Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — Hebrews (Koine Greek → Persian)
0. Purpose and Method
This analysis executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Hebrews curriculum. It does not re-derive terms already fixed by the Romans baseline translation_memory.json (reused exactly, per the Hard Rules) or already catalogued in the Hebrews-specific 08_core_glossary.md and updated bible_term_registry.json. Instead, it performs the analytical work those artifacts assume: for each of the eight curriculum doctrines, it maps the available Persian vocabulary space, names the specific weakness of each candidate term, and issues a recommended strategy (reuse / new coinage / compound / fence / transliterate). It then separates Hebrews’ vocabulary problems into two structurally different classes — missing vocabulary (no real Persian equivalent exists) and crowded semantic neighborhoods (too many pre-loaded equivalents exist, all wrong in some way) — because these two classes require opposite mitigation strategies. It closes with a transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision log and a ranked list of this book’s highest-risk ambiguities.
Hebrews is linguistically unlike Romans for this audience: Romans’ vocabulary problems are almost entirely doctrinal collision (a Persian word already means something close but theologically wrong). Hebrews adds a second, harder problem layer: an entire cultic-priestly register (high priest, sacrifice, tabernacle, veil, blood-manipulation ritual, atonement) for which Twelver Shia Islam — unlike, say, Second Temple Judaism’s own environment — has no functioning structural equivalent. Iranian Shia clergy (ruhaniyat, ayatollahs, imam-e jom’eh) are jurist-scholars and prayer-leaders, not sacrificial mediators who enter a graded-access sanctuary bearing blood on behalf of others. This is the single most important finding of this analysis and shapes nearly every recommendation below.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each curriculum doctrine: the load-bearing terms, the Persian candidate(s) considered, the specific weakness of each candidate, and the recommended strategy actually adopted (cross-referenced to the term registry).
1.1 The Superiority of Christ over Angels, Moses, and the Levitical Priesthood
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angel | فرشته (fereshteh) | None lexically — but doctrinally fereshteh is an already-honored, familiar category (Jibril, Mika’il); risk runs backward from the baseline pattern: Christ could be pulled down into fereshteh’s category rather than elevated above it | Reuse فرشته, but require the argumentative frame (“superior to,” “worshiped by”) to be rendered with unmistakable force — see §4 ranked risks |
| Worship (of the Son) | پرستش کردن (parastesh kardan) | Islamic angelology holds angels worship only God; rendering 1:6 weakly could be read as a scribal/textual anomaly rather than a deliberate deity-claim | Reuse, retain full imperative force of the LXX quotation |
| Moses | موسی (Musa) | A maximally honored Quranic prophet (kalim Allah, “one who spoke with God”); “greater than Moses” risks sounding gratuitously diminishing to an MBB ear still processing Islamic reverence patterns | Reuse موسی; supply framing that Moses himself is honored as a faithful servant (3:5), not denigrated — comparison of house-builder to house, not master to servant |
| Priesthood (Levitical) | کهانت (kahānat) | No native Persian religious vocabulary for a hereditary sacrificial caste (Shia clergy are appointed by scholarship, not lineage) | New coinage کهانت; must be taught, not assumed — see §2.1 |
1.2 Christ as the Great High Priest
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Priest | کاهن اعظم (kāhen-e a’zam) | The Arabic-root کاهن is understood in Persian almost exclusively through OT/biblical-history contexts (already used for OT priests in existing Bible translations) and carries zero functional resonance with any living Iranian religious office | Build as new technical vocabulary; every occurrence needs contextual reinforcement (see §2.1), not reuse of a false-friend like پیشوا (spiritual guide/leader, too political) or امام (Imam — absolutely forbidden, would directly substitute Twelver Shia’s central office) |
| Priest (general) | کاهن (kāhen) | Same functional gap as above, smaller scale | New coinage, same register as کاهن اعظم |
| Mediator | واسطه (vāseteh) | شفیع (shafi’, intercessor) rejected — too close to شفاعت’s Karbala-specific devotional loading; امام rejected outright as it names the exact competing office | New coinage واسطه; must explicitly assert exclusivity (8:6, 9:15) against Shia tawassul practice of seeking mediation through Imams/saints |
| Melchizedek | ملکیصدق (Malki-Sedeq) | No Quranic counterpart at all — a pure knowledge-gap, not a collision | Transliterate/phonetically adapt as a proper noun; supply background teaching (Gen 14) rather than treat as self-evident |
| Permanent priesthood (no successor) | دائمی / بدون جایگزین (dā’emi / bedun-e jāygozin) | None major, but note the positive polemical opportunity: this concept runs directly against the Imamate’s succession-claim logic | Reuse coined term; flag as a bridge argument for teaching (Christ’s priesthood needs no successor line, unlike a lineage-based imamate) |
1.3 The New Covenant versus the Old
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Covenant | عهد (‘ahd) | Baseline-established, but Hebrews exploits Greek διαθήκη’s covenant/last-will double meaning (9:16-17), which عهد does not carry | Reuse عهد; supplement with an explicit وصیتنامه (vasiyat-nāmeh, “last will”) teaching gloss at 9:16-17 only — do not attempt to force the wordplay into the running translation itself |
| New Covenant | عهد جدید (‘ahd-e jadid) | Risks being heard through the naskh (Quranic abrogation) lens — “new” superseding and invalidating a flawed “old,” rather than “new” as promised fulfillment of what the old covenant itself anticipated (Jer 31) | Compound reuse; teaching notes must foreground continuity/fulfillment, not replacement-by-correction |
| Obsolete/Aging (of old covenant) | کهنه شدن (kohne shodan) | Risks reinforcing tahrif (the old covenant text/institution itself becoming corrupt or false) rather than Hebrews’ own sense (fulfilled, therefore retired) | Reuse; explicit “fulfillment, not falsification” framing required at 8:13 |
| Shadow / Copy (type/antitype) | سایه (sāyeh) / نمونه، تصویر (namuneh, tasvir) | Persian Illuminationist (Hikmat al-Ishraq) and Mulla Sadra metaphysics use shadow/emanation-hierarchy language for how lower reality derives from higher reality — a real risk of readers absorbing Hebrews’ typology into that framework rather than salvation history | Reuse with mandatory typological (historical fulfillment) framing; avoid any translator’s-note phrasing that could sound Ishraqi (“the shadow flows from the true form”) |
1.4 The Once-for-All Atoning Sacrifice
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sacrifice | قربانی (qorbāni) | The single most heavily “crowded” term in the entire book: قربانی is everyday, joyfully-practiced vocabulary (Eid-e Qorban, commemorating Ibrahim/Ismail) for a repeated, communal, non-atoning ritual meal-sacrifice | Reuse (no viable substitute exists), but fence hard: every doctrinally significant occurrence must be paired with یکبار برای همیشه (once for all) or برتر (superior) to block the repeated-ritual reading |
| Once for all | یکبار برای همیشه (yek bār barāye hamishe) | None lexical; the risk is entirely about whether translators remember to use it consistently wherever ἅπαξ/ἐφάπαξ occurs | New coined phrase; treat as the single highest-priority consistency item in the entire book (see §4) |
| Propitiation | کفاره کردن (kaffāreh kardan) | کفاره is the exact Islamic fiqh technical term for human-performed compensatory expiation (broken fast, broken oath) — paid by the sinner, not received from a substitute | Reuse the vocabulary but forcibly invert its normal grammatical subject: God/Christ performs کفاره for humanity, never the reverse; flag every occurrence for theologian review |
| Blood | خون (khun) | Native, low lexical risk, but must be prevented from reading as bare biological/forensic-evidence vocabulary; must retain atoning-life-poured-out weight | Reuse; reinforce collocation with سرشتہ/تقدیم کردن (offer) language |
| Bear sins (substitution) | گناهان را بر خود گرفتن | None major; risk is theological softening into moral-example language rather than substitutionary bearing | New coined compound phrase; must retain “on himself,” not “as an example” |
| Various washings | شستوشوهای گوناگون | Strong resonance with wudu/ghusl ablution categories | Reuse deliberately as a positive teaching bridge — old covenant ritual washing genuinely anticipates, and is surpassed by, Christ’s internal cleansing |
1.5 The Danger of Apostasy and Warning Passages
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall away / Apostasy | ارتداد (ertedād) vs دور شدن از ایمان | ارتداد is the precise Islamic legal term for apostasy from Islam, which under Iranian law and Shia fiqh can carry capital-punishment implications; using it in a pastoral warning to underground MBB readers imports real, literal mortal danger into a text meant to warn, not endanger | دور شدن از ایمان (distancing oneself from faith) selected; ارتداد never used; mandatory translator’s note at every occurrence explaining the deliberate avoidance |
| Deliberate sin | گناه عمدی (gonāh-e ‘amdi) | None major; continues the same warning register | Reuse; keep terminologically paired with دور شدن از ایمان |
| Partaker (of the Spirit, in warning context) | سهیم (sahim) vs شریک (sharik) | شریک shares the ش-ر-ک root with شرک (shirk, idolatrous partnership) — an uncomfortable resonance in an already loaded warning passage (Heb 6:4) | Prefer سهیم as the lower-resonance option; شریک may still appear elsewhere (per baseline’s “fellowship” precedent) but not in Heb 6:4’s severe warning |
| Unbelief | بیایمانی (bi-imāni) | None major; direct negative of ایمان | Reuse |
1.6 Faith of the Old Testament Saints
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Faith’s assurance/conviction (Heb 11:1) | یقین (yaqin) | یقین is also a technical term in Islamic epistemology (certainty as the highest of three grades of knowledge, ‘ilm/zann/yaqin) — a genuine bridge, but risks being read as intellectual certainty about propositions rather than confident personal trust and hope | Adopt یقین but require it be anchored to a personal object (trust in God’s promise), not free-floating certainty |
| Testify / God’s commendation | تأیید شدن / گواهی یافتن vs شهادت دادن | شهادت دادن carries double loading: (1) the Islamic creedal shahada recitation, and (2) Twelver Shia martyrdom-veneration vocabulary (Imam Hussein’s shahādat at Karbala) — either reading would distort ch.11’s sense of God commending faith | تأیید شدن / گواهی یافتن adopted; شهادت دادن excluded throughout ch.11 without exception |
| Eagerly await (implicit posture, applied to Christ’s return in 9:28) | با اشتیاق منتظر بودن | منتظر بودن (montazer budan) is the standard Persian verb Shia Muslims use for awaiting the Hidden Twelfth Imam | Usable as an emotional-posture bridge (eager anticipation is a shared category) provided the object of waiting (Christ, already historically come once, returning bodily) is explicitly and repeatedly distinguished from Mahdi-return expectation |
1.7 Perseverance and Assurance
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Endurance | پایداری (pāydāri) | None major | Reuse |
| Rest (Sabbath-rest, eschatological) | آرامی (سبت) vs آرامش | آرامش is the exact term forbidden by the baseline for “peace,” now doubly relevant: Iran’s popular wellness/self-help culture uses آرامش heavily for secular inner calm | آرامی reused with mandatory qualifier (“in God,” “eternal,” “-e sabt”); آرامش never used unqualified |
| Confession | اعتراف (e’terāf) | None major, but must be checked against any future Romans 10:9 rendering for cross-curriculum consistency | Reuse identically |
| Second coming / return | آمدن دوم (āmadan-e dovom) vs ظهور دوم | ظهور دوم (zohur-e dovom) is the exact fixed Shia technical term for the Hidden Twelfth Imam’s eschatological reappearance | آمدن دوم / بازگشت مسیح adopted; ظهور family of words excluded without exception for Christ’s return language |
1.8 Access to God through Christ’s Blood
| Term | Persian candidates | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boldness / confidence (access) | دلیری / اطمینان کامل | None lexical; the doctrinal weight is that this access is unmediated | New coined phrase; must be paired at every occurrence with explicit unmediated-access framing against both general Islamic ritual-mediated approach (salat structure, wudu) and Shia-specific shafa’at-seeking |
| Draw near | نزدیک شدن (nazdik shodan) | None major | Reuse consistently across all occurrences (4:16; 7:25; 10:1,22; 11:6; 12:22) |
| Veil / Curtain | پرده (pardeh) | None major independently | Reuse; significance depends on surrounding Holy of Holies context |
| Holy Place / Holy of Holies | قدس / قدسالاقداس | قدس is also the name of Jerusalem in Persian/Arabic and the centerpiece of Iran’s state-sponsored anti-Israel “Ruz-e Qods” commemoration | Reuse with explicit disambiguation note attached at first occurrence in each document: sanctuary-space, not geopolitical referent |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
Hebrews’ vocabulary problems fall into two structurally distinct categories requiring opposite mitigation strategies. Conflating them (treating a gap as if it were a collision, or vice versa) is itself a translation risk.
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (no functional Persian/Shia equivalent — needs construction, not fencing)
These terms have no live cultural referent in Iranian Shia religious life to either help or hinder comprehension. The risk is comprehension failure (blank incomprehension or, worse, silent reinterpretation through the nearest available category), not doctrinal collision with an existing wrong meaning.
| Concept | Why the gap exists | Mitigation strategy |
|---|---|---|
| High priest / priesthood (کاهن اعظم / کهانت) | Twelver Shia clergy are jurist-scholars and prayer-leaders appointed through scholarly credentialing, not sacrificial mediators operating within a graded-access sanctuary system | Must be taught as new vocabulary with sustained narrative explanation (Aaronic system, Day of Atonement) before the typological argument (Christ as superior High Priest) can land; cannot rely on any existing schema to carry meaning |
| Tabernacle / Holy Place structure (خیمه / قدس / قدسالاقداس) | No equivalent graded-access sacred architecture in popular Shia practice (shrines function differently — open pilgrimage/intercession sites, not graded-entry sanctuaries) | Requires diagram-level background teaching, not just vocabulary; the structure of restricted access is itself the missing concept, not merely the words for it |
| Levitical sacrificial system as a whole (blood manipulation, altar, various washings) | No cultic-priestly ritual system of this kind survives in any form in contemporary Iranian religious practice (Eid-e Qorban is a single annual commemorative event, not a continuous sacrificial economy) | Treat the entire Levitical background as content to be taught, not assumed; Hebrews’ argument is unintelligible without it |
| Melchizedek | No Quranic or Islamic-historical counterpart at all | Pure background-knowledge gap; supply Genesis 14 context directly rather than relying on any existing association |
Strategy summary for missing vocabulary: construct new technical Persian compounds (already done in the core glossary) and budget substantial teaching content, not just glossary entries — a term with no cultural referent cannot be “fenced” against a wrong meaning because there is no competing meaning yet; the danger is under-explanation, not misapplied collision.
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (too many available equivalents, all doctrinally compromised — needs fencing)
These terms have the opposite problem: multiple live, well-understood Persian words already occupy the semantic space, and every available candidate carries some unwanted doctrinal freight that must be actively fenced off at each occurrence.
| Concept | Crowded neighbors | Fencing strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Sacrifice (قربانی) | Eid-e Qorban (Abrahamic commemorative sacrifice), general “sacrifice/giving up” idiom (فداکاری) | Pair every doctrinally load-bearing occurrence with یکبار برای همیشه or برتر; never let قربانی stand alone in an atonement-doctrine sentence |
| Propitiation (کفاره کردن) | Islamic fiqh compensatory expiation (missed fast, broken oath) | Invert the grammatical subject explicitly (God/Christ performs it, not the sinner); flag for theologian review at every occurrence |
| Purification (پاک کردن / پاکی) | طهارت (wudu/ghusl ritual purity categories) | طهارت excluded entirely; consistently pair پاک کردن with ضمیر (conscience) to keep the inward/moral register explicit |
| Mediator (واسطه) | تواسل / شفیع (Shia tawassul-seeking through Imams/saints) | شفیع excluded; واسطه must be paired with exclusivity language (“only,” “one,” “no other”) at 8:6, 9:15, 12:24 |
| Apostasy (دور شدن از ایمان) | ارتداد (capital-risk Islamic legal apostasy category) | ارتداد excluded absolutely; mandatory translator’s note explaining the choice at every occurrence, given the real physical danger of the alternative |
| Testify/witness (تأیید شدن / گواهی یافتن) | شهادت دادن (Islamic creedal shahada + Shia martyrdom-veneration of Hussein) | شهادت-root vocabulary excluded throughout ch.11 |
| Second coming (آمدن دوم) | ظهور (Hidden Twelfth Imam’s technical reappearance term) | ظهور-root vocabulary excluded absolutely for Christ’s return |
| Rest (آرامی) | آرامش (secular wellness/mindfulness “inner calm”) | آرامش excluded unqualified; آرامی always qualified with “in God” / “-e sabt” |
| Holy Place (قدس) | Jerusalem/Ruz-e Qods state political usage | Disambiguation note required at first occurrence per document |
| Tabernacle/Tent (خیمه) | Karbala’s burned tents in Ashura martyrdom narrative | Teach access-function explicitly; do not let context imply a martyrdom association |
| Shadow/Copy (سایه / نمونه) | Illuminationist (Ishraqi) and Sadra’ian emanation metaphysics (higher reality “casting” lower reality) | Frame strictly as historical type-fulfillment (an event anticipating another event), never as an ontological emanation hierarchy |
| Angel (فرشته) | Islamic angelology’s already-honored Jibril/Mika’il category | Preserve the full comparative force of ch.1-2’s argument; do not let familiarity soften “superior to” into “alongside” |
Strategy summary for crowded neighborhoods: the danger is silent reinterpretation through an existing, competing framework the reader already possesses. Mitigation is not new-vocabulary construction (the words already exist and are fluent) but active, repeated fencing — qualifiers, exclusivity language, and translator’s notes attached at every doctrinally significant occurrence, per the Critical/High escalation rules already established in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
Persian Bible translation tradition (Tarjome Ghadeem, Mojdeh) generally prefers native or Arabic-loanword compounds over Greek/Aramaic transliteration, reserving transliteration for proper names and a small set of fixed liturgical exclamations. Hebrews introduces several new decision points:
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Melchizedek | Transliterate (ملکیصدق) | Proper noun with no Persian semantic content to translate; phonetic adaptation is the only option, consistent with how other transliterated OT proper names (e.g., داوود) are handled |
| Abba | Transliterate (ابا) | [BASELINE REUSE] — already fixed by Romans; retained for cross-curriculum consistency even though Hebrews does not itself contain the term, per requirements doc |
| Amen / Hallelujah | Transliterate (آمین / هللویاه) | [Established convention per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md]; fixed liturgical exclamations with no live semantic content requiring translation |
| High Priest, Priesthood, Sacrifice, Mediator, Tabernacle, Once-for-all, Propitiation, etc. | Paraphrase/compound (کاهن اعظم, کهانت, قربانی, واسطه, خیمه, یکبار برای همیشه, کفاره کردن) | All are common nouns/abstract-office terms carrying real semantic content that must be actively taught and doctrinally shaped; transliterating the Greek (e.g., a Farsi rendering of “archiereus”) would produce meaningless technical jargon with zero comprehension value and would forfeit the chance to use existing (fenced) Persian vocabulary as a teaching bridge |
| Zion / Jerusalem (heavenly) | Paraphrase with established Persian toponym (کوه صهیون / اورشلیم آسمانی) | Uses the existing Persian geographic name rather than a transliteration of the Greek, but requires disambiguation from the politically loaded “Sahyunism” usage in Iranian state discourse — see §2.2 |
| Second coming | Paraphrase, deliberately avoiding the “natural” transliteration-adjacent loan register (آمدن دوم, not ظهور) | Although ظهور is native Persian vocabulary (not a transliteration), it functions here as the forbidden option precisely because it is the fixed technical term for a competing eschatological figure; the decision is to select the less theologically marked native paraphrase over the more natural-sounding but doctrinally compromised one |
General rule for this curriculum: transliterate only where (a) the item is a genuine proper name with no separable meaning, or (b) a fixed liturgical exclamation already has an established transliterated form in Persian Christian usage. Every other technical term — even where a Greek-derived transliteration might seem to preserve precision — should be rendered through a Persian compound or reused/fenced native vocabulary, because transliteration would create opaque jargon for an MBB readership without the seminary-Greek background to parse it, contrary to the register requirements of 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities (Hebrews-Specific)
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality) × likelihood (how easily an existing Persian/Shia framework could silently substitute) × exposure (frequency across the book, with weight given to the core passage, Heb 9:11-28).
-
کفاره کردن (propitiation) read as a human-performed compensatory act rather than a completed divine act. Because کفاره is literally the operative Islamic fiqh term for expiation (e.g., for a missed fast), the grammatical subject must be forcibly held on God/Christ at every occurrence (2:17; core passage 9:11-28’s entire argument). Highest risk because misreading here inverts the gospel itself: works-based debt-payment instead of gift received.
-
قربانی (sacrifice) collapsing into the repeated Eid-e Qorban ritual pattern. The core passage (9:11-28) pivots entirely on the once/many contrast; if قربانی is left unfenced even once in this passage, the entire argument of the chapter can be silently reabsorbed into an annual-commemoration framework the reader already finds religiously satisfying.
-
واسطه (mediator) being read compatibly with, rather than in exclusive competition with, Shia tawassul/Imam-intercession practice. Iranian Shia piety has no difficulty affirming “a mediator exists between me and God” — the danger is not rejection but comfortable addition of Christ to an existing roster of mediating figures. Requires explicit, repeated exclusivity language, especially at 9:15 within the core passage.
-
کاهن اعظم (High Priest) failing to register as an office at all, defaulting to a vague “religious leader” gloss. Because there is no living functional equivalent, under-explanation risks the entire priesthood argument (the organizing structure of the whole book, and the direct subject of the core passage) landing as decorative language rather than substantive Christology.
-
ظهور-adjacent language leaking into “second coming” renderings through translator habit. Even a single lapse into montazer-zohur register at 9:28 (within the core passage) would re-subordinate Christ’s own return to Mahdi-centered eschatological expectation — the same Mahdi-displacement risk flagged repeatedly in the Romans baseline, now concentrated at the exact climax of the core passage.
-
دور شدن از ایمان vs. ارتداد — a single mistranslation here is not merely doctrinally wrong but physically dangerous to underground MBB readers, given Iran’s apostasy-adjacent legal exposure. Ranked below the theological risks above only because it is more procedurally controllable (a fixed exclusion rule, not a contextual judgment call) — but its real-world stakes are the highest of any item on this list.
-
شهادت دادن leaking into ch.11’s faith-testimony language. Given how deeply embedded the shahada/martyrdom-veneration register is in everyday Persian religious speech, this is a high-probability translator slip even with the fenced alternative established; requires active checking, not just glossary listing.
-
پاک کردن/ضمیر (purification/conscience) drifting toward طهارت-style external ritual categories, especially in 9:13-14’s direct old-covenant/new-covenant contrast within the core passage — the exact verse pair where the argument’s force depends on the inward/outward distinction landing correctly.
-
سایه/نمونه (shadow/copy) being absorbed into Illuminationist emanation metaphysics rather than historical typology — lower risk than the items above because it requires a more educated/philosophically literate reader to misapply, but present in learned house-church contexts influenced by Persian mystical-philosophical literature.
-
قدس (Holy Place) triggering the Ruz-e Qods political association. Lower-frequency risk (confined to specific sanctuary-description verses) but high potential for jarring, conversation-derailing misreading if unaddressed at first occurrence.
5. Summary and Handoff
This analysis confirms that Hebrews requires the Romans baseline’s collision-fencing discipline (Section 2.2 and the Ranked List) plus a second, distinct discipline the Romans baseline did not need at scale: sustained construction of missing cultic-priestly vocabulary with real teaching content behind it (Section 2.1). Both disciplines are already reflected in the Hebrews-specific entries of bible_term_registry.json and 08_core_glossary.md; this document supplies the underlying rationale and priority ordering that Phase 2 segment translation and the Step 17 doctrinal fidelity review should consult when adjudicating edge cases not explicitly covered by an exact glossary match.
Feed this analysis into Phase 1 Step 9 (updated doctrine_risk_registry.json) and Phase 1 Step 10 (updated 12_ai_translation_requirements.md escalation rules) before Phase 2 translation of Hebrews begins.