Executive Summary: Acts 1–28 (English → Sanskrit)

Why it matters

Acts is Luke’s narrative confirmation of the very doctrines Romans argues abstractly — justification by faith (13:39), salvation by grace (15:11), the Spirit’s personal indwelling (ch. 2), and the gospel’s reach to Jew and Gentile alike (ch. 10, 15). For Sanskrit, a language with no living speech community whose sole audience is scholars, seminarians, and classically trained pandits actively trained to parse philosophical technical vocabulary, this book raises the stakes higher than Romans did: Acts narrates practiced rites (baptism), names a singular personal adversary (Satan), and stages a direct, sustained philosophical polemic against a living devotional tradition (the Areopagus speech, Acts 17). Getting this Language Package right determines whether Acts reads, to its intended audience, as a rigorous theological text engaging their own philosophical tradition on its own terms — or as an accidental doctrinal collision.

Key findings

• 113 total glossary terms now govern Phase 2 Acts translation: 47 inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline, 66 newly introduced by Acts’ nine curriculum doctrines.
• 62 terms are Critical or High risk (20 Critical + 42 High), all requiring mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence — up from the Romans baseline’s smaller Critical/High set, driven largely by Pentecost’s dense terminological cluster (wind, fire, tongues, filling, pouring) and by five entirely new hard-forbidden-substitution terms (baptism, Satan, the Way, idols, shepherd) that Romans never required.
• 23 named doctrines span the book; 19 (8 Critical + 11 High) require mandatory human theologian review, 2 Medium-risk doctrines route to Sanskrit-philosophically-literate scholar review, and only 2 Low-risk doctrines are automated-review-sufficient.
• The single highest-risk term in the entire curriculum is “witness” (साक्षी) — it positively echoes dharmaśāstra’s forensic-witness procedure but collides directly with Advaita Vedānta’s sākṣin (witness-consciousness identified with ātman/Brahman), and it sits at the book’s own programmatic bracket-verses (1:8; 28:31), maximizing exposure.
• Baptism (बाप्तिस्मः) is the clearest transliteration-mandatory decision in this Language Package, stronger than even “Messiah”: both native candidates (स्नानम्, दीक्षा) name specific, currently and actively practiced rival rites, not merely classical-textual background.
• Idolatry (Acts 14, 17) is this Package’s highest inter-religious-dialogue stake: the default Sanskrit words for “idol” (मूर्तिः, प्रतिमा) are the positively-valenced terms for a living, theologically-defended Hindu devotional practice, requiring a qualified compound (मिथ्यादेवप्रतिमा) rather than a blanket rejection of the tradition.

Risks

• Compounded ātman-Brahman collision: Pentecost’s simultaneous multi-person Spirit-indwelling (2:4) intensifies, rather than merely repeats, the baseline’s already-Critical Holy Spirit risk into a corporate register; Acts 17:28’s “in him we live and move and have our being” independently risks being quoted as scriptural support for Advaitic non-dualism if the transcendence note is dropped.
• Living-tradition contamination, not just classical-text contamination: unlike most Romans-era risks, several Acts risks concern currently practiced rites and devotions — Gaṅgā-style ritual bathing (baptism, and again at 22:16’s “wash away your sins”), temple mūrti-pūjā (idols), Kṛṣṇa’s cowherd epithet (shepherd) — meaning a mistranslation here risks giving unintended offense to, or being misread by, a living community, not only a historical philosophical school.
• Cross-document drift: five verses (Acts 2:21, 4:12, 13:39, 15:11, 16:31) must remain lexically identical to their Romans companions; any independent Phase 2 rendering of these verses without the cross-check step will silently break doctrinal consistency between the two curricula.
• Escalation-fatigue risk: with 62 Critical/High terms and 19 theologian-review doctrines, reviewer bandwidth is the binding constraint, not glossary completeness; the requirements document’s tiered escalation list is designed to prioritize साक्षी, बाप्तिस्मः, and the Areopagus material above other High-risk items for triage purposes.

Opportunities

• Positive precedent reuse: साक्षी’s dharmaśāstra forensic-witness resonance and निर्णयः’s Mīmāṃsā/Nyāya argumentative-conclusion resonance (already fixed in Romans) are genuine rhetorical assets once fenced — this Package can present Acts’ truth-claims in vocabulary this audience already recognizes as weighty, not merely translated-around.
• Built-in pedagogical moments: the Lystra crowd’s own mistaken “gods have come down in human form” (14:11) and Paul’s immediate correction (14:15) hand this Language Package a ready-made, textually-internal parallel to the avatāra-vs-incarnation distinction, requiring no external apologetic scaffolding.
• Genuine gap-filling contributions: six terms (baptism, Satan, Pentecost, God-fearer, Christian, and the abstract concept of “conversion”) had no risk-free native Sanskrit equivalent at all; this Package’s transliteration and coinage decisions for them can be proposed as durable additions to the thin existing corpus of Christian Sanskrit vocabulary (Serampore 1808, de Nobili, Upadhyay).

Recommended actions

1. Promote साक्षी (witness), बाप्तिस्मः (baptism), and the Areopagus idol/immanence vocabulary to the top of the Phase 2 human-theologian review queue, ahead of other High-risk terms, given their combined frequency and doctrinal density.
2. Enforce the five cross-document consistency anchors (2:21/10:13; 4:12/10:12-13; 13:39/3:28; 15:11/3:24; 16:31/10:9) via an automated pre-submission check before any human review begins, to avoid wasting theologian review time on preventable drift.
3. Treat the Acts-specific hard forbidden substitutions (स्नानम्/दीक्षा, असुरः, माया, मार्गः, bare मूर्ति/प्रतिमा, गोपाल/गोप, दुःखम्, सिद्धि) with the same zero-tolerance validation-gate enforcement already applied to मोक्षः/अवतारः in the Romans baseline.
4. Brief theologian reviewers specifically on the living-tradition (not merely classical-text) character of the baptism, idol, and shepherd risks, since the review posture required (sensitivity to a practiced community’s own self-understanding, not only historical-philosophical precision) differs from the posture the Romans baseline mostly required.
5. Carry the six genuine vocabulary-gap coinages (बाप्तिस्मः, शैतानः, पेण्टेकोस्तपर्व, परमेश्वरभीरुः, ख्रीष्टीयः, and the descriptive conversion-vocabulary) forward as candidate additions to any future cross-curriculum Sanskrit Christian terminology standard.

Full supporting detail: analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md, analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md, assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md.