Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: Acts 1–28 (English → Pashto)
0. Purpose and Method
This document executes Phase 1 Step 8 for the Acts curriculum. It does not re-derive terms already fixed by the Romans baseline (translation_memory.json) — those are treated as settled law and are only referenced here where Acts’ narrative context intensifies, complicates, or newly stress-tests a baseline decision. Its purpose is to answer four questions for every load-bearing doctrine term surfaced in analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json:
- What Pashto vocabulary is available for this doctrine, and what are its weaknesses?
- Where is there genuinely missing vocabulary (no adequate native or loan term exists) versus a crowded semantic neighborhood (too many existing terms, each carrying unwanted theological baggage from Islam, Sufism, or Pashtunwali)?
- Where should the pipeline transliterate rather than paraphrase, and why?
- Of all the ambiguities surfaced, which are the highest-risk for this specific book, given that Acts is a first-person narrative of conversion, public preaching, miracle, and persecution — a genre profile very different from Romans’ epistolary argument?
Coverage is full-book: every chapter of Acts (1–28) was reviewed for new terminology per analysis/08_core_glossary.md; chapters contributing no new load-bearing vocabulary beyond what is already catalogued are noted in Section 5 as reviewed with no new gap findings.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the nine curriculum doctrines, the table below lists the available Pashto term(s), the specific weakness of each, and the recommended mitigation strategy. “Baseline” terms are enforced exactly per the Romans translation_memory.json; “New” terms are proposed in analysis/08_core_glossary.md Section B and carry provisional risk tiers pending Step 2 doctrine-registry extension.
1.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| روح القدس (Rooh-ul-Qudus) | Baseline, Critical | Mainstream Sunni tafsir identifies this exact Quranic phrase with the created angel Jibril, not a divine Person. | Reuse exactly; every occurrence in Acts 2, 5, 8, 10 must be paired with explicit personhood-affirming context (speaks, is lied to, is grieved, distributes gifts as he wills) rather than left as a bare noun phrase. |
| ډک شول (dak shol, “filled/was filled”) | New, High | Regional folk-Islamic vocabulary describes jinn possession with structurally similar “entering/filling” verbs; an unwary hearer may map Spirit-filling onto involuntary possession. | Always anchor “filled with the Spirit” to a willing, believing subject and an empowering (not controlling) result — bold speech, worship, wisdom — never fear, loss of control, or trance. |
| پنطیکوست (Pantikost) | New, High | No native equivalent; if left unglossed, hearers may substitute a generic Islamic eid-festival frame (fixed ritual calendar observance) for what is a one-time, unrepeatable historical event of fulfillment. | Transliterate with a mandatory explanatory gloss at first occurrence in every document: “پنطیکوست — د پنځوسمې ورځې مذهبي اختر [the fiftieth-day feast], کله چې روح القدس په مؤمنانو نازل شو.” |
| نورو ژبو (nore zhabe, “other tongues”) | New, Medium | Risk of collapse into unrelated regional ecstatic-utterance/trance-speech practices if “other” is read as “unintelligible.” | Render so the emphasis falls on real, distinct, recognizable human languages (Acts 2:6, 8, 11 — hearers understand their own native tongue); avoid vocabulary suggesting glossolalic ecstasy alone. |
1.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| انجیل (Injil) | Baseline, High | Shared tahrif (textual-corruption) assumption. | Reuse exactly; Acts’ repeated “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” pattern (13:46, 18:6, 28:28) should be taught alongside انجیل’s NT-record status, not conceded as a lost original. |
| غیر یهودیان (gheyr yahudian) | Baseline, Medium | None significant; deliberately avoids امتونه’s shirk-adjacent Ummah root. | Reuse exactly throughout Acts 10–15, 21–28. |
| پاک / ناپاک (pak/napak) | New, Critical | Near-total overlap with everyday-operative halal/haram and najis categories; Peter’s vision (Acts 10) risks being heard as abrogating Islamic dietary law rather than the Mosaic ceremonial code. | Always scope explicitly to “Mosah’s law’s food/purity rules” (د موسی د ناموس د خوراک قوانین) — never comment on or imply anything about contemporary halal/haram practice. |
| د خدای ویروونکی (God-fearer) | New, Medium | An obsolete first-century intermediate category with no living regional analogue; risk of hearers assuming an ongoing “half-convert” status is still available/required today. | Teach explicitly as historically obsolete: Gentiles in Acts 10 receive the Spirit and salvation directly, without any intermediate step now required. |
1.3 Repentance and Baptism
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| توبه (tuba) | New, High | Standard shared Islamic term embedded in a deeds-and-mercy, balance-scale repentance framework (tawba plus subsequent good works weighed by Allah). | Every occurrence must be anchored to a stated object of trust (Christ, his resurrection) and to Acts 11:18’s claim that God himself “granted” it — repentance as gift, not merit-generating turning. |
| تعمید (ta’amid) | New, Critical | No baseline precedent; risk of conflation with repeatable Islamic ritual purification (wudu/ghusl) for ritual eligibility to pray. | Never use for wudu/ghusl-type ritual washing. Teach explicitly as one-time, public, non-repeatable identification with Christ’s death and resurrection — and flag every occurrence for safety review given the severe real-world exposure public baptism creates for converts. |
| د ګناهانو بخښنه (forgiveness of sins) | New, Medium | Shared with Islamic maghfirah’s cumulative deeds-weighing framework. | State forgiveness as immediate and complete on faith and repentance, not partial or contingent on a future balance of good deeds. |
1.4 The Church as Community
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| کلیسا (kalisa) | Baseline, Critical | Forbidden substitution امت must never appear. Acts adds the concrete image of a scattered, house-meeting, sometimes-underground community (2:46; 5:42; 8:1; 12:12). | Reuse exactly; use Acts’ own persecuted/dispersed pattern as the explicit teaching model for today’s underground house-church reality, rather than assuming a public building. |
| لار (lar, “The Way”) | New, High | طریقه (tariqa) is the obvious native-feeling alternative but is the standard word for a Sufi mystical brotherhood/order — using it would recast the church as one more Sufi tariqa among others. | Never use طریقه. Use لار with a mandatory gloss at first occurrence: “لار — د عیسی مسیح پیروانو ته لومړنی نوم.” |
| مشران (mashran, “elders”) | New, Medium | Strong positive overlap with the Pashtunwali jirga elder-authority structure (age/lineage-based). | Explicitly distinguish: church elders are a scripturally-qualified spiritual office (character, doctrine, ability to teach), not simply the oldest or most tribally prominent men. |
| ټول شیان په ګډه لرل (all things in common) | New, Medium | Risk of being heard through the reciprocity-generating melmastia hospitality lens (gifts create repayment obligation) or as enforced collectivism. | Frame explicitly as voluntary, Spirit-produced generosity flowing from grace (فضل), with no repayment expectation and no coercion. |
1.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| رسول (rasul) | Baseline, High | Collides with Muhammad’s defining title within the shared shahada framework. | Reuse exactly; Acts 15’s apostolic council additionally shows governing doctrinal authority exercised corporately — must not be reduced to a generic spiritual-guide/pir role. |
| نښانې او عجایبات (signs and wonders) | New, High | کرامات (karamat) — miracles worked through a Sufi saint’s personal holiness/barakat — is the obvious “natural-sounding” alternative and must be avoided. | Never render with کرامات. Teach apostolic signs as unique divine attestation of the gospel message itself, not evidence of the apostle’s personal spiritual potency. |
| لاس ایښودل (laying on of hands) | New, Medium | Overlaps with regional pir/folk-healer hand-laying practice, popularly attributed to personal barakat. | Attribute efficacy explicitly to the Holy Spirit’s own action, never to the minister’s personal spiritual power. |
| جادو / جادوګر (sorcery) and د فال ویلو روح (spirit of divination) | New, High | Risk of validating the broader regional occult/jinn-exorcism framework as generally real and merely “outmatched” by a stronger power. | Frame Christ’s authority as categorically superior in kind, not degree — the confrontation is not “stronger magic beats weaker magic.” |
1.6 Persecution and Bold Witness
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| زړورتوب (boldness) | New, High | Could be heard as license for reckless indifference to real danger. | Teach as Spirit-given courage exercised with wisdom (cf. Paul’s own strategic withdrawals, e.g., Acts 9:25, 17:10), never recklessness. |
| شاهد / شاهدي ورکول (witness) | New, Critical | Root shares its consonantal shape and etymological field with شهید (shahīd), the emotionally loaded Islamic jihad-martyrdom term denoting a violent death guaranteed paradise. | Restrict strictly to the evidentiary/testimonial sense (eyewitness to the resurrection) in Acts 1:8, 22; 2:32; 3:15; 10:39; 22:15; never allow bleed-through into the shahīd sense until the explicit narrative contrast at Stephen’s death. |
| د شاهدۍ په وخت کې مړینه (martyrdom) | New, Critical | Same root risk as above, intensified: Stephen’s death (Acts 7) is the paradigm case where confusion with shahīd-ideology is most likely and most damaging. | Explicit, mandatory doctrinal contrast at every occurrence: Stephen dies forgiving his killers (7:60), following Christ’s own pattern — the opposite of dying while inflicting violence for a guaranteed reward. |
1.7 Conversion of Paul
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| آسماني رویا (heavenly vision) | New, Medium | Genuine bridge with regional dream/vision legitimacy (ru’ya, kashf) — an asset, but risks over-generalizing to validate ongoing personal revelation as equally authoritative. | Anchor firmly to this unique, historical, once-for-all encounter with the risen Christ; do not extend the category to validate ordinary contemporary dreams as equivalent revelation. |
| غورول شوی لوښی / غوره شوی لوښی (chosen vessel) | New, Medium | None major; reinforces baseline “election” caution. | Use to underscore that a former violent persecutor was sovereignly chosen — election is unrelated to lineage, merit, or prior record. |
| د بشر زوی (Son of Man) | New, High | Risk of being flattened to “merely a human being,” reinforcing the default prophet-only Christology. | Always teach alongside Daniel 7’s exalted, enthroned, divine-authority sense; never present as a “lesser,” more human alternative to “Son of God.” |
1.8 Justification apart from the Law
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| ناموس (namus) | Baseline, Critical | Must be distinguished from both شریعت (shari’a) and Pashtunwali custom simultaneously — a double distinction unique to this language pair. | Reuse exactly; Acts 15, 21 stage the “Law vs. grace” controversy as a live narrative conflict, giving concrete teaching opportunities for the double distinction. |
| ختنه (circumcision) | New, High | Also a near-universal regional cultural/religious practice (khatna/sunnat) performed on nearly all boys regardless of household’s faith. | Clarify precisely: the Acts 15 debate concerns circumcision’s salvific necessity (answered no), not a condemnation of the practice itself as culturally observed. |
| اېږه / جوغه (yoke of the law) | New, Medium | Agrarian image, low mechanical risk, but easily reduced to decorative metaphor. | Pair explicitly with the doctrinal point: law as unbearable burden versus grace’s freedom (Acts 15:10-11). |
| فیصله (council decree) | New, Medium | Risk of being heard as an ongoing fatwa-issuing magisterial authority. | Frame as Spirit-guided, collegial pastoral wisdom for a specific historical question, not a template for an ongoing legislative body with binding authority over new questions. |
1.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled
| Available term | Status | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| ماموریت (mission) | Baseline, High | Acute, potentially life-threatening real-world safety risk for readers, especially in Taliban-controlled regions. | Reuse exactly; treat Acts as this doctrine’s primary narrative outworking, with safety-sensitivity review on every occurrence per baseline escalation rules. |
| د ځمکې تر پایه (to the end of the earth) | New, High | Same acute mission-safety sensitivity as ماموریت. | Handle with the same review routing as evangelism/mission vocabulary. |
| پرته له خنډ، ټول زړورتوب سره (unhindered proclamation) | New, High | Risk of being misheard as a promise of unhindered proclamation in every present context, which is false and pastorally dangerous for readers under real, ongoing restriction. | Frame the transferable truth carefully: the gospel’s ultimate advance is unstoppable, not that individual believers will be free from present danger, arrest, or worse. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no adequate native or loan term exists)
These concepts have no existing Pashto lexical item that carries the needed sense; the pipeline must either transliterate with a gloss or construct a periphrastic compound.
| Concept | Gap | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Pentecost (a specific, unrepeatable, fulfilled-prophecy feast day) | No native festival-name equivalent; Pashto’s festival vocabulary is built around the Islamic ritual calendar (اختر, عید). | Transliterate پنطیکوست + mandatory explanatory gloss at first occurrence per document. |
| ”Filled with the Spirit” as a total, willing, empowering indwelling (distinct from possession) | Existing “filling” vocabulary (ډکول) is generic; no dedicated term distinguishes Spirit-indwelling from jinn-possession idiom. | Retain ډک شول but require accompanying descriptive clause (willing subject + empowering result) at first occurrence in each teaching unit. |
| Baptism as one-time, non-repeatable, public Christian rite | No native rite-name exists; nearest neighbors (وضو، غسل) are repeatable ritual-purity acts. | Retain تعمید (established already in prior Acts registry) as a dedicated loan-coinage, never a native purification word. |
| Sanhedrin (a specific 1st-century Jewish judicial-religious council) | No structural analogue exists as a named native institution. | Transliterate سنهدرین with descriptive gloss (“د یهودانو لویه عدلي شورا”), consistent with prior registry. |
| ”Chosen vessel” / “instrument” (σκεῦος ἐκλογῆς) as a figure of speech for a person set apart for a task | No idiomatic Pashto equivalent for “vessel” as a metaphor for a human agent exists outside literal container vocabulary. | Retain the constructed compound غوره شوی لوښی; gloss at first occurrence so “لوښی” (vessel/container) is not misheard literally. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (too many available terms, each carrying unwanted baggage — require deliberate “fencing”)
Fencing means: select one term, explicitly reject the others, and state the rejection reason so translators and reviewers never drift toward the forbidden neighbor.
| Concept | Competing terms in the neighborhood | Term selected | Terms fenced out (and why) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Witness / testimony under persecution | شاهد (witness) / شهید (shahīd, jihad-martyr) / ګواه (legal witness, secular) | شاهد / شاهدي ورکول, restricted to evidentiary sense | شهید fenced out entirely — its paradise-guaranteed-through-violent-death sense is the opposite of what Acts 1:8, 22:15 mean; ګواه fenced out as too flatly legal/secular for the theological weight of eyewitness-to-resurrection testimony. |
| The Christian movement’s identity/way of life | لار (way) / طریقه (Sufi order) / دین (religion, systemic) / مذهب (sect/denomination) | لار, with gloss | طریقه fenced out — recasts the church as a mystical brotherhood; دین and مذهب fenced out as too abstractly systemic/institutional for Acts’ original grassroots self-designation. |
| Miracle-working power | نښانې او عجایبات (signs and wonders) / کرامات (Sufi saint’s miracles) / معجزه (miracle, neutral) | نښانې او عجایبات (established) | کرامات fenced out — ties miracle to a saint’s personal holiness/barakat rather than to unique divine attestation of the apostolic gospel message; معجزه alone permitted only as a plain descriptive gloss, never as the primary doctrinal term, since it lacks the “attestation” nuance. |
| Turning from sin | توبه (tawba) / بدلون (change/transformation, secular) / تغیر زړه (change of heart) | توبه, with mandatory reframing | بدلون and تغیر زړه fenced out as primary renderings — too weak/secular to carry the weight of a decisive Spirit-enabled reorientation toward Christ, though may appear in explanatory paraphrase. |
| Ceremonial/ritual purity status | پاک / ناپاک (established) / حلال، حرام (halal/haram) / نجس (najis) | پاک / ناپاک, scoped explicitly to Mosaic ceremonial law | حلال/حرام and نجس fenced out as primary renderings — using them would make Acts 10 sound like a ruling on Islamic dietary law rather than the Mosaic ceremonial code it actually addresses. |
| Elder/leadership office | مشران (established) / ملا (mullah, formal Islamic clergy) / پیر (pir, Sufi spiritual guide) | مشران, with explicit qualification | ملا fenced out — implies formal Islamic clerical training/ordination categories foreign to the text; پیر fenced out — implies a spiritual-guide/disciple hierarchy and hereditary shrine authority foreign to the biblical elder qualification. |
| Repentance-plus-forgiveness transaction | د ګناهانو بخښنه (established) / مغفرت (maghfirah, deeds-weighing) | د ګناهانو بخښنه, reframed as immediate/complete | مغفرت not formally rejected (shares the root) but must always appear with explicit teaching that forgiveness here is complete and immediate on faith, not partial pending a future deeds-balance. |
| Church as covenant community | کلیسا (established) / امت (Ummah, forbidden) / جماعت (jama’at, generic gathering/Islamic congregational term) | کلیسا | امت remains absolutely forbidden per baseline; جماعت fenced out as a live option — it is the standard word for a mosque congregation/Islamic political-religious grouping and would blur the church’s distinct covenant identity. |
| Divine calling/selection | بلل شوی / غوره کول (established) / قسمت، تقدیر (qismat, taqdir — fate/destiny) | بلل شوی / غوره کول | قسمت and تقدیر fenced out — both carry impersonal-fatalism connotations (folk qadar) rather than a personal God’s purposive redemptive choice. |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
The following table records, for every term where the choice between transliteration (loan word, possibly with gloss) and paraphrase (native periphrastic construction) was live, the decision taken and its rationale. This extends the baseline’s own precedent (e.g., انجیل, مسیح as transliterations; صادق ګڼل کیدل as a periphrastic compound).
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Pentecost | Transliterate (پنطیکوست) + mandatory gloss | No native festival-name equivalent exists; paraphrasing risks losing the proper-noun, historically-anchored, once-for-all character of the day and inviting confusion with a recurring festival category. |
| Baptism | Transliterate/loan-coin (تعمید), never paraphrase as “washing” (پاکول) or “purification” | A plain paraphrase using native washing-vocabulary would immediately collapse into the wudu/ghusl ritual-purity neighborhood; a dedicated loan-coinage keeps the rite terminologically walled off. |
| Sanhedrin | Transliterate (سنهدرین) + descriptive gloss | Proper-noun institution with no structural native analogue; a paraphrase (“Jewish council”) loses the specific historical body’s identity across repeated narrative references (chs. 4-6, 22-23). |
| Hades | Transliterate (هاډیس), never paraphrase as دوزخ (hell/Jahannam) | Paraphrase using the native word for final eternal punishment would theologically conflate the intermediate state of death (which Christ conquers in the resurrection) with final judgment — a doctrinally serious error, not merely a stylistic one. |
| Christian(s) | Transliterate/loan (مسیحي), not paraphrase as “follower of the Way” throughout | مسیحي is already the established regional identity-term and is needed as a stable proper-designation once introduced narratively (Acts 11:26); paraphrase-only usage would make the text awkwardly avoid naming the very identity Acts itself names. |
| The Way | Paraphrase native term + gloss (لار, glossed “د عیسی مسیح لار”) rather than transliterating a Greek loan | Greek ὁδός has no natural transliterated form Pashto readers would recognize; a native word capturing “path/way of life” combined with an explicit gloss preserves both naturalness and precision, while avoiding the transliteration-would-be-meaningless problem. |
| Signs and wonders | Paraphrase (نښانې او عجایبات), reject transliteration of Greek sēmeia/terata | A Greek loanword here would be opaque to readers and would forfeit the chance to use plain, everyday Pashto nouns that nonetheless avoid the کرامات trap; paraphrase with careful term selection is superior to a meaningless transliteration. |
| Chosen vessel | Paraphrase/compound (غوره شوی لوښی) + gloss | Purely idiomatic Greek metaphor; transliteration is meaningless, and the literal image (a container set apart for special use) is recoverable in Pashto with a brief explanatory gloss. |
| Servant (pais) title | Paraphrase (خادم) always paired with fuller titles, never left as a standalone transliteration | Standing alone as a bare native word, خادم risks confirming a “merely a servant/prophet” reading; pairing (never isolating) mitigates this without requiring a specialized transliterated form. |
| Council decree (“it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”) | Paraphrase (فیصله) with explicit non-magisterial framing, not a transliterated technical term | No Greek technical term to transliterate (edoxen is a common verb, not a proper noun); a native decision-word is adequate provided the framing note is consistently applied. |
| Spirit of divination (pneuma pythōnos) | Paraphrase (د فال ویلو روح), not transliterate “Python spirit” | A transliterated “Python” reference (the Greek mythological allusion) would be opaque and could even be misheard as referring to the literal snake; the descriptive paraphrase names the functional activity (fortune-telling) clearly. |
General rule derived from this analysis: transliterate only where (a) the concept is a genuine proper noun/historical institution with no structural native analogue (Pentecost, Sanhedrin, Hades), or (b) an existing baseline precedent already established the transliterated form (مسیح, عیسی, انجیل). Everywhere else — especially for metaphors, compound theological titles, and descriptive activities — prefer a carefully fenced native paraphrase over an opaque loanword, since an unrecognizable transliteration provides no doctrinal protection at all.
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of collision with a pre-loaded competing frame × real-world safety consequence where applicable), specific to what Acts newly introduces or intensifies beyond the Romans baseline.
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شاهد/شاهدي (witness) vs. شهید (shahīd, jihad-martyr). The single highest risk in the entire Acts package: near-identical root, radically opposite content (evidentiary testimony to a historical resurrection vs. a violent death guaranteed paradise), occurring at the book’s programmatic thesis verse (1:8) and recurring through every major sermon. Any drift toward the shahīd sense would actively distort the doctrine of Persecution and Bold Witness at its foundation.
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تعمید (baptism) vs. وضو/غسل (Islamic ritual purification). Critical doctrinal collision (repeatable ritual cleansing vs. one-time public identification with Christ) compounded by acute, potentially life-threatening real-world exposure for converts in restrictive regions — a doctrinal and physical-safety risk simultaneously.
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پاک/ناپاک (clean/unclean) vs. حلال/حرام/نجس (halal/haram/najis). Acts 10’s abrogation of Mosaic ceremonial food law is the most exegetically vulnerable point in the whole book to being misheard as commentary on contemporary Islamic dietary law — a category error that would derail the entire Cornelius narrative’s actual point (Gentile inclusion) into an unrelated and inflammatory legal debate.
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لار (the Way) vs. طریقه (Sufi tariqa). If this fence fails even once in a widely circulated document, the entire ecclesiology of Acts could be reframed in readers’ minds as one more mystical brotherhood among many regional Sufi orders, undermining the uniqueness claims embedded in Church as Community and Apostolic Authority doctrines.
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کرامات (Sufi saint miracles) as an attractive but forbidden rendering for نښانې او عجایبات (signs and wonders). Because کرامات is the single most natural-sounding native option for a translator working quickly, it is a high-probability accidental substitution risk, not merely a theoretical one; it would silently recast apostolic authority as generic holy-man barakat.
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توبه (repentance) inside the shared deeds-and-mercy (tawba) framework. Acts uses repentance more densely and more evangelistically than Romans (2:38, 3:19, 17:30, 26:20); the risk of readers hearing a merit-generating religious act rather than a Spirit-granted (11:18) reorientation of trust is structurally present at every occurrence, not just isolated verses.
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د بشر زوی (Son of Man) collapsing into “merely a man.” Occurring at the doctrinally loaded climax of Stephen’s martyrdom vision (7:56), a flattened reading directly reinforces the default prophet-only Christology precisely where the text intends the opposite — an exalted, enthroned divine-human figure.
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مسیحي (Christian) carrying a foreign/Western or Quranic “Nasara” connotation. Because this term functions as the primary in-group identity marker across nearly every subsequent teaching document in this curriculum, an unaddressed negative connotation at first introduction (11:26) would compound across the whole curriculum rather than remain a local, contained risk.
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مشران (elders) collapsing into jirga tribal-elder authority. High-frequency term (chs. 11, 14, 15, 20, 21) governing how house-church leadership itself is taught and modeled; an unfenced reading would import age/lineage-based tribal authority structures into what must be a scripturally-qualified spiritual office, with downstream effects on real church governance practice among readers.
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پرته له خنډ (unhindered proclamation) read as a present-tense safety guarantee. Acts’ triumphant closing note (28:31) is pastorally double-edged: read carelessly by a persecuted reader, it risks producing either false expectation of safety or, worse, despair when current experience contradicts an apparent promise; this ambiguity is unique to Acts and has no Romans-baseline precedent to draw on.
5. Full-Book Chapter Review Note
Every chapter of Acts (1–28) was reviewed against analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json for this gap analysis. Chapters not separately discussed above (notably 4, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22–27) contribute terms already fully catalogued in Sections 1–4 above (e.g., “great grace” ch. 4; deacon/service ch. 6; household baptism ch. 16; unknown god/idols ch. 17; vow/sect ch. 18/24; heavenly vision recounted chs. 22, 26) and are confirmed reviewed with no additional gap findings beyond what is recorded here. No chapter was silently omitted from this analysis.
This document feeds Phase 1 Step 9 (doctrine risk registry extension) and the eventual Acts extension of translation_memory.json. All decisions above are subordinate to and must never contradict the Romans baseline Language Package; where this analysis proposes a new term, it inherits the same enforcement priority rules defined in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md once ratified.