Executive Summary — Luke 1–24 Nepali Language Package

Why it matters

Luke is the Gospel curriculum’s narrative anchor for reaching Nepal’s still-young, historically restricted church with a Savior “for all nations and all people” — Jew and Gentile, rich and poor. That claim lands in a country whose caste hierarchy was formally codified in state law (the Muluki Ain) until 1963, whose monarchy was constitutionally linked to Vishnu-avatar theology until 2008, and whose Hindu, Newar Vajrayana Buddhist, and shamanic traditions each supply ready-made, still-practiced vocabulary that can quietly hijack Luke’s core claims — from salvation-as-liberation-from-rebirth to a living virgin-goddess cult sharing Mary’s very title. This package extends the proven Romans baseline discipline into Luke’s distinct narrative, healing, and table-fellowship material, where the collision risk is, if anything, more concrete and more frequent.

Key findings

• Full-book coverage confirmed. All 24 chapters of Luke were reviewed for load-bearing doctrine and vocabulary (07_semantic_analysis.md, 11_doctrine_analysis.md); only chapter 13 introduced no new term or doctrine, and this was explicitly recorded, not silently skipped.
• 29 doctrines identified, extending the Romans doctrine_risk_registry.json schema exactly: 10 Critical, 12 High, 5 Medium, 2 Low. 22 of 29 (76%) require human theologian review; 5 require native-speaker review; only 2 are automated-only.
• 100 terms are now enforced in Luke’s translation memory: 38 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline (परमेश्वर, येशू, प्रभु, पवित्र आत्मा, उद्धार, धार्मिकता, etc.) and 62 new terms Luke specifically requires. Of these 100 terms, 20 are Critical and 34 are High risk — 54 terms (54%) require mandatory human theologian review on every occurrence.
• Luke introduces at least four collision risks with no clean Romans precedent: कुमारी (Virgin) shares its exact title with the living Kumari Devi cult; करुणा is rejected for “compassion” because it is Newar Buddhism’s central bodhisattva virtue-title; अभिषेक (anoint) is literally the Shah-dynasty coronation term; and both पातालपुरी (Hades) and स्वर्ग (Paradise) are existing Puranic/Hindu cosmological terms carrying residual, unresolved mythological risk that must be managed by mandatory context, not lexical substitution.
• The core passage, Luke 4:16-21, functions as Luke’s thesis statement (parallel to Romans 1:16-17) and concentrates five of the highest-risk decisions in the whole package: सुसमाचार, अभिषेक गर्नु, छुटकारा, गरीब, and पूरा भएको छ.

Risks

• Highest-risk unresolved items (ranked in 06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md): Virgin (कुमारी, Critical, no substitute exists), Savior (उद्धारकर्ता vs. त्राता, Critical, a new coinage without inherited devotional weight), Paradise and Hades (both High, both borrowing existing Hindu cosmological geography), Anointing (High, direct Shah-monarchy ritual collision), Compassion (High, Buddhist bodhisattva collision), Kingdom “in your midst” (High, a single preposition choice separates corporate Christ-centered proclamation from Buddhist/Hindu inner-enlightenment readings).
• Legal, not merely cultural, exposure: Evangelism/Witness passages (Luke 9, 10, 24) and the Nazareth manifesto’s “proclaim” language sit against Nepal’s 2017 Muluki Criminal Code restrictions on religious conversion — a live legal risk, not an abstract sensitivity, repeating and extending the same flag the Romans package raised.
• Caste-collision doctrines carry real social stakes: table fellowship with sinners/tax collectors, the Good Samaritan, and universal salvation language all directly confront commensality and access rules formally in force under the Muluki Ain until 1963 and still socially felt; softening these in translation would blunt doctrine the source text intends to be confrontational.
• Two terms are retained “least-bad” without full resolution: पातालपुरी (Hades) and स्वर्ग (Paradise) both import existing mythological geography and require mandatory disambiguating context at every single occurrence — this is a standing residual risk, not a solved problem, and must be tracked through Phase 2 and Phase 3 review.

Opportunities

• Luke’s narrative form is a pedagogical asset. Unlike Romans’ argumentative density, Luke’s parables (prodigal son, Good Samaritan) and concrete scenes (Zacchaeus, the Emmaus road) give this young, often newly literate and newly Christian audience vivid, memorable entry points into doctrines that are otherwise abstract — cost/joy of discipleship, repentance, compassion.
• Direct cultural bridge on caste. The Good Samaritan and Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors offer a built-in, textually authentic bridge to Nepal’s own Dalit-inclusion conversation, requiring no imported illustration — the comparative theology work in 04_comparative_theology.md is ready to support teaching notes here.
• Reinforces rather than duplicates the Romans investment. 38 of the package’s 100 enforced terms are exact, zero-cost reuse of Romans baseline decisions, meaning translator and reviewer training already completed for Romans carries forward directly.

Recommended actions

1. Route all 54 Critical/High terms and 22 Critical/High doctrines through mandatory human theologian review before any Phase 2 segment touching them is marked approved, per assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json routing.
2. Lock the core passage (Luke 4:16-21) renderings first, before parallel batch processing of thematically related chapters (6, 7, 14, 15) begins, since their vocabulary depends on the core passage’s fenced decisions (per the Performance Notes in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md).
3. Treat कुमारी, अभिषेक गर्नु, पातालपुरी, स्वर्ग, and तिमीहरूको माझमा as mandatory-context terms requiring a translator note on every occurrence, not just the first — flag this explicitly to reviewers as a residual risk not eliminated by lexical choice alone.
4. Brief reviewers using 04_comparative_theology.md before Phase 2 begins, so theologian and native-speaker reviewers recognize collision risk on sight rather than discovering it mid-review.
5. Carry the evangelism/legal-risk flag forward into Phase 3 pastoral review, ensuring any public-facing study material framing proclamation avoids recruitment-style language given current Nepali law.