Executive Summary — Luke Curriculum, Spanish Language Package

Why it matters

The Gospel of Luke is being prepared for Spanish-speaking learners across a doctrinally mixed, historically Catholic-majority audience now including large and growing Evangelical/Pentecostal populations, plus Caribbean and Afro-Latin contexts with active Espiritismo and Santería. Luke’s core passage (4:16-21) makes the highest-stakes possible claim — Jesus declaring Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy fulfilled in himself, “today,” in his own hearing — and the Gospel as a whole is denser in doctrinally load-bearing, syncretism-exposed vocabulary than the Romans curriculum this package extends. Getting this Language Package right determines whether Spanish-speaking learners receive Luke’s message of a Savior for all nations and all people, poor and rich alike, with theological precision, or receive a diluted, devotionally blended, or spiritualized-away substitute.

Key findings

• 84 glossary terms are now governed by translation_memory.json: 47 inherited directly and unchanged from the Romans baseline, plus 37 new terms this book introduces (e.g., Salvador, Hijo del Hombre, ἄφεσις’s libertad/perdón split, cruz, paraíso, samaritano, pecador, arrepentimiento).
• Of these 84 terms, 52 are Critical or High risk (18 Critical + 34 High), requiring human theologian review on every occurrence — a materially higher proportion than the Romans baseline.
• 41 doctrines are catalogued in doctrine_risk_registry.json across all 24 chapters; 31 are Critical or High risk (15 Critical + 16 High), requiring human theologian review; 7 require native speaker review; 3 are automated-only.
• The single highest-leverage new risk in the entire curriculum is ἄφεσις (Luke 4:18 and throughout): one Greek word spanning Jubilee social liberation and forgiveness of sins, which Spanish cannot render with one term — every occurrence needs a cross-referencing note or the doctrine fractures into two unrelated ideas.
• Luke’s Gospel introduces two new Critical-tier Christological titles absent from the Romans baseline glossary: Salvador (σωτήρ) and Hijo del Hombre (υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) — both collide with live devotional and doctrinal risks specific to Hispanic Catholic popular piety.
• Full-book coverage confirms every chapter (1–24) contributes to at least one of the curriculum’s eight named doctrines; no chapter was silently omitted.

Risks

• Devotional dilution of “Salvador”: folk Catholic piety’s regional patron-saint and Marian “protector” titles risk making Jesus’ exclusive rescuer status read as one benefactor title among several.
• ἄφεσις fracture: splitting “libertad” (4:18) from “perdón” (elsewhere) without a mandatory cross-reference note will sever Luke’s deliberate unification of social liberation and forgiveness of sins.
• “Cruz” domestication: colloquial Spanish (“cada uno tiene su cruz”) threatens to flatten the costly, shameful force of discipleship’s defining texts (9:23; 14:27).
• “Pobres” over-spiritualization: importing Matthew 5:3’s “poor in spirit” into Luke’s own material-referent poverty texts (4:18; 6:20) would erase the real economic content central to “Good News to the Poor.”
• “Paraíso” vs. purgatory: Catholic multi-stage-afterlife framing risks delaying the immediacy of Christ’s promise to the repentant thief (23:43).
• Holy Spirit / resurrection syncretism: Caribbean Espiritismo and Santería’s ancestral/guide-spirit and reincarnation frameworks remain a live collision risk, now heightened because Luke is the most Spirit-saturated and resurrection-climactic Gospel in the canon.
• “Reino de Dios” politicization: Luke’s unusually high frequency of kingdom language raises exposure to Latin American liberation-theology assimilation of the doctrine into a purely political program.

Opportunities

• Luke’s honor/shame-sensitive table-fellowship narratives (5:27-32; 7:36-50; 15:1-2; 19:1-10) resonate strongly with Hispanic cultural categories of hospitality and social scandal — if “pecador” retains its concrete referent, this doctrine can land with unusual force.
• Luke’s outsider-faith pattern (the Roman centurion, the Samaritan, the sinful woman) offers a natural bridge to teaching “Savior for All Nations and All People” in societies still negotiating ethnic, racial, and class hierarchies.
• The Reina-Valera tradition already supplies stable, cross-denominationally recognized renderings for the large majority of baseline-inherited terms, meaning most of the translation foundation work is proven and simply needs to be carried forward intact.

Recommended actions

1. Adopt assets/translation_memory.json and assets/bible_term_registry.json (Luke versions) as the enforced Phase 2 databases; do not permit ad hoc rendering of any of the 84 catalogued terms.
2. Route all 52 Critical/High terms and 31 Critical/High doctrines through mandatory human theologian review per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md’s escalation rules before any segment is marked approved.
3. Enforce the mandatory translator note at every ἄφεσις, samaritano, “aborrecer” (14:26), and Salvador occurrence — these four are singled out for note-on-every-occurrence treatment, stricter than the general Critical/High rule.
4. Lock in verbatim consistency for the ten flagged Lukan sentences (4:18-19, 4:21, 2:11, 18:14, 19:10, 23:43, 24:47, and their parallels) across all Phase 2 documents.
5. Brief Phase 2 reviewers on the Caribbean/Afro-Latin Espiritismo and Santería collision risk before processing any Holy Spirit or resurrection passages, and on the liberation-theology collision risk before processing any kingdom-of-God passage.