never render ἔργον, or the core passage’s argument inverts.
• Election and Predestination in Christ required an entirely new Critical term (पूर्वनिर्धारण गर्नु) — the Romans baseline never isolated this concept, since Romans’ election language (8:29-30) was folded into general “calling” vocabulary.
• Five terms demand mandatory standing clarifying notes at every single occurrence: रहस्य (mystery), युग (age), पूर्णता (fullness), स्वर्गीय स्थान (heavenly places), and ज्ञान (revealed knowledge) — each collides with Nepal’s Tantric, cyclical-cosmology, or self-attained-liberation religious vocabulary.
• Two deliberate, narrow, explained exceptions to standing baseline prohibitions were required: पवित्र मन्दिर (Eph 2:21 only, church-as-temple metaphor) and शक्ति for hostile forces only (Eph 6:12 only) — both flagged for mandatory theologian sign-off every time they appear.

Risks

• Highest risk: कर्म substituting for काम at Ephesians 2:9-10 would silently convert the core passage from a grace declaration into an anti-karma philosophy statement — a failure mode with no visible error signal unless specifically validated.
• High risk: प्रभु accidentally applied to the human “masters” of Ephesians 6:5/6:9 would blur the Critical, non-negotiable reservation of प्रभु for Christ’s Lordship — the single most tightly guarded term in the whole Language Package.
• High risk: Household codes (5:21-6:9) and idolatry/covetousness material (5:5) carry real social-tone risk in Nepal’s caste- and patriarchy-inflected, majority-Hindu/Buddhist context; mishandled framing could read as either endorsing bonded labor/patriarchal hierarchy or as gratuitously condemning neighbors’ mainstream religious practice.
• High risk: Spiritual warfare material (6:10-12) intersects with Nepal’s current legal restrictions on religious conversion; the “not against flesh and blood” qualifier must never be dropped.
• Moderate risk: Ephesians’ far denser use of the “in Christ” union formula (vs. Romans) raises the bar for cross-document consistency; any drift in ख्रीष्ट/येशू ख्रीष्ट rendering will be more visible and more consequential here than in Romans.

Opportunities

• Ephesians’ “dividing wall” (2:14) and “one new humanity” (2:15) imagery maps with unusual precision onto Nepal’s own Muluki Ain caste-separation history (in force until 1963), giving this curriculum a uniquely resonant, high-payoff teaching opportunity that Romans’ more abstract unity language did not offer as concretely.
• The letter’s insistence that spiritual gifts and church offices are Christ-apportioned, not self-attained or lineage-transmitted, directly and constructively engages Nepal’s guru-lineage and tantric-attainment religious models — an opportunity for clear doctrinal contrast rather than mere avoidance.
• Nearly all new Ephesians vocabulary was resolved through native Nepali paraphrase plus fencing rather than new transliteration, keeping the reading level accessible (Class 8-10) while still confronting, not evading, competing religious vocabulary.

Recommended actions

1. Merge assets/translation_memory.json (v2) and the Ephesians bible_term_registry.json/doctrine_risk_registry.json into Phase 2 tooling before any segment translation begins; do not allow Phase 2 to proceed on Romans-only memory.
2. Encode the twelve standing clarifying notes (rahasya, yug, gyan, purnata, swargiya sthan, etc.) as reusable footnote templates so reviewers are not re-deriving fencing language per occurrence.
3. Staff proportionally more theologian review capacity for Ephesians chapters 1, 3, and 6 than a uniform per-chapter allocation would suggest, given their markedly higher density of Critical/High flags.
4. Route every occurrence of the two narrow exceptions (पवित्र मन्दिर at 2:21; शक्ति at 6:12) through mandatory individual theologian sign-off — these are the two points in the glossary most likely to be silently over-generalized by a downstream editor.
5. Brief all reviewers explicitly on the काम-vs-कर्म distinction and the प्रभु-vs-मालिक split before Phase 2 begins; these two rules are the most likely to be violated by habit rather than by unfamiliarity with the material.