Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: Hebrews (English–Sanskrit)
Curriculum: Hebrews 1–13
Core passage: Hebrews 9:11–28
Language pair: English → Sanskrit
Depends on: translation_memory.json (Romans baseline, v1), 08_core_glossary.md (Hebrews), bible_term_registry.json (Hebrews)
Status: Extends, does not contradict, the baseline. All risk tiers and forbidden substitutions from the Romans Language Package remain binding.
0. Purpose and Method
This document performs PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for Hebrews: it maps where Sanskrit’s existing theological vocabulary is missing entirely versus where it is oversupplied by rival, already-theorized terms that must be fenced off, records every transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision and its rationale, and ranks the highest-risk ambiguities specific to this letter — with special weight given to the core passage, Hebrews 9:11–28, where nearly every cross-cutting risk in the book converges (priesthood, sacrifice, covenant/testament, blood, conscience, redemption, eschatological time).
As established in the baseline: Sanskrit has no first-language speaker community, so gap analysis here is not “does an ordinary speaker have a word for X” but “does classical Sanskrit’s philosophical literature already have a fully theorized, citable doctrine occupying this semantic space, and if so, does adopting its vocabulary import that doctrine along with it?” Hebrews is unusually exposed to this risk because its central subject — priesthood, sacrifice, ritual purification, and access to the divine — is precisely the subject matter Sanskrit’s Śrauta, Mīmāṃsā, and dharmaśāstra literatures were developed to regulate. Romans faced this problem acutely with a handful of terms (righteousness, law, salvation); Hebrews faces it as its organizing subject matter, across the entire letter.
Part A — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the eight curriculum doctrines: the available Sanskrit candidate terms, their weaknesses, and the recommended strategy (which in every case matches or extends the Section 1/2 choices already recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and bible_term_registry.json).
A.1 The Superiority of Christ over Angels, Moses, and the Levitical Priesthood
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| देवः / देवाः (angels) | Recasts angels as members of the Vedic/Purāṇic devatā class — undermines the entire ch.1 argument, which requires angels to be a category of created servant, not a lesser class of gods | Reject. Use दूतः/दूताः (Section 2, Critical) |
| दूतः / दूताः (angels) | Minimal — “sent one,” parallel to baseline’s प्रेषितः | Adopt, with explicit “created, serving, not worshipped” framing at 1:6–14 |
| मोशेः as गुरुः-analogue | Would frame Moses/Christ as a lesser/greater teacher within a guru-paramparā, when the text’s contrast is servant (θεράπων) versus Son | Reject any guru-framing; render the servant/Son contrast literally, with a note that this is an office contrast, not a lineage-rank contrast |
| याजकः / महायाजकः (priesthood) | Inherent Śrauta/Brahmanical hereditary-caste resonance (see A.2) | Adopt with mandatory redefinition each occurrence in chs. 5–10 |
A.2 Christ as the Great High Priest
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| महायाजकः | Built on याजक, whose ordinary referent (Brahmin priestly officiant) is understood by every classically-trained reader as a birth-restricted office — the single most load-bearing collision risk in the entire letter, since Hebrews’ whole argument is that Christ’s priesthood is open on entirely different terms | Adopt (no unencumbered alternative exists) but pair every occurrence with the वंशरहितः (“without genealogy,” 7:3) framing established for Melchizedek, making the non-hereditary basis explicit rather than assumed |
| पुरोहितः (royal family chaplain) | Equally caste-bound; historically a hereditary court appointment | Reject |
| ऋत्विक् (Vedic sacrificial officiant, technical Śrauta term) | Even more narrowly tied to Śrauta ritual competence and mantra-recitation qualification (adhikāra) restricted by varṇa | Reject |
| मल्कीषेदक् / वंशरहितः (Melchizedek precedent) | None significant — proper name plus accurate description | Adopt as the fencing mechanism for महायाजकः itself: every high-priest passage should be teachable back to this precedent |
A.3 The New Covenant versus the Old
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| संविद् (covenant, baseline) | Denotationally weightless — carries no inherent binding-promise sense on its own | Adopt, with the baseline’s standing requirement of explicit teaching at every occurrence, intensified in Hebrews because the argument (superseding, not merely supplementing) is more load-bearing here than in Romans |
| नियमः | Activates Patañjali’s second yogic limb (niyama) | Reject (baseline) |
| वाचा | Activates Vāc cosmic-speech theology / Mīmāṃsā’s eternal śabda-brahman doctrine of the Veda | Reject (baseline) |
| इच्छापत्रम् (for the legal-will sense of διαθήκη, 9:16–17) | Solves denotation but cannot reproduce the Greek pun that a single word (διαθήκη) carries both “covenant” and “will/testament” senses in the same paragraph | Adopt with mandatory translator’s note (see Part B.1 below) — this is a structural gap, not a lexical-choice problem |
A.4 The Once-for-All Atoning Sacrifice
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| यज्ञः | The single most dangerous available Sanskrit word for this doctrine: names the fully systematized, Mīmāṃsā-regulated, repeatable-by-design Śrauta ritual category. Vidhi (scriptural injunction) governs exact re-performance; efficacy is procedural, not once-for-all | Forbid absolutely (already Critical/forbidden in registry) |
| बलिः | Comparatively unencumbered, but still a generic word for cultic offering/killing used of ordinary Puranic and even present-day votive offerings (e.g. bali to a village deity), which are themselves periodic and repeated | Adopt, but every occurrence describing Christ’s sacrifice must carry the सकृदेव (“once for all”) qualifier — बलिः alone, unqualified, drifts toward the repeatable-votive-offering sense |
| प्रायश्चित्तम् (for ἱλασμός, atonement/propitiation) | The precise dharmaśāstra category of prescribed, sin-specific ritual penances (Manusmṛti et al.) — resolving sin through correct penitential performance, the exact opposite of Hebrews’ argument | Forbid absolutely; use पापहरणबलिः instead |
| — (vicarious substitution, 9:28’s “bearing the sins of many”) | No single Sanskrit lexeme exists for one party’s guilt being substitutionarily transferred onto another; Sanskrit’s sacrificial vocabulary encodes ritual efficacy transferred by correct performance (vidhi), not culpability transferred onto a substitute person | Structural gap — use the full descriptive phrase बहुजनानां पापभारं वहन् अर्पितः; no shorter fix is available (see Part B.2) |
A.5 The Danger of Apostasy and Warning Passages
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| पतितः | Newly identified collision, not previously flagged at this depth: पतित is the specific dharmaśāstra technical term for a person who has fallen from caste (varṇa-cyuta) through a grave sin (mahāpātaka), a ritual-status category with prescribed expiation and formal readmission procedures in Manusmṛti and later nibandha literature. Using पतितः for apostasy risks a classically-trained reader hearing Hebrews 6:4–6 and 10:26–29 not as “no further sacrifice remains” but as “this is a caste-fall requiring the correct expiation rite” — precisely inverting the text’s point that no remedy remains | Use with an explicit blocking note at every occurrence: “not a ritual-status fall remediable by prāyaścitta-expiation, but a decisive, final rejection of the only available atonement.” Consider भ्रष्टः as the primary term (a more general “corrupted/degraded” sense with weaker technical baggage) and demote पतितः to secondary/glossed use only |
| भ्रष्टः | Milder, more general term for moral/spiritual ruin; still has minor Dharmaśāstra resonance (bhraṣṭa-varṇa) but far less technically loaded than पतितः | Prefer as primary rendering, reserving पतितः only where the stronger sense of decisive fall is contextually unavoidable, always with the blocking note above |
| जानता कृतं पापम् (willful sinning, 10:26) | Descriptive phrase rather than a single lexeme — acceptable; no ready single Sanskrit word conveys “deliberate post-knowledge sin” | Adopt as-is; no single-term substitute exists or should be sought |
A.6 Faith of the Old Testament Saints
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| विश्वासः (baseline) | Comparatively unencumbered vessel, as established in Romans | Adopt unchanged |
| निश्चयः (for ὑπόστασις, 11:1, “assurance/substance”) | Risk of drift toward अधिष्ठानम्, Advaita’s term for the substratum beneath an illusory superimposition (adhyāsa) — would make faith’s object sound like a projected appearance rather than a real future reality | Adopt निश्चयः, forbid अधिष्ठानम्, with a note that faith’s object is a real coming reality, not a superimposed appearance |
| प्रत्ययः (for ἔλεγχος, 11:1, “conviction/evidence”) | Risk of drift toward प्रमाणम्, the pan-Indian epistemological category spanning every darśana’s warrant-taxonomy (Nyāya’s four pramāṇas; Mīmāṃsā’s inclusion of śabda/Veda) | Adopt प्रत्ययः, forbid प्रमाणम्, with a note that faith is not being classified as a formal epistemic warrant within an existing pramāṇa system |
| आरोपिता धार्मिकता (imputed righteousness, cross-ref. to Abraham in 11:8–19) | None beyond baseline’s own Critical-tier caution | Reuse verbatim from Romans for cross-document consistency |
A.7 Perseverance and Assurance
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| सहिष्णुता (endurance) | Low classical-doctrinal risk, but in contemporary usage (outside this Language Package’s primary audience, though worth noting) सहिष्णुता is the standard modern term in Indian public discourse for religious/pluralistic “tolerance” — a minor register mismatch, not a doctrinal collision | Adopt, aware of the register note; no fencing required |
| धृतिः | Also a technical term in Yoga/Āyurveda for the faculty of steadfast retention (dhṛti as one of the sattva-guṇa qualities) | Acceptable as a secondary/poetic synonym; primary rendering should remain सहिष्णुता to avoid importing the guṇa-classification apparatus |
| निश्चयः (assurance, shared with 11:1) | Covered under A.6 | Consistent reuse across 3:14, 6:11, 10:22, 11:1 required |
A.8 Access to God through Christ’s Blood
| Candidate | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| रक्तम् (blood) | Denotationally neutral, but sits inside a crowded neighborhood: Vedic paśubandha (animal sacrifice) and, more acutely, Tantric/Śākta bali traditions in which blood offerings to a deity (e.g. Kālī, Durgā) are periodic, votive, and expected to be repeated at festival intervals | Adopt, with a standing collective note (already in registry) that Christ’s blood is a unique, terminal, self-offered act, not one more instance of a repeatable blood-offering category |
| आवरणवस्त्रम् (veil) | Low risk — descriptive compound | Adopt unchanged |
| प्रगल्भता (confidence/boldness, 4:16, 10:19) | A classical rhetorical-debate term (boldness of speech in a vāda/disputation context); risk is low but should not be mistaken for self-generated fearlessness earned by argumentative skill | Adopt, with the note that this confidence is grounded in Christ’s finished work, not rhetorical or ascetic self-assurance |
| दयापीठम् (mercy seat, 9:5) | Built on दया rather than baseline’s अनुग्रह, correctly separating the physical object from the doctrine of grace — but risks being read as a general Buddhist/Jain karuṇā-ethics term if unglossed | Adopt as a proper-noun-like object label only; do not let दया substitute for अनुग्रह anywhere the doctrine of grace itself is being taught |
Part B — Missing Vocabulary: Structural Gaps
These are places where no Sanskrit term, however chosen, closes the gap — the gap is structural, not lexical, and must be handled by mandatory translator notes or descriptive phrasing rather than a better word choice.
B.1 — The covenant/testament pun (Hebrews 9:16–17). Greek διαθήκη carries both “covenant” and “last will/testament” within the same short argument, and Hebrews exploits the pun (a διαθήκη, like a will, takes effect only at the death of the one who made it). Sanskrit संविद् (covenant) and इच्छापत्रम् (will) are two unrelated words with no shared root and no possible wordplay between them. No lexical solution exists. This must be flagged as untranslatable wordplay requiring an explicit translator’s note at first occurrence, not resolved by clever word choice.
B.2 — Vicarious, substitutionary bearing of sin (9:28, echoing Isaiah 53). Sanskrit’s sacrificial vocabulary (बलि, अर्पण, यज्ञ) encodes ritual efficacy transferred to the sacrificer/beneficiary by correct performance of the rite, not another’s guilt transferred substitutionarily onto the victim. There is no single word for “bearing someone else’s culpability in their place.” The registry’s descriptive-phrase solution (बहुजनानां पापभारं वहन् अर्पितः) is necessary, not merely stylistic, and should not be compressed to a shorter term under stylistic pressure.
B.3 — Conscience as a guilt-registering faculty (9:9,14; 10:2,22; 13:18). अन्तःकरणम् names the Sāṅkhya/Vedānta composite “inner instrument” (manas + buddhi + ahaṃkāra) — a cognitive-psychological apparatus for perception, judgment, and self-reference. It has no inherent guilt-registering function. This is a genuine conceptual gap: Sanskrit philosophical psychology does not organize itself around a faculty specifically tracking moral guilt before a personal God. The redefinition burden is heavier here than the registry note alone conveys — expect this to require the most explanatory apparatus of any Anthropology-category term in the letter.
B.4 — A priesthood that changes lineage (7:12, “when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well”). Varṇāśrama-dharma has no ready category for a priestly office transferring between families or peoples — priestly status is fixed by birth, full stop. There is no Sanskrit technical term for “a priesthood that can change hands non-hereditarily,” because within the system’s own terms this is closer to a contradiction than a describable event. The Melchizedek precedent (7:1–17) must do all of the conceptual work here; no term-level fix is available.
B.5 — “Made perfect” through suffering (2:10, 5:8–9, 7:28). पूर्णता (“fullness/completeness”) is a fine word for the result, but Sanskrit has no ready causal-narrative term for “completed specifically through undergoing suffering” as opposed to through ascetic discipline (tapas), yogic practice (sādhana), or ritual correctness. Each occurrence needs the causal clause spelled out; पूर्णता alone will not carry it.
B.6 — Eschatological “rest” still outstanding (4:1–11). विश्रामः is a plain word for rest, but the specific now-inaugurated-but-not-yet-consummated eschatological structure of Hebrews’ rest doctrine (already available by faith, not yet fully entered) has no ready Sanskrit temporal-theological category to borrow, unlike (for contrast) मोक्ष or समाधि, which describe a rest fully attained by the practitioner in the present. This asymmetry — a rest that is both promised-and-available and not-yet-consummated — must be taught explicitly each time, since it does not map onto any single existing Sanskrit soteriological structure.
Part C — Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
Unlike Part B (nothing available), these are neighborhoods where Sanskrit offers too many well-developed competing terms, each belonging to a different, fully theorized system, and each capable of quietly reassigning a Hebrews doctrine into that system’s own framework if the fence is not maintained.
C.1 — The mokṣa/mukti/nirvāṇa cluster, at the book level, not merely the term level. This is the most important structural observation of this analysis and goes beyond anything flagged per-term in the glossary or registry: Hebrews’ cumulative narrative arc — pilgrimage toward a promised rest (κατάπαυσις), redemption (λύτρωσις) from bondage, and final perfection (τελείωσις) of the believer — assembles, across chapters 3–4, 9, and 11–12 taken together, into something that structurally resembles a liberation narrative (bondage → purification → rest/completion) far more than Romans’ forensic courtroom drama (guilt → verdict → acquittal) did. Each individual term (त्राणम्, उद्धारः, विश्रामः, पूर्णता) is correctly fenced away from मोक्ष/मुक्ति/निर्वाण/समाधि individually in the registry. But translators and reviewers must additionally watch the combined effect across a passage or chapter: a reader encountering “रक्तेन उद्धारः… नित्यं विश्रामं… पूर्णतां प्राप्तवान्” in sequence may synthesize a jñāna-mārga-shaped liberation story even where every individual word has been correctly chosen. Recommendation: require a chapter-level (not just term-level) doctrinal note for chs. 4, 9, and 11–12 explicitly naming this cumulative risk and reasserting that this is a relational rescue-and-inheritance narrative, not a self- or Christ-achieved liberation from an impersonal cycle.
C.2 — The Śrauta/Mīmāṃsā ritual-sacrifice cluster (यज्ञ, विधि, प्रायश्चित्त, ऋत्विक्, वेदी). Already extensively fenced in the registry (बलि not यज्ञ; पापहरणबलि not प्रायश्चित्त; वेदी requires a non-installation note). This remains the single largest fencing burden in the letter given that priesthood and sacrifice are its central subject matter across chs. 5–10.
C.3 — The guru-paramparā / ṛṣi-lineage cluster (apostle, mediator, founder/pioneer, high priest, Moses). Fenced by consistently avoiding गुरुः and ऋषिः for any of these offices; the registry’s आदिनायकः (founder/pioneer) and मध्यस्थः (mediator) choices correctly avoid this, but reviewers should watch narrative passages describing Moses’ “faithfulness in all God’s house” (3:2–5) for any drift toward guru-disciple transmission language.
C.4 — The ātman-Brahman identity cluster. Already Critical in the baseline for Holy Spirit; Hebrews adds two new residents requiring fence maintenance: जीवः (soul, 6:19, 10:39, 13:17) and अन्तःकरणम् (conscience). Neither uses आत्मन् directly, which is correct, but both sit close enough to Vedāntic anthropology that a note disclaiming any jīva-Brahman or ātman-identity implication should accompany first use of each.
C.5 — The varṇa-hereditary-access cluster. This is Hebrews’ most distinctive fencing challenge relative to Romans, and spans priesthood (A.2), the Levitical line’s supersession (7:11–19), and — newly identified here — apostasy’s पतित-caste-fall resonance (A.5). All three collision points share one root problem: classical Sanskrit religious vocabulary is saturated with birth-determined ritual status (who may sacrifice, who may approach the altar, who has fallen from status and how they are readmitted), while Hebrews’ entire argument is that access to God is now decisively not birth-determined. Recommend treating this as a single cross-cutting doctrinal note applied consistently at 7:1–19, 9:11–14, and 10:26–29 rather than three unconnected footnotes.
C.6 — The avatāra/yuga cyclical-time cluster. Already fenced for incarnation (देहधारण, never अवतार) and end-of-age (कालान्तः, never युगान्तः) in the baseline/registry. Hebrews 9:26–28’s “once… but now once for all… will appear a second time” is the passage of greatest exposure, since it combines both fenced terms in close proximity — recommend a single combined note at 9:26–28 rather than two separate ones, to keep the linear-versus-cyclical argument unified for the reader.
C.7 — The siddhi/yogic-attainment cluster (spiritual gifts [Romans-inherited], perfection, rest). Perfection (पूर्णता, never सिद्धि/सिद्ध) is the acute case in Hebrews; already Critical in the registry. Rest (विश्रामः, never समाधि) is High. Both must resist any stylistic pressure toward a “more classical-sounding” synonym, per the baseline’s standing synonym-substitution prohibition.
C.8 — The Sanātana-dharma/eternal cluster. नित्यम्, never सनातनम्, throughout — acutely tested at 13:8 (“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”), a verse whose poetic cadence may tempt a more “elegant” सनातन rendering; this must be explicitly resisted.
Part D — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decision Log
| Term | Decision | Type | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melchizedek | मल्कीषेदक् | Transliteration | Proper name; theological weight carried by “without genealogy” descriptor, not the name itself |
| Sabbath (in “Sabbath rest”) | शब्बत्- (compounded with विश्रामः) | Transliteration | Follows baseline’s अब्बा precedent for retaining Semitic terms of theological weight rather than translating |
| Hyssop | हिसोपः | Transliteration | No native Sanskrit botanical equivalent for this specific Levant plant; standard biblical-flora borrowing practice |
| Old Testament saints’ proper names (Abel, Enoch, Noah, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Rahab, Gideon, Samson, Samuel) | Transliterated per Serampore-tradition forms | Transliteration | Weight lies in the surrounding faith-narrative of ch.11, not the names |
| Zion / Heavenly Jerusalem | सियोन्पर्वतः / स्वर्गीया यरूशालम् | Transliteration + descriptive gloss | No Sanskrit equivalent concept of a covenant-city; proper names retained with mandatory OT background note, as with Israel/David in the baseline |
| Testament/will pun (διαθήκη, legal sense) | इच्छापत्रम् + mandatory note | Paraphrase/descriptive term with note | Cannot preserve the Greek pun; denotation only, flagged as untranslatable wordplay (see B.1) |
| Vicarious bearing of sins (9:28) | बहुजनानां पापभारं वहन् अर्पितः | Full descriptive phrase | No single lexeme exists; compression to a shorter term would lose the substitutionary sense (see B.2) |
| Great Shepherd (13:20) | मेषाणां महान् पालकः | Coined descriptive compound, deliberately avoiding गोपः/गोपालकः | गोप/गोपाल is Kṛṣṇa’s fixed bhakti epithet (Govinda); मेष (sheep) + generic पालक (herder) sidesteps the collision entirely rather than paraphrasing around it |
| Atonement/Propitiation (2:17) | पापहरणबलिः | Coinage (compound of established roots) | Avoids प्रायश्चित्तम्’s dharmaśāstra penance-category baggage while remaining transparent in meaning |
| Without genealogy (7:3) | वंशरहितः | Direct compound, not paraphrase | Transparent, low-risk, and does the necessary fencing work for महायाजकः itself |
| Redemption (9:12) | उद्धारः | Reuse-extension of a general “rescue/uplift” root, not a coinage | Deliberately avoids मुक्ति/मोक्ष/विमोचन-family roots; requires supplementary “price paid” teaching at first occurrence since उद्धार alone lacks that component |
| Consuming Fire (12:29) | भस्मकारी अग्निः | Descriptive predication, not a bare name | अग्नि is also a Vedic deva’s proper name; grammatical construction must stay predicative/simile (“like an all-consuming fire”), never a naming construction that could identify God with Agni-deva |
Part E — Ranked Highest-Risk Ambiguities in This Letter
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision specificity), with special weight given to the core passage (Hebrews 9:11–28), where items marked ★ occur directly.
- ★ The covenant/testament pun (9:16–17) — Critical. Structural, untranslatable wordplay; no lexical fix exists; requires mandatory translator’s note every occurrence (B.1).
- ★ बलिः vs यज्ञः repeatability collision (9:25–26, “not to offer himself repeatedly… but as it is, he has appeared once for all”) — Critical. The entire once-for-all argument is structurally opposed to how Sanskrit’s own sacrificial vocabulary ordinarily signals ritual efficacy (procedural, vidhi-governed, repeatable).
- NEW: पतितः caste-fall collision for apostasy (6:4–6, 10:26–29) — High/Critical. Not previously isolated at this level of specificity: risks recasting “no further sacrifice for sin remains” as an ordinary dharmaśāstra caste-fall awaiting the correct expiation rite — the exact inversion of the warning passages’ point (A.5).
- ★ महायाजकः hereditary-varṇa collision (9:11, “a high priest of the good things to come”) — High. Every occurrence across chs. 4–10 carries this risk; mitigated only by consistent pairing with the Melchizedek precedent.
- ★ रक्तम् Tantric/Śākta votive blood-offering collision (9:12–22) — Medium-High. Denser here than anywhere else in the letter given the sheer concentration of blood-sprinkling language in this single passage.
- ★ इच्छापत्रम्/संविद् inconsistent weight across a single argument (9:15–20) — High. The passage moves between covenant-sense and will-sense of the same underlying Greek word within a few verses; translators must track which sense is active line by line, not assume consistency of a single Sanskrit term.
- ★ अन्तःकरणम् conscience-purification (9:14, “purify our conscience from dead works”) — High. The Sāṅkhya/Vedānta composite cognitive faculty has no inherent guilt-registering function (B.3); this is the passage where that gap is most exposed.
- ★ कालान्तः / युगान्तः combined exposure (9:26–28) — High. Both fenced terms (end-of-age, second appearing) occur in close proximity; recommend the single combined note described in C.6.
- ★ उद्धारः vs मोक्ष-family collision (9:12, 15) — High. Occurs twice in the core passage; each occurrence needs its own “price paid” supplementary note, not reliance on a single note elsewhere in the document.
- ★ छाया/प्रतिरूप typological-shadow vs chāyāvāda reflection-theory (9:23–24, “copies of the true things,” “a shadow of the good things to come”) — High. Advaita’s minor chāyāvāda doctrine (soul as reflection of Brahman) sits close enough to require the note every time, and this passage is its highest-density occurrence in the letter.
- ★ दयापीठम् mercy seat vs अनुग्रह grace-doctrine confusion (9:5) — Medium. Low individually, but proximate to items 4–5 above in the same short span of verses, compounding review burden.
- Cumulative mokṣa-shaped soteriological arc (book-level, acute in chs. 9–10 read together with 4 and 11–12) — High, flagged as a pattern risk rather than a single-term risk (C.1). This is the analysis’s principal structural finding: no individual term is mistranslated, yet the passage’s assembled shape risks a jñāna-mārga liberation reading if reviewers check only term-by-term compliance.
- वंशरहितः / महायाजकः cross-reference dependency (7:1–17, presupposed throughout ch. 9) — Medium. The core passage’s high-priest language in 9:11ff. depends entirely on the non-hereditary argument established in ch. 7; if that chapter’s fencing note is dropped or abbreviated in excerpted use of ch. 9 alone, item 4 above becomes substantially worse.
Part F — Full-Book Coverage Confirmation
Consistent with 08_core_glossary.md Section 3: every chapter of Hebrews (1–13) has been reviewed for gap-analysis purposes. No chapter is vocabulary-free. Chapters not separately itemized above (1–3, 11–13 outside the specific items already listed) were reviewed and found to introduce either (a) terms fully covered by the Romans baseline with no new gap, or (b) terms already treated in Parts A–E above; none contribute an additional structural gap or crowded-neighborhood risk beyond what is documented here. The concentration of highest-severity items in chapters 6–10, and above all in the core passage 9:11–28, reflects the letter’s actual doctrinal weighting rather than an artifact of selective coverage.
This analysis extends 08_core_glossary.md and the Romans-baseline translation_memory.json/bible_term_registry.json without contradiction. All forbidden substitutions and Critical/High risk tiers established there remain fully binding. New findings in this document (§A.5 पतितः caste-fall collision; §C.1 cumulative mokṣa-shaped-arc risk) should be incorporated into doctrine_risk_registry.json for Hebrews in the next pipeline step.