Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: Ephesians — Pashto Destination Language
0. Method and Scope Note
This analysis extends the Romans baseline translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json without contradicting any established rendering. It covers every chapter of Ephesians (1-6). Chapters or sections that introduce no new terms or doctrinal risk beyond what is already logged are explicitly marked “reviewed, no new gap” rather than omitted. The nine assigned curriculum doctrines structure Section 1; Sections 2-4 re-cut the same underlying data by linguistic problem type (missing vocabulary, crowded neighborhoods, transliteration decisions, ranked ambiguity) as required by Step 8 deliverables.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
1.1 Salvation by Grace through Faith (Eph 1:2, 6-7; 2:1-10; 3:2, 7-8; 4:7, 29; 6:24)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | فضل (grace, baseline), ایمان (faith, baseline), ډالۍ (gift, new), کارونه / ښه کارونه (works / good works, new), فخر کول (boast, new) |
| Weaknesses | Pashtunwali’s melmastia hospitality code treats any gift from a superior as reciprocity-creating; a literal ډالۍ from God risks being heard as the opening move of an honor exchange requiring repayment. Separately, کارونه (works) sits directly beside Islamic mizan (deeds-weighing at judgment) and Pashtunwali honor-earned-by-deeds logic — both frameworks make “salvation apart from works” counter-intuitive rather than merely unfamiliar. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain فضل/ایمان/ډالۍ exactly per registry. At every 2:8-9 occurrence, pair ډالۍ with an explicit teaching gloss (“this gift asks for no repayment”) rather than trusting the noun alone. Keep the کارونه (excluded) / ښه کارونه (fruit) distinction visually and grammatically sharp — never merge the two into one Pashto lexeme, since Paul’s own rhetorical force depends on the reader detecting the shared root and the reversed logic. |
1.2 Election and Predestination in Christ (Eph 1:4-5, 11)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | غوره کول (election, baseline), مخکې ټاکل شوی (predestined, new), د خدای تدبیر (providence, baseline) |
| Weaknesses | Sunni qadar theology (one of the six pillars of iman) has already primed Pashto readers to hear any “God decided beforehand” language as blanket, often fatalistic, cosmic decree covering all events including damnation, disaster, and everyday fortune — popularly received with resignation (“that was written”). Pashtun tribal culture additionally colors “chosenness” with lineage/bloodline prestige, which risks reframing election as bloodline favoritism rather than free grace. |
| Recommended strategy | Never introduce مخکې ټاکل شوی or غوره کول without the qualifying phrase “په مسیح کې” (in Christ) immediately attached, every occurrence, no exceptions. Teaching material must explicitly contrast this Christ-anchored, redemptive election with (a) generalized qadar fatalism and (b) tribal-lineage chosenness. Treat as a standing footnote requirement, not a one-time explanation. |
1.3 The Church as the Body of Christ (Eph 1:22-23; 2:19-22; 4:4, 12, 16; 5:23, 30)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | کلیسا (church, baseline, Critical), د مسیح بدن (body of Christ, new), معبد (temple/living, new), د کونج ډبره (cornerstone, new), د خدای کورنۍ (household of God, new) |
| Weaknesses | کلیسا itself has no visible-institution referent for most readers, since public church buildings are largely absent or dangerous to identify in Taliban-controlled and similarly restrictive areas — the word must denote a living, dispersed, sometimes secret community, not a place. معبد separately risks a false cognate pull toward جومات (mosque) as “the building where the religious community gathers,” exactly the opposite of Paul’s point that believers themselves are the building. |
| Recommended strategy | Consistently modify معبد with “ژوندی” (living) at first use in each lesson: ژوندی معبد. Never let کلیسا stand alone as a lesson’s only image of the church; pair it structurally with د مسیح بدن and د خدای کورنۍ so the corporate-organic and corporate-familial senses reinforce the non-building sense. |
1.4 Unity of Jews and Gentiles in One New Humanity (Eph 2:11-22; 3:6; 4:3-6)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | غیر یهودیان (Gentiles, baseline), اسرائیل (Israel, baseline), د اسرائیل ټولنه (commonwealth of Israel, new), نوی انسان (one new man, new), پخلاینه (reconciliation, new), د بېلتون دیوال (dividing wall, new), یووالی (unity, new) |
| Weaknesses | Two separate collision paths converge here. First, general pan-Islamic solidarity sentiment attaches to اسرائیل as a live political referent, though this is less acute in Afghanistan/Pakistan than in Iran or the Arab-majority world. Second, and more structurally significant: یووالی (unity) risks being heard through the lens of tawhid’s own emphatic doctrine of God’s numerical, indivisible oneness — Ephesians 4:4-6’s sevenfold “one” is a claim about diverse-body unity around one Lord, not a restatement of tawhid’s singular-essence claim. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain اسرائیل with deliberate pastoral framing per baseline precedent; the theological point (Gentile inclusion, not modern geopolitics) must be foregrounded explicitly in teaching notes at every 2:11-22 occurrence. For یووالی, teaching material must state directly that this “oneness” describes a body of many distinct members, not the metaphysical singularity of the divine essence — flag for native speaker review at minimum, theologian review recommended given the doctrinal adjacency to tawhid. |
1.5 The Mystery of Christ Revealed (Eph 1:9; 3:3-9; 5:32; 6:19)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | راز (mystery, new), بشپړتیا (fullness, new) |
| Weaknesses | This is the single sharpest new collision surface introduced by Ephesians beyond the Romans baseline. راز is deeply embedded in the region’s Sufi devotional tradition (Rahman Baba, Khushal Khan Khattak, and the wider tariqa culture) as an esoteric secret disclosed progressively, and only to a spiritually advanced initiate (murid) under a master’s (pir’s) guidance. Ephesians’ μυστήριον is the theological opposite: a plan once hidden, now fully and publicly disclosed to every believer with no elite tier of access. بشپړتیا carries a parallel risk toward Sufi wahdat al-wujud (“unity of being”) pantheistic monism — “all things filled with God” — where Ephesians means Christ’s own personal, relational filling of his own body, the church. |
| Recommended strategy | Every occurrence of راز and بشپړتیا requires mandatory human theologian review, not merely native-speaker review — this is a stricter routing than the Romans baseline required for any single term. Teaching material accompanying both terms should state the negative case explicitly (“not a secret hidden from ordinary believers,” “not the idea that God’s being fills and equals all things”) rather than relying on positive definition alone. |
1.6 Spiritual Warfare and the Armor of God (Eph 1:21; 2:2; 3:10; 6:10-20)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | د خدای وسله (armor of God, new), روحاني واکمنۍ او ځواکونه (rulers/authorities/powers, new), د هوا واکمن (ruler of the power of the air, new), د خدای کلام (word of God/sword, new) |
| Weaknesses | This is the single highest real-world safety risk in the entire letter. وسله (weapons/arms) is not a neutral metaphor-word in this context — it carries the full weight of decades of literal armed conflict, tribal badal feuding, and, critically, Taliban jihadist rhetorical framing of “armor/weapons of God/Allah” for literal combat. A careless or under-explained rendering could be read, or deliberately misread by a hostile listener, as endorsing literal armed struggle. Separately, رهني واکمنۍ او ځواکونه intersects with a live regional belief in jinn as a populated, morally mixed unseen-world taxonomy; Ephesians presents one already-defeated singular enemy (شیطان), not a crowded spirit-hierarchy of ambiguous moral status. |
| Recommended strategy | د خدای وسله and every “powers/authorities” term in 6:10-20 require theologian review at every single occurrence — apply the same review discipline the Romans baseline already mandates for Mission and Evangelism. Teaching material must state, every time, in direct unambiguous language: this armor is exclusively spiritual, exclusively defensive, and never a warrant for literal violence. Given persecution-context safety, consider parallel oral/audio explanation rather than relying on written footnotes alone (per the baseline’s literacy note). |
1.7 Household Codes and Christ-Centered Relationships (Eph 5:21-6:9)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | غاړه ایښودل (submit, new), سر (head, new), یوه غوښه (one flesh, new), غلام (bondservant, new), مالک (master-human, new) |
| Weaknesses | غاړه ایښودل (“submit,” literally “to place the neck”) sits at a triple collision point: (1) Islam’s own definitional submission (the very meaning of islam) owed exclusively to God, which could make “submit to your husband” sound like a rival, illegitimate object of ultimate submission; (2) Pashtunwali’s own honor-code expectations of submission to tribal elders and household patriarchs, an entirely separate authority system Paul is not endorsing wholesale; (3) the internal risk that 5:21’s mutual submission (“submitting to one another”) is read past or forgotten by the time the reader reaches 5:22’s wife-specific instruction, collapsing a mutual principle into a one-directional command. سر (head) defaults, in Pashtun patriarchal family culture, to stern control rather than Christ’s self-sacrificial model in 5:25. |
| Recommended strategy | 5:21 must never be omitted, paraphrased away, or treated as merely introductory; teaching material should present 5:21 and 5:22 as a single unbroken unit. Every occurrence of سر in 5:23 must be immediately qualified by reference to 5:25’s self-giving pattern within the same teaching unit, not left to a separate cross-reference. مالک must never be corrected back to خداوند in 6:5-9 — this reversal risk is explicit and high because مالک was rejected elsewhere in the baseline as “too transactional” for divine Lordship, which is precisely why it is correct and required here. |
1.8 Gifts for Building Up the Church (Eph 4:7-16)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | روحاني ورکړې (spiritual gifts, baseline), د انجیل ویناوال (evangelist, new), شپون (pastor/shepherd, new), بشپړ انسان (mature man, new) |
| Weaknesses | شپون is a genuine cultural asset (a well-established, positively-resonant regional shepherding image) with low independent risk. د انجیل ویناوال carries the same severe real-world safety risk already flagged Critical for mission/evangelism vocabulary generally — naming this as a formal “office” in written teaching material could itself be a security liability for anyone identified as holding it. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain روحاني strictly as a qualifier in every occurrence of روحاني ورکړې so it is never read as ordinary natural talent. Handle د انجیل ویناوال with the same security-aware discretion the baseline already applies to ماموریت — consider whether naming specific office-holders in any given teaching context is itself unsafe, independent of the translation choice itself. |
1.9 Walking in Newness of Life (Eph 2:1-3, 10; 4:1, 17-24; 5:1-2, 8, 15)
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available Pashto terms | چلند کول (walk/conduct, new), زوړ انسان / نوی انسان (old/new self, new), نفس (flesh-ethical, new), د خدای پیروي کوونکي (imitators of God, new) |
| Weaknesses | نفس is a live, positively-loaded Islamic ethical category (the “lower self” disciplined through fasting, prayer, and piety) — an achievable self-mastery project. Paul’s σάρξ in Ephesians names a condition of spiritual death requiring God’s unilateral resurrecting action, not a manageable appetite. This is a subtle but serious risk: a reader could hear 2:3 and 4:22 as “discipline your نفس” rather than “you were dead and God alone made you alive.” |
| Recommended strategy | چلند کول must be rendered with the exact same lexeme at every one of its seven occurrences (2:2, 2:10, 4:1, 4:17, 5:2, 5:8, 5:15) so the letter’s structural before/after argument remains visible in Pashto as it is in Greek. Every occurrence of نفس in Ephesians 2:3 and 4:22 requires an explicit teaching gloss distinguishing Paul’s “dead in the flesh” claim from nafs-discipline piety — this cannot be left to context alone given how load-bearing and familiar the Islamic category already is. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (no adequate native/established term exists; coinage or compounding required)
| Concept | Passage | Gap | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Predestined (redemptive, Christ-anchored sense) | 1:5, 1:11 | No single Pashto word distinguishes God’s Christ-centered predestining purpose from generalized qadar fatalism | Compound مخکې ټاکل شوی, always bound to “په مسیح کې” |
| Made alive together with Christ | 2:5 | No existing verb captures co-resurrection-with-Christ as a single event | Compound د مسیح سره یوځای بیا راژوندي کول, built on the baseline’s own resurrection term, never abbreviated |
| Seated together (with Christ) | 2:6 | No existing idiom for a believer’s present positional share in Christ’s heavenly enthronement | سره کیناستل, taught with explicit “gift not achievement” framing |
| Commonwealth/citizenship of Israel | 2:12 | Pashto’s natural word for “people/nation” (قوم) is precisely the wrong connotation (rigid ethnic-lineage community) | Descriptive compound د اسرائیل ټولنه, deliberately avoiding قوم |
| One new man/humanity | 2:15, 4:24 | No existing term for a genuinely new third ethnic-spiritual category (neither Jew nor Gentile nor a coalition of both) | Literal compound نوی انسان, reinforced with explicit “a third, new reality” teaching gloss |
| Fullness (Christ’s relational filling of the church) | 1:23, 3:19, 4:13 | No existing term separates “totality/completeness” from Sufi monistic “all things filled with God’s being” | بشپړتیا retained but mandatorily paired with theologian-reviewed teaching note in every occurrence |
| Armor of God (non-violent sense) | 6:11, 6:13 | No existing “spiritual equipment” vocabulary independent of وسله’s literal-combat resonance | Retain د خدای وسله per prior output but require an explicit non-violence disclaimer at every occurrence, not merely at first use |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (multiple candidate Pashto/Islamic-register terms compete; the risk is wrong-neighbor collision, not absence)
| Concept | Competing terms | Fencing decision |
|---|---|---|
| Mystery | راز (chosen) vs. سر (secret, less loaded but also less standard) | Retain راز per registry (already the more standard Bible-translation choice) but fence it with mandatory theologian review and an explicit “fully disclosed to all, not an elite secret” gloss every occurrence |
| Flesh (ethical) | نفس (chosen) vs. جسم (body, too physical) vs. بشری کمزوري (human weakness, too diffuse) | Retain نفس but fence with explicit contrast to nafs-discipline piety at 2:3 and 4:22 |
| Head/authority | سر (chosen) vs. مشر (elder/leader, too tribal-political) vs. واکمن (ruler, too impersonal) | Retain سر but fence by mandatory pairing with 5:25’s self-sacrificial model in the same teaching unit |
| Submit | غاړه ایښودل (chosen) vs. تسلیمیدل (Islamic-resonant “submission,” rejected) vs. اطاعت کول (obedience, too compliance-flavored) | Retain غاړه ایښودل; explicitly reject تسلیمیدل as a substitute since it would collide directly with Islam’s own definitional submission to God alone |
| Fullness / Unity | بشپړتیا and یووالی both risk drift toward wahdat al-wujud / tawhid neighbourhoods respectively | Treat as a linked pair in teaching material — both require an explicit “this is not metaphysical divine-essence oneness” disclaimer, cross-referenced to each other so a teacher handling one recalls the other |
| Master (human) vs. Lord (divine) | مالک vs. خداوند | Fence absolutely: خداوند is reserved exclusively for Christ throughout Ephesians (1:2-3, 4:1, 4:5, 5:20, 6:1); مالک is mandatory and exclusive for the human referent in 6:5, 6:9. Record this reversal explicitly in translation memory notes so no future worker “corrects” مالک back to خداوند. |
| Reconciliation / peace / unity cluster | پخلاینه, سوله, یووالی all overlap in the 2:14-17 unity passage | Fence by role: سوله names the resulting state (peace achieved), پخلاینه names the unilateral act (Christ’s cross-work), یووالی names the resulting corporate identity (one body); do not use them interchangeably even though a translator under time pressure may be tempted to substitute one for another for variety |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| مسیح (Messiah/Christ) | Transliteration (retained from baseline) | Already the settled, uncontroversial Pashto Christian form; paraphrase would abandon established reader recognition |
| روح القدس (Holy Spirit) | Transliteration/compound (retained) | Matches the shared Quranic phrase exactly, which is precisely why every occurrence must carry a content-correction gloss (created angel Jibril vs. divine Person) rather than a different, unfamiliar coinage |
| راز (mystery) | Native-word retention, not transliteration of μυστήριον | A Greek transliteration (e.g., “مستریون”) would be entirely opaque to readers and lose all devotional resonance; retaining راز trades opacity for a manageable, teachable collision with Sufi vocabulary — judged the lesser risk, but only with mandatory glossing |
| تعمید (baptism) | Established loan-compound, not paraphrase | Avoids غسل (Islamic ritual washing) entirely; a periphrastic paraphrase (“dipping in water,” “washing ceremony”) would strip the once-for-all, Christ-uniting theological content that تعمید as a technical term preserves |
| مخکې ټاکل شوی (predestined) | Compound paraphrase, not single-word transliteration | No natural single Pashto word carries the Christ-anchored redemptive sense without the qadar-fatalism default; the multi-word compound forces the reader to slow down rather than pattern-match onto a familiar single religious term |
| د خدای وسله (armor of God) | Paraphrase using an existing word (وسله) under heavy semantic control, not a softer euphemistic substitute | Considered and rejected a softer substitute (e.g., “spiritual equipment,” روحاني وسایل) because Paul’s own text is deliberately drawing on literal Roman military armor imagery; the concrete image should be kept, but fenced with explicit non-violence teaching rather than diluted into an abstract euphemism that would lose the vividness of 6:14-17’s item-by-item description |
| د اسرائیل ټولنه (commonwealth of Israel) | Descriptive paraphrase, deliberately avoiding both transliteration and the natural word قوم | قوم (transliteration-adjacent native word) was rejected because it would reinforce, rather than dismantle, the very ethnic-lineage exclusivity Paul is overturning in 2:11-22 |
| زندانی سفیر (ambassador in chains) | Paraphrase compound, not a single loanword for “ambassador” | A generic single-word “ambassador” (سفیر alone) would lose the imprisonment context that gives 6:20 its rhetorical and pastoral force for a persecuted readership; the compound retains both halves |
| ابا (Abba) | Transliteration (retained from baseline, cross-referenced) | Not directly present in Ephesians’ text but should be available in teaching notes wherever 1:5’s adoption/زوی نیول is explained, preserving the intimacy contrast already established in Romans 8 |
General principle applied: transliteration is preferred only where (a) an established, settled Pashto Christian usage already exists (مسیح, روح القدس, تعمید), or (b) a paraphrase would strip essential concrete imagery the source text is deliberately using (armor, ambassador-in-chains). Paraphrase/compounding is preferred wherever the single-word native option carries a strong, misleading connotation from Islamic theology, Sufi devotional tradition, or Pashtunwali tribal custom that a compound can partially defuse by forcing explanatory context.
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Ephesians
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision strength × real-world consequence), highest first.
-
د خدای وسله / armor of God imagery (6:10-20) — Critical. Unique among this list for carrying acute physical safety risk alongside doctrinal risk: a botched or under-explained rendering could plausibly be heard as endorsing literal armed jihad-adjacent struggle in a live conflict context. Requires theologian review at every occurrence plus explicit non-violence disclaimers, every time, not just at first use.
-
راز / mystery (1:9; 3:3-9; 5:32; 6:19) and بشپړتیا / fullness (1:23; 3:19; 4:13) — Critical, treated as a linked pair. The Sufi elite-initiate and wahdat al-wujud pantheism collision surfaces are specific to Ephesians and have no precedent flagged in the Romans baseline; this is genuinely new risk territory for this Language Package.
-
غاړه ایښودل / submission (5:21-24) and سر / head (5:23) — Critical. Triple collision (Islamic submission-to-God-alone, Pashtunwali elder-submission, and the internal risk of losing 5:21’s mutuality) compounded by the patriarchal-authority default reading of سر. High potential for either overcorrection (erasing the household code entirely) or undercorrection (reinforcing exactly the stern-authority pattern the text is meant to challenge).
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مخکې ټاکل شوی / predestined (1:5, 1:11) — Critical. Direct collision with qadar, a formal pillar of Sunni iman, carrying a strong fatalistic-resignation popular reception that runs precisely counter to Ephesians’ assurance-producing intent.
-
ډالۍ / gift and کارونه / ښه کارونه / works-excluded vs. works-as-fruit (2:8-10) — Critical. The core passage’s own thesis statement; melmastia reciprocity logic plus Islamic mizan deeds-weighing plus Pashtunwali honor-earned-by-deeds together form a uniquely dense triple cultural default against grace, all converging on the letter’s single most load-bearing ten verses.
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مالک vs. خداوند reversal risk (6:5-9) — High-Critical procedural risk (not doctrinal ambiguity in the text itself, but a translation-memory management risk): a future worker “correcting” مالک back to خداوند would either divinize a human slave-master or dilute Christ’s exclusive title. Must be flagged in tooling, not just prose.
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یووالی / unity (4:3-6) — High. The sevenfold “one” is close enough to tawhid’s own numerical-singularity emphasis that a careless summary could read as an accidental restatement of strict monotheism rather than Paul’s diverse-body-one-Lord ecclesiology.
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نفس / flesh-ethical (2:3, 4:22) — High. Risk of quietly converting Paul’s total-depravity claim into an achievable nafs-discipline self-improvement project, given how familiar and positively-loaded that Islamic ethical category already is.
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د اسرائیل ټولنه / commonwealth of Israel and اسرائیل itself (2:12) — High. Lower acuity than in Arabic/Persian/Persian-Gulf contexts given the absence of direct territorial proximity, but still requires deliberate pastoral framing to prevent contemporary political sentiment from overriding the covenant-historical argument.
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پخلاینه / reconciliation vs. سوله / peace (2:14-17) — Medium-High. Risk of the two terms blurring into a bilaterally-negotiated jirga-style settlement rather than Christ’s unilateral cross-achieved peace; not doctrinally destructive if blurred, but meaningfully flattens Paul’s specific argument.
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چلند کول / walk (recurring, 7 occurrences) — Medium. Not a content-collision risk but a consistency risk: if even one of the seven occurrences is rendered with a synonym for stylistic variety, the letter’s deliberate before/after structural argument becomes invisible to the Pashto reader.
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معبد / temple-living (2:21) — Medium. Risk of a building-association pull toward جومات; mitigated but not eliminated by the “ژوندی” qualifier recommended in Section 1.3.
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مسیح-titled office names (د انجیل ویناوال, evangelist, 4:11) — Medium doctrinal risk, but High practical/security risk in restrictive-area teaching contexts; flagged here because the risk is operational rather than semantic.
5. Chapters Reviewed With No New Gap Beyond Sections Above
- Ephesians 1:1, 1:16-21 (opening greeting, thanksgiving, prayer report) — reviewed; terms fully covered by baseline (رسول, شکر, جلال, د خدای قدرت) with no new Ephesians-specific gap.
- Ephesians 3:14-21 (prayer for strengthening) — reviewed; پلار fatherhood wordplay already logged under baseline Father entry; no additional gap beyond Section 1.2/1.5 entries already covering مخکې ټاکل شوی and بشپړتیا within this section.
- Ephesians 4:1-3, 4:25-29, 4:31-32 (unity exhortation transitions; practical ethics) — reviewed; هڅول, ملګرتیا, and general ethical vocabulary (lying, anger, stealing) carry standard, low-risk renderings with no collision beyond ordinary care.
- Ephesians 5:3-14 (sexual ethics, light/darkness contrast) — reviewed; imagery of light/darkness uses standard, low-risk Pashto vocabulary with no distinctive Islamic or Pashtunwali collision beyond what general sin/holiness vocabulary already covers in the baseline.
- Ephesians 6:1-4 (children and parents) — reviewed; پلار/مور family vocabulary standard; no new gap beyond the general household-code cautions already logged in Section 1.7.
- Ephesians 6:21-24 (closing greetings) — reviewed; standard epistolary closing vocabulary (سوله, ایمان, فضل), fully covered by existing entries, no new gap.
This document extends, and does not contradict, the Romans baseline translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json. All risk-tier conventions, script, and citation formats follow those artifacts. See analysis/08_core_glossary.md for the corresponding term inventory and assets/bible_term_registry.json for the full Ephesians-extended registry entries referenced throughout this analysis.