Executive Summary — Leviticus (English → Spanish)

Why it matters

Leviticus is being added to a Spanish-language Bible curriculum already anchored in Romans. Unlike Romans, Leviticus is a Hebrew ritual-legal text whose vocabulary — sacrifice, priesthood, purity, the scapegoat, the Sabbath — collides with live, currently practiced Spanish-speaking religious realities: Catholic sacramental priesthood and Penance, canonized sainthood, the Catholic indulgence-granting Jubilee Year, active Sabbatarian movements, and, in the Caribbean, Espiritismo and Santería. Several of these collisions are more immediate than anything documented in the Romans baseline, because the rival referent is not historical background but an institution or practice many learners currently participate in. Getting this Language Package right is what stands between Leviticus 16 being taught as a vivid, textually grounded pointer to Christ’s finished work, and it being silently absorbed into an existing, contrary devotional framework.

Key findings

• Two doctrines carry the highest cumulative risk in the whole book: The Priesthood and Mediation, and The Scapegoat and Substitution — both because a modern Spanish word or idiom (sacerdote; chivo expiatorio) already has a strong, ready-made, doctrinally opposite meaning in the learner’s own language and culture.
• One term (“holocausto”) has no viable lexical alternative despite colliding, at very high frequency, with the Nazi genocide — the single most emotionally loaded modern referent competing with any word in this curriculum.
• The book’s OT–NT typological bridges are precise and fragile: “propiciatorio” (→ Romanos 3:25), “llevar/cargar” (→ Isaías 53:12; Juan 1:29), “una vez al año” (→ Hebreos 9:26-28, 10:10), and “fuera del campamento” (→ Hebreos 13:11-13) all depend on exact, consistent Spanish rendering to remain visible to the learner.
• Ceremonial impurity requires active protection from moral misreading: childbirth and menstrual impurity (chs. 12, 15) must be taught as purely ritual-status categories, not as statements about a person’s worth — a real risk in the destination culture.
• Love of neighbor (19:18) has essentially zero lexical risk but a real scope risk: the text’s own extension to the “extranjero” (19:34) must not be quietly narrowed given regional and racial hierarchies affecting indigenous and Afro-descendant communities across Latin America.

Risks

• 11 doctrines (of 20 identified) require mandatory human theologian review: 4 rated Critical (Sacrificial System and Atonement; Priesthood and Mediation; Day of Atonement; Scapegoat and Substitution) and 7 rated High (Holiness of God/Call to Be Holy; Clean and Unclean; Sabbath and Sacred Time; Love of Neighbor; Sexual Ethics and Family Holiness; Prohibition of Occult Practices; Redemption and the Kinsman-Redeemer).
• 36 individual glossary terms (of ~100 catalogued) are rated Critical or High and require theologian-level enforcement: 11 Critical terms (burnt_offering, atonement, priest, mediation, day_of_atonement, mercy_seat, azazel, scapegoat, bear_carry_guilt, god, intercession) and 25 High terms (including sin_offering, blood, life_soul_person/nephesh, holy, holiness, sanctify, clean, unclean, menstrual_impurity, sabbath, love_neighbor, medium_necromancer, goat_demons, covenant, redemption_redeemer, law, and related terms).
• Idiom drift is the single most likely silent failure mode: “chivo expiatorio” is common enough in everyday Spanish political/social speech that translators or reviewers may reach for it reflexively, inverting the doctrine.
• Sabbatarian and Caribbean-spiritist regional sensitivities require differentiated review routing, not a uniform national default, or lessons risk either provoking unnecessary controversy or under-teaching a live pastoral issue.

Opportunities

• Strong existing cross-reference scaffolding: Because the baseline Romans package already carries Critical-tier cautions for “gracia,” “justificación,” “santos,” and “intercesión,” this Leviticus package can extend rather than invent doctrinal guardrails — the grace-not-merit and mediation-fulfilled-in-Christ arguments are already proven patterns in this Language Package.
• High cross-tradition intelligibility for several doctrines: Love of Neighbor, Sanctity of the Divine Name, and Gratitude/Firstfruits offerings have very low translation risk and near-universal resonance, making them efficient, low-friction teaching entry points into the book.
• The Yom Kippur / Día de la Expiación paraphrase-plus-transliteration strategy gives the curriculum a built-in interfaith and cross-cultural anchor point, useful for learners encountering the Hebrew festival name elsewhere.
• The nephesh split-rendering rule (“vida”/“persona,” never “alma”) is a durable, reusable translation-memory rule that will pay off across every future Old Testament book added to this Language Package, not just Leviticus.

Recommended actions

1. Lock the Leviticus assets/translation_memory.json and assets/bible_term_registry.json produced in this phase as the enforced Phase 2 baseline before any segment translation begins, loaded alongside (never replacing) the Romans baseline files.
2. Route Levítico 16:1-34 (the core passage) for 100% human theologian review given its cumulative Critical-risk density — no automated or native-speaker-only pass should be treated as sufficient for this chapter.
3. Apply differentiated regional review routing: Caribbean-facing lessons for occult-practice vocabulary (19:31; 20:6, 27; 17:7); Sabbatarian-movement-dense regions for Sabbath doctrine (16:29-31; 23; 25-26).
4. Enforce the “chivo expiatorio” and “holocausto” forbidden-substitution rules at the validation layer, not only the system-prompt layer, since both are high-frequency everyday words a translator could reach for without conscious doctrinal intent.
5. Carry the mandatory typological teaching notes (propiciatorio → Romanos 3:25; llevar/cargar → Isaías 53:12/Juan 1:29; una vez al año → Hebreos 9:26-28/10:10) into every downstream lesson template so the OT–NT bridge is never left implicit.