Linguistic Gap Analysis: Acts 1–28 (English → Polish)

Purpose and Method

This analysis identifies where standard literary Polish has (a) genuine lexical gaps against the source-text concepts introduced by Acts, and (b) “crowded” semantic neighborhoods — existing Polish terms that are lexically adequate but pre-loaded with competing associations from Polish Catholic sacramental practice, 20th-century political history, or contemporary Charismatic devotional culture. It formalizes and cross-checks the term-level decisions already surfaced in 07_semantic_analysis.md and consolidated in 08_core_glossary.md, and produces the ranked ambiguity list Phase 1 Step 9 (term registry finalization) must prioritize for review routing.

Coverage is full-book: every chapter of Acts 1–28 has been reviewed (see §5). The core passage, Acts 2:1–41, is the theological anchor and receives the deepest treatment, but it is not the boundary of the analysis.

Risk tiers match the baseline exactly: Critical (destroys essential doctrine, mandatory theologian review), High (significant confusion/syncretism risk, mandatory theologian review), Medium (reduces clarity, native speaker review recommended), Low (minor imprecision, automated review sufficient).

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Section 1 — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the nine curriculum doctrines, this matrix records the available Polish vocabulary, its specific weaknesses as a vehicle for the doctrine, and the recommended translation strategy already encoded in the glossary/registry.

1.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Duch Święty (baseline, reused)	None as a lexeme; risk is doctrinal context, not the word itself.	Reuse exactly; no gap.
bierzmowanie (“Confirmation”)	Pre-empts “napełnienie Duchem Świętym” as the only recognized category of receiving the Spirit’s fullness; a once-for-life, bishop-administered rite. Acts describes a repeatable, non-hierarchical filling.	Do NOT use “bierzmowanie” or its verb forms to render πλήθω/πίμπλημι. Use “napełnić/napełnieni Duchem Świętym” with an explicit teaching note distinguishing the sacrament from the repeatable narrative event.
chrzest w Duchu Świętym (coined phrase, no single existing Polish theological consensus term)	Polish has no settled, doctrinally neutral single word; the phrase itself is contested territory, since the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (“Odnowa w Duchu Świętym”) already uses this exact phrase for a distinct, debated post-conversion experience often tied to ecstatic tongues.	Retain the phrase (already fixed in the term registry) but require a translator/teaching note on every occurrence naming the interpretive debate rather than silently adopting or rejecting either reading.
mówienie językami / glosolalia (loanword available in academic register)	“Glosolalia” is a specialist loanword unfamiliar to general readers; “mówienie językami” is the popular phrase but is now saturated with the Odnowa’s ecstatic-speech connotation, whereas Acts 2 specifically narrates known human languages (xenolalia, v.6,8,11).	Use “mówienie [innymi/różnymi] językami” as the primary rendering (already fixed), reserve “glosolalia” only for footnoted technical clarification, and require an explicit note on the xenolalia/glossolalia distinction at every Acts 2 and Acts 10/19 occurrence.
Pięćdziesiątnica / Zesłanie Ducha Świętego	Two competing Polish names exist for the same feast: “Pięćdziesiątnica” (OT/Jewish feast-name, transliteration-adjacent) and “Zesłanie Ducha Świętego” (the Church’s own liturgical feast name, already known to virtually every Polish reader as a public holiday). Using only the latter risks readers assuming they already fully understand the term and skipping the OT covenant background.	Use “Pięćdziesiątnica” as the primary term (already fixed) and introduce “Zesłanie Ducha Świętego” only as a bridge to the reader’s existing liturgical knowledge, explicitly layering in the Feast of Weeks/Sinai-covenant background.

1.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
poganie / narody	”Poganie” over-translates the neutral ethnē into a strongly negative “pagans” register; “narody” is safer but under-signals the religious contrast Acts sometimes intends.	Dual-track per baseline: “poganie” for the religiously charged sense, “narody” for the neutral ethnic-geographic sense (already fixed in registry as separate entries).
czysty / nieczysty / pospolity	Polish has adequate words but the underlying Levitical purity system is unfamiliar to most readers; the nearest cultural analogy readers will improvise is Catholic Lenten fasting rules (piątek postny), which is far too weak a parallel to carry Peter’s vision’s argumentative weight.	Do not rely on the lexical items alone; mandatory OT background note plus explicit statement that the vision’s real referent is the Jew/Gentile boundary, not food rules per se.
bojący się Boga	Adequate periphrasis, no true single-word equivalent for the Greek’s fixed sociological category (Gentile synagogue sympathizer short of full proselyte status).	Retain periphrasis; add a one-time sociological footnote at first occurrence (10:2) rather than repeating it at each of the term’s four occurrences.
Bóg nie ma względu na osobę	Lexically strong and unambiguous; the risk is entirely at the application level (softening toward residual Polish-Catholic-nation privilege), not the vocabulary.	Retain exactly; pair with explicit denial of any national/ethnic exception, consistent with the baseline’s “Polak-katolik” caution.
bogowie czynieni rękami	Adequate as a description of manufactured idols, but risks unintended extension to Catholic devotional statues/icons (e.g., the Częstochowa image) given surface similarity of “obraz/statua” venerated in both contexts.	Require explicit teaching note: the biblical critique targets objects worshipped as gods, not devotional images functioning within an already-monotheistic frame.

1.3 Repentance and Baptism

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
pokuta / pokutować	This is the dominant, catechetically reinforced Polish word-family for post-baptismal turning from sin, tightly bound to the Sacrament of Penance/Confession and priestly absolution. Using it for μετανοέω would silently import a sacramental, priest-mediated act into texts describing a direct, personal turning to God prior to any sacrament.	Rejected as primary rendering. Use “nawrócić się / nawrócenie” instead (already fixed), reserving “pokuta” only for explicit contrastive footnotes distinguishing the two.
nawrócić się / nawrócenie	Available and doctrinally cleaner, but Polish popular usage of “nawrócenie” already carries a strong “dramatic, once-for-all life change” connotation (often from a specifically irreligious past) that can under-include Luke’s calls to repentance addressed to already-religious Jewish hearers (2:38; 3:19).	Retain as primary term; add teaching note that repentance in Acts is addressed to religious insiders as much as outsiders.
chrzest / chrzcić	The single Polish sacramental category covers infant baptism (dominant practice, administered before personal faith) and any adult/believer’s baptism without lexical distinction; Acts’ baptism-after-faith pattern is structurally reversed from majority Polish practice.	Retain “chrzest/chrzcić” (no lexical alternative exists) but mandate an explicit sequencing note (repentance/faith → baptism) at every Acts occurrence, without adjudicating the wider infant-baptism debate outside the scope of this curriculum.
odpuszczenie grzechów	This exact phrase is the fixed liturgical formula spoken by a priest during sacramental Confession absolution, so Polish readers will default to a priest-mediated, repeatable-absolution frame.	Retain the phrase (no better lexical option exists) with a mandatory clarifying note: in Acts this is God’s own direct forgiveness received through repentance/faith and confessed publicly in baptism, not contingent on a separate ongoing priestly rite.
zmyć / obmyć (grzechy)	Adequate imagery, minor risk of being read as literal ritual washing (cf. Jewish mikveh/ritual bath analogies) divorced from the calling-on-Christ’s-name clause that defines its meaning in 22:16.	Always translate with the full clause (“…wzywając Jego imienia”) retained, not the washing image in isolation.
chrzest Janowy	Lexically clean, but risk is structural: Polish catechesis has only one baptism category, so a reader may assume “chrzest Janowy” is simply an early or incomplete form of the same sacrament rather than an explicitly Luke-distinguished, superseded rite.	Retain; add explicit note at 18:25 and 19:1-5 naming the text’s own two-baptism distinction.

1.4 The Church as Community

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
wszystko wspólne	Lexically accurate for κοινά, but Poland’s communist-era (PRL) history of forced collectivization and state seizure of private property has left “wspólna własność” with strong, largely negative connotations of coercion and economic failure.	Retain the phrase (already fixed) but require mandatory framing language (“dobrowolnie,” “z pobudek duchowych”) at every occurrence, explicitly contrasting Spirit-motivated voluntary generosity with state-imposed collectivism.
kościół / zgromadzenie	”Kościół” is doctrinally correct for the Christian-community sense but is also the capitalized institutional term (“Kościół”) central to Polish national-religious identity; the identical Greek word (ekklēsia) also occurs in Acts 19 for the purely secular Ephesian civic riot, where “kościół” would be absurd and doctrinally confusing (“church riot”).	Maintain the dual-track split already fixed: “kościół” for the Christian-community sense, “zgromadzenie” for the secular civic sense (19:32,39,41) — never interchange.
Droga (capitalized)	Collides visually and idiomatically with the extremely common Polish self-help/motivational phrase “droga życia” (“path of life”), which carries no technical movement-name sense at all.	Retain “Droga” capitalized as a technical proper-name designation with an explicit first-occurrence note (9:2) that this is the movement’s own early self-designation, not a generic life-journey metaphor.
starszy / biskup / nadzorca	Polish Catholic ecclesiology has a fully developed three-tier hierarchy (biskup > prezbiter/kapłan > diakon), with “biskup” denoting a distinct, higher order with jurisdiction over multiple congregations, reinforced nationally by the prominent Konferencja Episkopatu Polski. Acts 20:17,28 uses “elder” (presbyteros) and “overseer” (episkopos) interchangeably for the SAME local, plural leadership team.	Retain both terms but mandate an explicit anti-anachronism note at every Acts 20 occurrence: this is a plural, congregation-level, functionally identical eldership, not the later three-tier system.
diakonia / diakon	The Polish Catholic “diakonat” is now a formal clerical order within Holy Orders (including a visible modern “permanent deacon” ministry), risking retrojection of ordained-clergy theology onto Acts 6’s origin narrative of a practical service role addressing a specific community need (distribution to widows).	Retain “diakonia/służba” with an explicit historical-development note distinguishing Acts 6’s functional role from the later sacramental order.
łamanie chleba	Descriptively accurate, but the phrase sits directly adjacent to (and inevitably evokes) the fully developed Catholic Eucharistic/Mass theology of transubstantiation and priestly consecration, which Acts’ narrative description neither teaches nor resolves.	Retain the descriptive phrase; explicit note that Acts narrates a shared-meal practice without adjudicating later sacramental theology in either direction.

1.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
apostoł	Clean, unambiguous across Polish Christian traditions.	Reuse baseline exactly; no gap.
nakładanie / kładzenie rąk	The identical physical gesture underlies Polish sacramental ordination, Confirmation, and Anointing of the Sick, so readers will default to a single sacramental frame regardless of which of Acts’ at least three distinct purposes (commissioning, Spirit-impartation, healing) is in view.	Require the specific purpose to be named in context at every occurrence rather than relying on the gesture-word alone to disambiguate.
Sługa (Boży)	“Służebnica/Służebnik Boży” (“Servant of God”) is the OFFICIAL Catholic canon-law title for a candidate during the diocesan phase of a beatification process — a live, frequently reported category in Polish Catholic public life. Using it as Christ’s Isaianic title risks the reader hearing “a sainthood-candidate title” rather than a unique messianic title.	Retain “Sługa (Boży),” capitalized, with an explicit note at first occurrence (3:13) distinguishing the unique Isaianic Christological title from the canon-law honorific, both of which happen to share the identical Polish wording.
Sprawiedliwy	Adequate as a title if capitalized and flagged; the primary risk is not cultural collision but simple flattening into a generic adjective (“a righteous person”) if capitalization/title-marking is lost in typesetting or oral teaching.	Mandate capitalization and title-treatment at every occurrence (3:14; 7:52; 22:14).
okłamać / przeciwstawiać się Duchowi Świętemu	Lexically direct, no natural-Polish weakness; risk is purely doctrinal emphasis (affirming full personal deity of the Spirit against non-Trinitarian groups active in Poland, e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses).	Retain exactly; flag for theologian review given Trinitarian weight, not because of lexical inadequacy.
kamienować	Lexically clean; the doctrinal risk is narrative-conceptual (the hinge from forensic “witness” to later “martyrdom” sense) rather than a weakness in the stoning-vocabulary itself.	Teach the witness→martyr semantic development explicitly at 7:58-59 rather than assuming Polish readers will infer it, given the strength of Poland’s own martyr-cult tradition (e.g. Maksymilian Kolbe) pulling toward premature “martyrdom” readings even in Acts 1-6, before anyone has died.

1.6 Persecution and Bold Witness

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
świadek / świadczyć	Polish “świadek wiary” is a live devotional phrase already strongly associated with martyrdom (śmierć męczeńska) via the national martyr-cult tradition; this pulls the primary Acts sense (forensic eyewitness testimony to the resurrection) toward a premature death-association before the narrative itself makes that connection (from ch.7 onward).	Retain “świadek/świadczyć” (no lexical alternative exists) with explicit teaching notes anchoring the term first in eyewitness testimony, only secondarily and later in the book in costly/fatal witness.
śmiałość / odwaga	Adequate, but generic “odwaga” risks losing the Christ-specific proclamation content of parrēsia (boldness in preaching Christ, not generic courage).	Retain phrase pairing “w mówieniu [o Chrystusie]” explicitly rather than “odwaga” alone.
prześladować / prześladowanie	Strong, well-integrated Polish vocabulary with rich, largely positive historical resonance (Nazi occupation, communist-era suppression of the Church) — an asset, but risk of narrowing the doctrine to a national-historical narrative alone rather than retaining the specifically Christ-centered dimension (9:4-5: persecuting the church is persecuting Christ himself).	Retain vocabulary; explicitly teach the Christ-identification clause at 9:4-5 as the doctrinal center, using the national history only as a pastoral bridge, not a substitute frame.

1.7 Conversion of Paul

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
naczynie wybrane / wybrane narzędzie	Adequate; reuses baseline “wybranie” (election) caution against fatalistic “los/przeznaczenie” framing.	Retain exactly; ensure personal, purposive divine choice (not impersonal fate) is explicit at 9:15.
odzyskać wzrok	Lexically clean, no cultural-collision risk.	Retain exactly.
oddzielić / wyznaczyć	The specific Spirit-commissioning sense at 13:2 risks either (a) collapsing into ordinary “wyznaczyć” (assign a task administratively) with no sense of Spirit-initiation, or (b) being over-assimilated into the dominant Polish “powołanie” = priesthood/religious-life frame if teachers reach for that more familiar vocabulary instead.	Retain “oddzielić/wyznaczyć” specifically to keep this instance distinct from both the administrative-assignment flattening and the priesthood-vocation over-assimilation; affirm it as a genuine, Spirit-initiated calling in its own right.
żarliwy dla Boga	Adequate; low risk.	Retain exactly.

1.8 Justification apart from the Law

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
usprawiedliwienie	Baseline Critical term; Acts 13:38-39 is the narrative counterpart to Romans 3-5’s forensic argument. No new lexical weakness; risk is doctrinal continuity across curricula.	Reuse baseline exactly; cross-reference explicitly to Romans in teaching notes.
obrzezanie / obrzezać	Lexically unambiguous; the risk is entirely doctrinal-analogical — the Judaizing controversy of ch.15 functions as Acts’ version of the baseline’s Trent-merit-cooperation caution, and this parallel must be surfaced explicitly for teachers, not left implicit.	Retain exactly; require explicit cross-reference to the baseline’s grace/justification Critical entries at every ch.15 occurrence.
jarzmo	Adequate; minor risk of implying blanket disparagement of the Mosaic Law’s devotional value if the “as a condition of salvation” qualifier is dropped.	Retain, always paired with the salvation-condition qualifier in teaching.
bezprawni / ludzie bezbożni (2:23, ἄνομος)	No single Polish word cleanly isolates “lawless human agents” without risking a collective-ethnic reading in a crowd-address context; Poland’s own fraught history with antisemitic violence and its national reckoning with Polish-Jewish history sharpens this risk considerably beyond a generic translation problem.	Mandatory explicit translator/teaching note affirming individual and institutional (not ethnic/collective) responsibility at every occurrence; theologian review mandatory, not merely recommended.
zamysł Boży / uprzednia znajomość	Adequate, but “los/przeznaczenie” is the linguistically “easier,” more idiomatic Polish choice a translator might reach for by default — precisely the fatalistic framing the baseline forbids for providence/election vocabulary.	Explicit forbidden-substitution flag: never use “los” or “przeznaczenie” for 2:23’s/4:28’s divine plan language.

1.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled

Available Polish terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
aż do krańców ziemi	Lexically clean; risk is scope-narrowing in teaching (treating 1:8 as fulfilled/closed rather than as an ongoing mandate bracketed by 28:31’s open ending).	Retain exactly; teach 1:8 and 28:31 as a deliberate literary frame.
przywrócić królestwo Izraelowi	Adequate; risk is treating the disciples’ question as a live theological option for the curriculum to affirm rather than a corrected misunderstanding — parallel to the baseline’s caution against national-political kingdom readings (the “Polak-katolik” fusion).	Retain exactly; explicit note that this is a corrected misreading, not a model.
głosić	Adequate, connects cleanly to baseline “Ewangelia.”	Retain exactly.
bez przeszkód	Adequate; minor risk of under-translating the deliberateness of Luke’s open ending if rendered as a throwaway adverb rather than the book’s climactic final word.	Retain, with typographic/rhetorical emphasis preserved in teaching materials.
musisz stanąć przed Cezarem	Adequate; the same “los/przeznaczenie” fatalism risk as providence generally.	Retain “opatrzność Boża” framing explicitly; avoid impersonal-necessity tone.

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Section 2 — Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 True Lexical Gaps (no adequate single Polish term exists)

These require paraphrase, compound phrasing, or a coined/borrowed technical term rather than a single natural Polish word:

1. Xenolalia vs. glossolalia distinction — Polish has no popular single-word pair distinguishing Acts 2’s known-language phenomenon from 1 Corinthians 14-style ecstatic speech. Requires sustained paraphrase (“mówienie znanymi językami obcymi” vs. general “mówienie językami”) and explicit teaching, not a lexical fix.
2. God-fearer (φοβούμενος τὸν θεόν) as sociological category — no equivalent Polish sociological term for a Gentile synagogue-adjacent sympathizer short of full conversion. Requires periphrasis (“bojący się Boga,” with footnote) rather than a single noun.
3. The Way (ἡ ὁδός) as a movement’s technical self-designation — Polish “Droga” exists as a word but not as an attested technical religious-movement name; there is no ready-made Polish equivalent to signal “this is a proper noun, not a metaphor” beyond capitalization and footnoting.
4. σκεῦος ἐκλογῆς (“chosen instrument/vessel”) — no single Polish idiom carries both the “vessel” imagery and the “election” doctrine simultaneously; the compound phrase is a constructed solution, not a pre-existing idiom.
5. ἀρχηγός (“Author/Pioneer of life”) — Polish “wódz/przywódca” (leader) and “książę” (prince) both existed as historic options (as in some older Polish Bible translations) but neither captures the originating/pioneering sense without a compound rendering (“Twórca/Sprawca życia”).
6. κλῆρος’s double sense (literal lot-casting vs. covenantal inheritance) — Polish “los” covers the literal procedure but collides with the baseline’s forbidden fatalistic framing when the same word must also convey “inheritance/portion” (26:18); no single word serves both senses safely, requiring context-dependent dual rendering (“los” only for the literal procedure of 1:17,25-26; “dział/udział” for the inheritance sense).

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

These are cases where a perfectly serviceable Polish word or phrase already exists, but is heavily “occupied” by a competing frame from Polish Catholic sacramental theology, canon law, Charismatic devotional practice, or 20th-century political history. Each requires an explicit fencing note distinguishing the Acts sense from the dominant cultural sense, rather than a different word choice:

Polish term	Occupying frame	Fencing required
pokuta	Sacrament of Penance/Confession, priestly absolution	Excluded as primary rendering of μετανοέω; used only in contrastive footnotes.
chrzest	Infant sacramental baptism, regeneration prior to personal faith	Sequencing note (faith/repentance precedes baptism in Acts) at every occurrence.
odpuszczenie grzechów	Fixed liturgical absolution formula	Note: God’s direct forgiveness through faith/repentance, not contingent on separate ongoing priestly rite.
bierzmowanie / napełnienie Duchem Świętym	Once-for-life episcopal Confirmation rite	Note: repeatable, non-sacramental empowering distinct from Confirmation.
chrzest w Duchu Świętym	Odnowa w Duchu Świętym’s contested Charismatic doctrine	Note naming the interpretive debate explicitly, without resolving it unilaterally.
mówienie językami	Charismatic ecstatic glossolalia	Note distinguishing Acts 2’s known-language xenolalia from ecstatic tongues elsewhere.
wszystko wspólne	PRL-era forced collectivization	Note: voluntary, Spirit-motivated, not state-imposed.
biskup / starszy	Developed Catholic three-tier hierarchy; Konferencja Episkopatu Polski	Note: Acts 20 describes interchangeable local eldership, not the later hierarchy.
diakon / diakonia	Catholic sacramental diaconate (Holy Orders)	Note: Acts 6 is a functional service role, historically prior to the later order.
łamanie chleba	Catholic Eucharistic/Mass theology	Note: descriptive shared-meal practice; Acts does not adjudicate later sacramental debates.
Sługa Boży	Canon-law beatification-candidate title	Note distinguishing the unique Isaianic Christological title from the homonymous honorific.
świadek	Martyr-cult tradition (świadek wiary = męczennik)	Note anchoring the term first in eyewitness testimony, not death.
znaki i cuda	Shrine/apparition folk piety (private revelations, miraculous images)	Note: apostolic, gospel-confirming signs, not devotional-visionary phenomena.
bogowie czynieni rękami	Catholic devotional statues/icons (e.g. Częstochowa)	Note: targets objects worshipped as gods themselves, not images within a monotheistic frame.
powołanie / oddzielić (aphorizō)	Priesthood/consecrated-religious-life vocation vocabulary	Note affirming a real, Spirit-initiated calling distinct from the narrower vocational sense.
los (κλῆρος, literal lots)	Baseline’s forbidden fatalistic “los/przeznaczenie” framing for providence/election	Note restricting “los” strictly to the literal lot-casting procedure, never to God’s providential character.

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Section 3 — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Mesjasz	Transliteration (retained from baseline)	Single-referent proper title; no natural Polish equivalent exists or should be sought.
Pięćdziesiątnica	Transliteration-adjacent (Latinate calque already established in Polish theological usage)	Names a specific historical feast; paraphrase (“pięćdziesiąty dzień”) would lose recognized technical status.
Otchłań (Hades)	Hybrid: native Polish term + parenthetical transliteration	”Otchłań” alone risks merging with popular “piekło” (hell/damnation); appending “(Hades)” anchors the term to its distinct referent (temporary realm of the dead, translating Sheol).
Abba	Transliteration, retained untranslated (baseline precedent)	Preserves Aramaic intimacy marker; paired with “Ojcze” per standard Polish Bible convention — not applicable within Acts itself (no Abba occurrence), but the same principle governs any Aramaic/Hebrew terms Acts does use.
glosolalia	Available as a specialist loanword; NOT used as primary rendering	Reserved for footnoted technical clarification only; primary text uses the paraphrase “mówienie [innymi] językami” for reader accessibility at the target reading level (secondary-school proficiency).
chrzest w Duchu Świętym	Paraphrase (constructed phrase, not a single coined term)	No existing single Polish word covers this concept; a phrase allows the necessary interpretive-debate footnote to attach without inventing an artificial neologism.
dar Ducha Świętego	Paraphrase	δωρεά’s sense (gift) is already covered by existing vocabulary; no transliteration warranted.
Droga (ἡ ὁδός)	Native word, capitalized as technical proper name	Transliteration is impossible (it is not a Greek loanword in the relevant sense); capitalization convention substitutes for the technical-term marking a transliteration would otherwise provide.
Sługa (Boży)	Native phrase, capitalized as Christological title	Transliteration of παῖς is unnecessary; the risk is homonym collision (canon-law title), addressed by footnote, not by seeking an alternate loanword.
ho dikaios (Sprawiedliwy)	Native word, capitalized as title	Same logic as above; no transliteration warranted, capitalization plus title-marking is sufficient.
bezprawni (ἄνομος, 2:23)	Paraphrase, deliberately avoiding a single stronger noun	A stronger single-word rendering (e.g. “zbrodniarze”) was considered and rejected as needlessly inflammatory and imprecise; the milder, more literal “bezprawni/ludzie bezbożni” better supports the mandatory anti-collective-blame teaching note.
klēros (los / dział)	Native word, split by sense rather than transliterated	Transliteration is not applicable to this common Greek word; instead, sense-splitting fences the forbidden fatalistic reading away from the literal-procedure and inheritance senses.

General principle applied: transliteration (or transliteration-adjacent retention) is reserved for terms functioning as unique proper names or fixed technical titles with no true native equivalent and no risk of unwanted secondary association (Mesjasz, Pięćdziesiątnica, Abba). Native Polish paraphrase is preferred wherever a competing native word-family already carries strong, potentially misleading associations, because a footnoted native phrase is more teachable and less alienating to the target reading level than an unfamiliar loanword.

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Section 4 — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranking criteria: (a) doctrinal severity per baseline risk tiers, (b) strength/prevalence of the competing Polish cultural frame, (c) frequency of occurrence across Acts, (d) centrality to the core passage (Acts 2:1-41) or to the nine curriculum doctrines.

1. Spirit-baptism vocabulary — “chrzest w Duchu Świętym” (1:5; 2:4 implied; 11:16; 19:1-6). Critical. Double collision: conflated with water baptism by default in a single-sacrament catechetical culture, AND independently contested by the Catholic Charismatic Renewal’s own distinct doctrine of a post-conversion Spirit-baptism experience. Central to the core passage’s theological frame.

2. Repentance/baptism/forgiveness cluster — 2:38 and parallels. Critical. The single most quoted evangelistic verse in Acts, sitting at the intersection of three separate collision risks simultaneously (pokuta/Confession, infant-baptism sacramentalism, and the fixed liturgical absolution formula “odpuszczenie grzechów”). Located inside the core passage itself.

3. Installed Lord and Messiah — 2:36 (ἐποίησεν). Critical. Adoptionist-adjacent misreading risk is acute given active non-Trinitarian groups in Poland; also located inside the core passage, at its rhetorical climax.

4. Lawless men / crucifixion responsibility — 2:23 (ἄνομος). Critical. Antisemitic collective-blame risk is a live, high-stakes pastoral issue given Poland’s own historical record; located inside the core passage, addressed to a crowd, making misapplication especially easy without an explicit note.

5. Circumcision and justification apart from the Law — ch.15; 13:38-39. Critical. The Acts counterpart to the baseline’s Critical grace/justification cautions regarding Tridentine merit-cooperation readings; requires explicit cross-curriculum linkage to the Romans baseline, not treatment as a standalone Acts issue.

6. Overseer/elder/bishop terminology — 20:17,28. High. Anachronistic retrojection of the fully developed three-tier Polish Catholic hierarchy (reinforced by the nationally prominent Konferencja Episkopatu Polski) onto a plural, interchangeable local eldership is a subtle error likely to occur even among careful teachers unless flagged explicitly.

7. All things in common — 2:44-45; 4:32-35. High. Located in the core passage’s immediate narrative aftermath; Poland’s PRL-era collectivization memory is strong enough to produce either reflexive suspicion or reflexive over-idealization if not explicitly fenced.

8. Breaking of bread — 2:42,46; 20:7,11. High. Located in the core passage’s own summary of early-church marks (2:42); risk of either over-reading full Eucharistic theology into the phrase or under-reading it as merely social dining, when Acts itself is deliberately silent on the later sacramental question.

9. Filled with the Holy Spirit — 2:4; 4:8,31; 9:17; 13:9. High. Located at the core passage’s opening verse; Confirmation/bierzmowanie collision risks reducing a repeatable narrative event to “the thing that already happened to me once at age 13-14.”

10. Speaking in tongues — 2:4,11; 10:46; 19:6. High. Located in the core passage; Charismatic Renewal’s ecstatic-speech paradigm is a live, contemporary, and theologically confident competing frame that will not yield to a footnote alone without sustained teaching emphasis on 2:6,8,11’s explicit “own language” clarification.

11. Servant of God title — 3:13,26; 4:27,30. High. The homonymous canon-law beatification title is a genuinely confusing collision for any reader following contemporary Polish Catholic news coverage of sainthood causes.

12. Deacon/elder functional roles — 6:1-4; 11:30; 14:23; 15:2-23; 16:4; 20:17; 21:18. High. Broad, recurring collision with the developed clerical-order theology across a large portion of the book’s second half; cumulative risk is high even though any single occurrence is only moderately severe.

13. Clean/unclean/common — 10:9-16,28; 11:8-9. High. Requires substantial OT background most readers lack; risk of trivialization via a weak Lenten-fasting analogy undermines the passage’s actual argumentative function (dismantling the Jew/Gentile barrier).

14. Signs and wonders — 2:19,22,43; 4:30; 5:12; 6:8; 8:13; 14:3; 15:12. Medium-High. Located partly within the core passage (2:19,22,43); shrine/apparition folk-piety associations are pervasive enough in Polish devotional culture to redirect the term toward private-revelation categories rather than apostolic gospel-confirmation.

15. Witness terminology and its martyr-sense drift — 1:8,22; 2:32,40 (core passage); 3:15; 4:33; 5:32; 7:58 onward. Medium-High. Low risk in isolated occurrences but cumulative risk across the book is significant given Poland’s strong martyr-cult resonance, which can prematurely color even the earliest, purely forensic occurrences of the term inside the core passage itself.

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Section 5 — Full-Book Coverage Confirmation

Every chapter of Acts has been reviewed for load-bearing vocabulary and doctrinal-collision risk. Chapters not separately itemized above contributed no terms beyond those already captured in the tables; they are recorded here explicitly per the full-coverage mandate, not silently omitted.

Chapter	Status	Notes
1	Contributes new terms	Ascension, Great Commission scope (1:8), restored-kingdom misreading (1:6), lot-casting (1:17,25-26).
2	Core passage — deepest treatment	Pentecost, Spirit-filling, tongues, Joel citation, 2:38 cluster, 2:23, 2:36, 2:42-45 community marks. See §1.1, §4 rankings 1-4, 7-10, 14-15.
3	Contributes new terms	Servant/Righteous One/Author of Life titles (3:13-15,26), repentance/turn-to-God (3:19), covenant citation (3:25).
4	Contributes new terms	Boldness (4:13,29,31), all things common (4:32-35), power of God (4:33), one accord (4:24).
5	Contributes new terms	Lying to/resisting the Holy Spirit (5:3-4), sanctification/saints groundwork, persecution onset (5:40).
6	Contributes new terms	Deacon/service origin narrative (6:1-4), word of God grew (6:7), laying on of hands (6:6).
7	Contributes new terms	Stephen’s speech, stoning/witness-to-martyr hinge (7:58-59), resist the Spirit (7:51), uncircumcised in heart (7:51).
8	Contributes new terms	Simon Magus and the gift-for-sale test case (8:18-24), gospel proclaimed to Samaria, God-fearer background groundwork.
9	Contributes new terms	Saul’s conversion, chosen instrument (9:15), regain sight (9:12,17-18), the Way (9:2), persecution vocabulary (9:1,4-5,13).
10	Contributes new terms	Cornelius episode: clean/unclean/common (10:9-16,28), God-fearer (10:2,22,35), no partiality (10:34-35), Gentile Pentecost parallel (“fell upon,” 10:44).
11	Contributes new terms	Report to Jerusalem, “turned to God” (11:21), Christian name coined at Antioch (11:26), promise-fulfillment echo (11:15-17).
12	Reviewed; no new load-bearing terms beyond baseline	Herod’s death (12:23, “glory” reused); persecution narrative continues without new vocabulary categories.
13	Contributes new terms	Set apart for task (13:2), justification climax (13:38-39), gospel to God-fearers/Gentiles at Antioch, boldness (13:46).
14	Reviewed; reinforces existing categories	Persecution (14:19, stoning), signs and wonders (14:3), no major new lexical category.
15	Contributes new terms	Jerusalem Council: circumcision (15:1,5,24), yoke of the Law (15:10), grace-not-works thesis (15:11), one accord (15:25).
16	Reviewed; reinforces existing categories	Philippian jailer/salvation (16:30-31), baptism (16:15,33), calling extended (16:10); no new lexical category beyond baseline reuse.
17	Contributes new terms	Areopagus speech: offspring of God (17:28-29), providence (17:26-28), resurrection as contested claim introduced narratively.
18	Contributes new terms	Baptism of John distinguished (18:25), Apollos episode.
19	Contributes new terms	Ephesus: tongues (19:6), sons of Sceva, secular assembly/riot (19:32,39,41 — “zgromadzenie,” fenced from “kościół”), word of God grew (19:20).
20	Contributes new terms	Miletus address: elder/overseer interchange (20:17,28), shepherd/flock (20:28-29), breaking of bread (20:7,11).
21	Reviewed; reinforces existing categories	Paul’s arrest, circumcision controversy echo (21:21), no new lexical category.
22	Contributes new terms	Paul’s defense: wash away sins (22:16), zealous for God (22:3), regain sight retold (22:13).
23	Contributes new terms	Sanhedrin resurrection dispute (Pharisee/Sadducee, 23:6-9) — useful teaching bridge per baseline resurrection entry, no new lexical category required beyond existing “zmartwychwstanie.”
24	Reviewed; reinforces existing categories	Felix hearing; righteousness/faith reused, no new lexical category.
25	Contributes new terms	Appeal to Caesar (25:11) — Great Commission narrative-providence hinge.
26	Reviewed; reinforces existing categories	Agrippa hearing; witness, repentance, sanctification vocabulary reused, no new lexical category.
27	Contributes new terms	Shipwreck voyage: “you must appear before Caesar” (27:24) as providence-in-narrative; thanksgiving reused (27:35).
28	Contributes new terms	Rome arrival: unhindered (28:31) as the book’s deliberate open ending, bracketing back to 1:8; thanksgiving reused (28:15).

No chapter was silently omitted. Chapters 12, 14, 16, 21, 23, 24, and 26 are explicitly recorded as reviewed with no new load-bearing vocabulary beyond terms already treated elsewhere in this analysis or reused directly from the Romans baseline.

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This analysis must be read alongside analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md (term-level semantic decisions) and analysis/08_core_glossary.md (consolidated glossary output) before Phase 1 Step 9 finalizes the Acts term registry and doctrine risk registry extensions.