Linguistic Gap Analysis: Philippians (English → Thai)

Purpose

This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Philippians curriculum. It maps the destination-language (Thai) vocabulary landscape against every doctrine in this curriculum’s parameter list, identifies where Thai vocabulary is genuinely missing versus where it is crowded with doctrinally hazardous near-neighbors from Thai Buddhist, folk-religious, and civic-nationalist registers, records the transliteration-versus-paraphrase decision for each load-bearing term, and ranks the letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 translator training and Phase 2 review routing.

This analysis extends — and must never contradict — the Romans/Galatians baseline translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json, and is consistent with the terminology decisions already recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and the Philippians additions to bible_term_registry.json. Where this document identifies a “gap,” the recommended resolution is the rendering already adopted in those files; this document exists to make explicit the linguistic reasoning behind those choices for Phase 2 quality review and translator onboarding.

Risk tiers follow the baseline definitions: Critical (human theologian review, every occurrence), High (human theologian review), Medium (native speaker review recommended), Low (automated review sufficient).

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Section 1 — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each curriculum doctrine: the Thai vocabulary options actually available (native Buddhist/folk/civic terms, existing Thai Christian coinages, and bare paraphrase), their specific weaknesses, and the recommended strategy.

1.1 The Incarnation and Self-Emptying of Christ (Kenosis)

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
การอวตาร (avatar)	Forbidden by baseline incarnation entry; implies a reversible, repeatable divine descent (Rama/Ramakien association)	Excluded — carried over as hard prohibition
ทรงว่างเปล่า / ทรงสูญเปล่า (lit. “became empty/void”)	Collides with สุญตา (śūnyatā), the Buddhist philosophical claim that all phenomena lack inherent self-nature; risks reading κενόω as a metaphysical statement about Christ’s non-self rather than a historical, personal, voluntary act	Rejected as primary gloss
ทรงสละพระองค์เอง (lit. “he gave himself up / relinquished himself”)	Verb สละ already carries a positive “voluntary relinquishment” sense in Thai (e.g., สละราชสมบัติ, abdication) without an “emptiness/non-self” philosophical undertone	Adopted (per glossary); requires a teaching note that Christ remained fully God while laying aside the outward exercise of divine privilege
สภาพ (for μορφή) vs. รูปลักษณ์ (for σχῆμα)	No single native Thai pair maps cleanly onto the Greek’s essential-nature/outward-appearance distinction; both words can drift toward each other in ordinary usage	Fenced pair — must be kept lexically distinct across 2:6-7 with an explicit glossary rule (see Section 2.2)

Gap type: Missing vocabulary (no native Thai philosophical-theological term for “voluntary divine self-limitation that does not compromise deity”) combined with a crowded neighborhood (สุญตา/ว่างเปล่า is readily available and superficially attractive). Strategy: paraphrase using a verb already carrying positive royal/legal “voluntary relinquishment” connotations (สละ), explicitly fenced away from the Buddhist emptiness field.

1.2 Joy in Suffering and Imprisonment

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
ความสุข (happiness)	Circumstance-dependent; standard register for contentment/pleasure, not resilient joy independent of circumstance	Rejected as primary gloss
โชคดี / ดวงดี (good fortune)	Imports astrological-fatalistic framing (ดวง); joy would read as luck, contradicting a letter written from prison	Excluded
อุเบกขา (equanimity, one of the Four Sublime States)	Achieved by disengaging from desire and outcome through meditative discipline; Pauline joy is an engaged, relationally grounded response that intensifies precisely because of, not despite, circumstance	Excluded as gloss, but useful contrast term for teaching notes
ความชื่นชมยินดี (lit. “rejoicing/exultant gladness”)	Already established in Thai Christian usage; carries an active, expressive, relational sense	Adopted (per glossary); every occurrence should be traceable to its Christ/gospel ground (e.g., “the advance of the gospel,” “you are in my heart”) to prevent drift toward generic ความสุข

Gap type: No missing vocabulary — a serviceable native term exists — but a crowded neighborhood (equanimity, luck) that must be actively fenced through consistent grounding language rather than lexical substitution.

1.3 Unity and Humility in the Church

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
เกรงใจ (social deference/consideration)	Denotes hierarchical face-saving etiquette toward a social superior, not voluntary self-abasement toward equals or inferiors	Rejected as primary gloss for ταπεινοφροσύνη
สุภาพ (politeness)	Too weak; a manners-register word, not a theological virtue modeled on the cross	Rejected
ความถ่อมใจ (lit. “lowered/humbled heart-mind”)	Neutral compound already used in Thai Christian ethical vocabulary; can be anchored explicitly to the Christ-hymn (2:6-8) as its model	Adopted (per glossary)
เมตตา / กรุณา (loving-kindness / compassion, two of the Four Sublime States)	Precise, fluent, and already loaded with a self-cultivated meditative-attainment framework (Brahmavihāra practice)	Retained as translation for σπλάγχνα/οἰκτιρμοί only with an explicit fencing note (see Section 2.2) that this compassion is Christ-given, not self-cultivated
ความอวดดี (conceit)	Serviceable for κενοδοξία but loses the κενός (“empty”)/κενόω wordplay with 2:7	Adopted with a teaching-note flag for the lost word-play, not a translation substitution

Gap type: Crowded neighborhood — Thai has more relevant vocabulary here than almost any other doctrine in the letter (a rich native ethical-Buddhist register for humility and compassion), which is itself the risk: fluency invites unexamined borrowing of the attached practice-framework.

1.4 Righteousness by Faith versus the Law

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
ความชอบธรรม / การถูกนับว่าเป็นผู้ชอบธรรม	Already fixed Critical-risk baseline terms	Reused exactly, no deviation
บุญกุศล / ความดี	Forbidden by baseline; converts forensic righteousness into a moral merit-score	Excluded
เศษขยะที่ไร้ค่า (rubbish, for σκύβαλα)	Formal Thai register resists genuinely crude/vulgar vocabulary; too polite a rendering understates Paul’s deliberate vulgarity, too crude a rendering breaks register consistency with the rest of the curriculum	Managed tension, not fully resolved — accept a moderated “worthless refuse” gloss that trades some rhetorical shock for register consistency, flagged in a teaching note
ความเชื่อในพระคริสต์ (for the πίστις Χριστοῦ genitive)	Thai genitive constructions do not resolve subjective/objective ambiguity any more clearly than English does	Objective-genitive resolved by explicit preposition ใน (“in”), consistent with the baseline faith object-clarity rule; subjective reading recorded as alternative_considered

Gap type: No new gap — this doctrine’s core vocabulary is already fixed by the baseline. The only live tension is stylistic (register vs. rhetorical force for σκύβαλα).

1.5 Contentment in All Circumstances

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
สันโดษ (monastic contentment/solitary sufficiency)	A specific, named Buddhist virtue cultivated through renunciation and detachment from possessions, part of the ascetic path; reframes Pauline contentment as a self-attained monastic discipline	Forbidden — must be added to the curriculum’s forbidden-substitution list
ความพอเพียง (“sufficiency,” as in the royally-associated “Sufficiency Economy” — เศรษฐกิจพอเพียง)	Inseparably tied in contemporary Thai civic and educational discourse to a specific national economic philosophy; using it would relocate Pauline contentment into a political-economic ideology rather than Christ’s personal enabling	Forbidden — must be added to the curriculum’s forbidden-substitution list
ความพอใจ (contentment/satisfaction, generic)	Semantically neutral and comparatively unloaded; safe base word	Adopted with mandatory qualifier: ความพอใจ(ในพระคริสต์)/โดยพระคริสต์ — never left bare, always anchored to 4:13’s enabling clause

Gap type: This is the letter’s single most severe crowded-neighborhood problem: Thai has not one but two extremely fluent, high-prestige, near-identical-sounding native concepts (one religious, one civic-national) that would each independently and silently convert Paul’s Christ-sourced contentment into a self-achieved or nationally-branded virtue. No missing-vocabulary problem exists — the risk is entirely one of over-supply requiring aggressive fencing.

1.6 Citizenship in Heaven

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
สัญชาติ (nationality/citizenship in the narrow legal-passport sense)	Too narrowly legal-bureaucratic; misses the communal, behavioral, ethical-conduct sense of πολιτεύεσθε (“conduct yourselves as citizens”)	Rejected as sole gloss
ความเป็นพลเมือง (civic membership/citizenship, broader civic-participation sense)	Closer, but risks being heard as competing with, or subordinate to, Thai national civic identity (the “Nation-Religion-King” triad reinforced through education and law) unless explicitly marked “heavenly”	Adopted with mandatory qualifier — always ความเป็นพลเมืองแห่งสวรรค์ (of heaven), never bare
อาณาจักร / ดินแดน framing (kingdom/territory language)	Available from the baseline’s kingdom_of_god entry but risks a territorial-political reading exactly where Paul’s point is trans-territorial primary allegiance	Avoided; retain the abstract civic-membership sense over a territorial-kingdom sense

Gap type: No missing vocabulary, but the highest political-sensitivity crowded neighborhood in the letter: any citizenship-language rendering interacts with Thailand’s legally reinforced monarchical-loyalty culture. Strategy is qualification (explicit “heavenly”) plus dual theologian and native-speaker review rather than lexical avoidance, since the doctrine cannot be preserved without some citizenship vocabulary.

1.7 Partnership in the Gospel

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
การสามัคคีธรรม (baseline fellowship)	Correct for the generic κοινωνία sense (2:1) but too weak for Paul’s deliberately commercial-accounting κοινωνία (1:5,7; 4:15), which involves concrete money and goods	Retained for generic sense only; not used for the partnership sense
หุ้นส่วน (business/investment partner)	Captures the commercial-accounting register precisely (Paul literally uses bookkeeping idiom, 4:15’s “account of giving and receiving”), but risks sounding coldly contractual if left unqualified	Adopted as การเป็นหุ้นส่วนในข่าวประเสริฐ, explicitly paired with the relational κοινωνία sense in teaching notes so the term is not read as a mere financial transaction
เครื่องบูชา / บูชา (offering/sacrifice vocabulary for 2:17; 4:18)	Directly overlaps with everyday Thai practice of making offerings (บูชา) to Buddha images, spirit houses (ศาลพระภูมิ), and ancestors, typically for merit, protection, or favor	Retained (no adequate substitute exists) but requires explicit fencing: biblical sacrificial theology (a pleasing response to God’s prior grace) versus transactional merit/favor-exchange logic (see Section 2.2)

Gap type: Mixed — a genuine missing-nuance gap (generic fellowship vocabulary cannot carry Paul’s commercial-partnership sense) resolved by importing a commercial loanword (หุ้นส่วน), plus a crowded neighborhood (บูชา) that must be fenced rather than replaced, since no non-cultic Thai vocabulary for “sacrificial offering” exists at all.

1.8 Pressing on toward the Goal in Christ

Available Thai vocabulary	Weakness	Recommended strategy
มุ่งบุ่ายหน้าไป / จับยึดไว้ (press on / lay hold of)	Serviceable Thai action-verbs, but the overall structure of disciplined, effortful progress toward a spiritual goal closely resembles the self-powered progress along the Noble Eightfold Path toward liberation	Retained lexically, but must be structurally fenced: every occurrence anchored to 3:12b (“because Christ Jesus has laid hold of me”) and 4:13 (Christ’s enabling), never presented as unaided striving
ผู้ใหญ่เต็มที่ฝ่ายวิญญาณ / บริบูรณ์ (mature/perfect, for τέλειος)	Risks collision with the baseline’s already-flagged พระอรหันต์ (arahant) ideal — a figure who has personally, completely attained enlightenment through discipline	Retained, but must be immediately qualified by Paul’s own explicit denial of having “already attained” (3:12a)
เป้าหมาย / รางวัลแห่งชัย (goal/prize)	Neutral athletic-race vocabulary; low risk on its own	Retained, with the prize explicitly marked as God’s gracious award (ที่พระเจ้าประทาน), not a self-earned ผล/phala of religious practice

Gap type: No missing vocabulary; the risk is entirely structural/collocational — native Thai vocabulary for disciplined spiritual progress necessarily echoes a self-powered attainment model, requiring anchoring language rather than lexical substitution.

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Section 2 — Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no adequate native Thai term exists at all)

These require paraphrase, compound coinage, or transliteration because Thai simply has no pre-existing lexical item covering the concept:

1. μορφή θεοῦ / σχῆμα distinction (2:6-7) — Thai has no pre-theological pair distinguishing “essential nature” from “outward observable form” with the philosophical precision Paul’s argument requires. Resolution: coined pair สภาพ (essential nature) vs. รูปลักษณ์ (outward form), fenced as a matched, non-interchangeable pair — see 2.2 below.
2. ἁρπαγμός (2:6) — no single Thai word captures “a thing legitimately possessed but not exploited for advantage.” Resolution: descriptive phrase สิ่งที่จะต้องยึดฉวยไว้ (“a thing that must be seized/clutched”), requiring a teaching note that Christ’s non-exploitation, not illegitimate possession, is in view.
3. κενόω as a theological technical term (2:7) — no native Thai theological vocabulary for “voluntary self-limitation without loss of essential nature.” Resolution: the verb-phrase ทรงสละพระองค์เอง, borrowing the positive “voluntary relinquishment” sense already present in Thai legal/royal usage (cf. สละราชสมบัติ, royal abdication) rather than coining a new philosophical term.
4. πολίτευμα as primary, trans-national civic identity (1:27; 3:20) — Thai civic vocabulary assumes a single, non-competing national citizenship reinforced by the “Nation-Religion-King” framework; there is no existing native category for “a citizenship elsewhere that relativizes this one.” Resolution: qualified compound ความเป็นพลเมืองแห่งสวรรค์, never left bare.
5. αὐτάρκεια as Christ-sourced (rather than self-sourced or nationally-branded) contentment (4:11) — see 1.5 above; the gap is not an absence of vocabulary but an absence of a third, unclaimed option distinct from the two culturally dominant candidates. Resolution: the deliberately plain, low-prestige ความพอใจ, mandatorily qualified.
6. μεμύημαι, mystery-initiation idiom (4:12) — Thai has vivid vocabulary for occult/folk-magic initiation (associated with ไสยศาสตร์) but no neutral equivalent for Paul’s borrowed-and-defanged Greco-Roman mystery-cult idiom used merely to mean “have come to know by hard experience.” Resolution: plain ได้เรียนรู้เคล็ดลับ(นี้แล้ว), deliberately avoiding ritual-initiation vocabulary.

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Active Fencing

These are the inverse problem: Thai vocabulary is abundant and fluent, which is precisely what makes it dangerous — a fluent native word invites unexamined adoption of its attached practice-framework or ideology. Each requires an explicit “fence” (a stated boundary rule for what the term must and must not be read to mean), not a lexical substitution, since no unloaded alternative exists.

Crowded neighborhood	Competing native concept(s)	Doctrine at risk	Required fence
Grace / merit	บุญ, กรรมดี, บารมี	Contentment; Righteousness by Faith; “work out your own salvation” (2:12-13)	Baseline fence reused: grace/righteousness/salvation are never earned; explicitly extended to 2:12-13 where v.13 (“it is God who works in you”) must textually precede and ground v.12 in every rendering
Self-emptying / metaphysical emptiness	สุญตา (śūnyatā)	Incarnation/Kenosis	κενόω is a personal, voluntary, historical act of the eternal Son; never a claim about the illusory nature of self or phenomena
Compassion / tender affection	เมตตา, กรุณา, อุเบกขา (Four Sublime States)	Unity and Humility	These are Christ-given relational affections flowing from union with Christ, never self-cultivated meditative attainments achieved through personal discipline
Reverence gesture	กราบ (prostration before Buddha images, monks, monarchy)	Lordship of Christ (2:10)	Reverence uniquely due to Christ’s divine Lordship; may be used as a maximal-reverence cultural bridge but must be explicitly taught as non-transferable to any other figure
Contentment / sufficiency	สันโดษ (monastic renunciation), ความพอเพียง (Sufficiency Economy)	Contentment in All Circumstances	Both are forbidden substitutions; contentment is sourced in Christ’s enabling (4:13), never self-cultivated detachment or national economic philosophy
Sacrifice / offering	บูชา (offerings to Buddha images, spirit houses, ancestors)	Partnership in the Gospel (2:17; 4:18)	A response to grace already received, not a transaction for merit, protection, or favor
Spiritual maturity / attainment	พระอรหันต์ ideal (arahant, one who has personally attained enlightenment)	Pressing on toward the Goal	Maturity is ongoing, not-yet-complete, and grounded in already being grasped by Christ, never a self-attained final state
Disciplined progress toward liberation	Noble Eightfold Path structure	Pressing on toward the Goal	Effort is a response to and is empowered by Christ (3:12b; 4:13), not unaided self-effort toward self-attained release
Church office loanword	มัคนายก (a term borrowed from the Buddhist lay-temple officer role)	Church Order (deacon, 1:1)	Distinct NT office of practical service; requires a clarifying note distinguishing it from the Buddhist lay-temple role from which the loanword originates
Civic/national identity	”Nation-Religion-King” triad; สัญชาติ	Citizenship in Heaven	A relativizing, primary allegiance, not a repudiation of legitimate earthly civic duty or a political statement
Joy vs. equanimity/fortune	อุเบกขา, โชคดี/ดวงดี	Joy in Suffering	Joy is an engaged, Christ-grounded response that intensifies within suffering, not detachment from outcome or circumstantial luck

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Section 3 — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Philippians introduces very few genuinely new proper nouns (Paul’s companions and the Philippian church officers are the main additions), but it introduces an unusually dense cluster of abstract theological-technical terms requiring a paraphrase-vs-transliteration decision. General principle, consistent with the baseline: transliterate proper names and terms with no meaningful semantic content to translate (per the 12_ai_translation_requirements.md transliteration standards); paraphrase or coin compound terms for concepts, since Thai readers gain nothing from an untranslated Greek-derived neologism.

Term	Decision	Rationale
Ἐπαφρόδιτος / Ἐπαφροδίτου (Epaphroditus), Τιμόθεος (Timothy), Εὐοδία (Euodia), Συντύχη (Syntyche), Κλήμης (Clement), καῖσαρ (Caesar)	Transliterate (established/regular Thai Bible proper-name conventions)	Proper names carry no doctrinal content to paraphrase; consistent with the baseline’s transliteration standards table
κενόω (“self-emptying”)	Paraphrase, not transliterate (“kenosis” as a bare loanword)	A transliterated “เคโนซิส” would communicate nothing to a Thai reader without extensive gloss and would forfeit the chance to use the doctrinally safer, already-meaningful Thai verb-phrase ทรงสละพระองค์เอง
ἁρπαγμός	Paraphrase (descriptive phrase, not transliteration)	No transliteration tradition exists for this term in Thai Bible history; a phrase is required to carry the nuance
μορφή / σχῆμα	Paraphrase, coined as a fenced pair (สภาพ / รูปลักษณ์)	Both are native Thai words repurposed with a fixed technical sense for this curriculum, not transliterations
αὐτάρκεια	Paraphrase, deliberately the plainest available native word (ความพอใจ) rather than a richer but contaminated alternative (สันโดษ) or a coinage	A coined or transliterated term here would be more conspicuous, not less risky; the flattest available native word, tightly qualified, is safer than either a “richer” native synonym or an opaque neologism
πολίτευμα	Paraphrase, compound qualifier required (ความเป็นพลเมืองแห่งสวรรค์)	No transliteration tradition exists; the doctrinal content (primary, trans-national allegiance) can only be carried by an explicit qualifying compound
μεμύημαι (mystery-initiation idiom)	Paraphrase, deliberately de-ritualized (ได้เรียนรู้เคล็ดลับ)	A more literal or vivid “initiation” rendering would transliterate cultural risk (occult association) rather than the Greek term itself; flattening the metaphor is the safer choice
ἐπίσκοπος (overseer)	Paraphrase using existing compound (ผู้ปกครองคริสตจักร), not the baseline’s paidagōgos-related guardian term	Reuses Thai morphology already established for pastoral oversight while remaining lexically distinct from the baseline’s temporary-custodial guardian sense
διάκονος (deacon)	Retain existing established loanword (มัคนายก) rather than coining a new term	This is already a fixed convention in Thai Bible translation predating this curriculum; changing it now would break consistency with existing Thai church usage, despite its Buddhist-loanword origin — the risk is managed through a teaching note, not a new rendering
κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός confession (2:11)	Paraphrase, fixed to match Romans 10:9 exactly	Per the baseline’s cross-document consistency rule; no transliteration option was ever in view here since the confession is a full sentence, not a single term
Messiah-adjacent/Christological titles (Χριστός)	Transliterate (established พระคริสต์)	Reused exactly from the baseline; no change

General rule for Phase 2: transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names and (b) a small closed set of already-established transliterated theological proper nouns (พระเมสสิยาห์, อาเมน, ฮาเลลูยาห์). Every abstract Kenosis-hymn or ethical term in Philippians is resolved by paraphrase or fenced compound, never by importing an unglossed Greek loanword, because Philippians’ distinctive theological vocabulary (κενόω, μορφή/σχῆμα, ἁρπαγμός, αὐτάρκεια, πολίτευμα) has no existing Thai Christian transliteration tradition to draw on, unlike, e.g., “Messiah” or “Amen.”

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Section 4 — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity of (a) doctrinal centrality, (b) likelihood of silent, plausible-sounding mistranslation, and (c) breadth of exposure (how many distinct segments/verses the risk touches). All items below are Critical or High tier per the baseline’s risk framework and require human theologian review at every occurrence unless otherwise marked.

1. “Work out your own salvation” (κατεργάζεσθε τὴν ἑαυτῶν σωτηρίαν, 2:12-13) — Critical. The single highest-risk phrase in the letter. A plausible-sounding literal rendering reads naturally as “achieve/earn your own salvation,” collapsing directly into ทำบุญ/สร้างบารมี merit-logic. The only safeguard is a rendering and teaching note that structurally foregrounds v.13 (“it is God who works in you”) as grounding v.12, in every occurrence.

2. Contentment (αὐτάρκεια, 4:11) vs. สันโดษ / ความพอเพียง — Critical. Two independent, high-prestige, fluent Thai concepts (one monastic-religious, one civic-national) each offer a more natural-sounding rendering than the correct one. Both are forbidden. Risk is compounded because either substitution would sound more natural and idiomatic to a Thai reader than the correct, deliberately plain ความพอใจ — the substitution would likely pass an unsupervised fluency check.

3. Kenosis / self-emptying (ἐκένωσεν, 2:7) vs. สุญตา / ทรงว่างเปล่า — Critical. The most theologically catastrophic possible substitution in the letter: rendering Christ’s self-emptying as a claim about metaphysical emptiness of self would import a completely different religious ontology into the heart of the Christ-hymn. Mitigated only by the non-obvious choice of ทรงสละพระองค์เอง, which must never drift toward ว่างเปล่า in any paraphrase or footnote.

4. Citizenship in Heaven (πολίτευμα/πολιτεύεσθε, 1:27; 3:20) — Critical/High. The letter’s highest political-sensitivity risk. An unqualified rendering risks being heard either as competing with, or as a repudiation of, the “Nation-Religion-King” civic-religious identity; an over-softened rendering loses Paul’s point that heavenly citizenship is primary. Requires dual theologian and native-speaker review, exceeding even the baseline’s Romans 13 caution in stakes.

5. μορφή θεοῦ vs. σχῆμα (2:6-7) — Critical. If the essential-nature/outward-form distinction collapses in translation (a real risk since Thai สภาพ and รูปลักษณ์ can overlap in ordinary usage), Christ’s continuous deity is reduced to a temporary external appearance — functionally the same doctrinal error the baseline already forbids for incarnation/avatar vocabulary, arrived at through a different lexical route.

6. Bow every knee (γόνυ κάμψῃ, 2:10), the กราบ gesture-word decision — High. Using the culturally maximal reverence-gesture word (กราบ) is doctrinally powerful but carries the risk of being read as a generic transferable act of cultural respect (as toward Buddha images, monks, or the monarchy) rather than worship uniquely due to Christ’s divine Lordship. Requires explicit teaching-note anchoring at every occurrence, not just at first use.

7. ἁρπαγμός (2:6) — High. A subtle but total-inversion risk: if the Thai phrasing implies Christ’s equality with God was illegitimately held (rather than legitimately held but not exploited), the hymn’s argument for his true, continuous deity is undermined at its most theologically dense point.

8. Tender affection/compassion (σπλάγχνα, οἰκτιρμοί, 2:1) vs. เมตตา/กรุณา — High. Two of the Four Sublime States are the most natural-sounding Thai renderings available, each carrying an entire attached meditative-cultivation framework (Brahmavihāra practice) that silently relocates the source of compassion from Christ to the believer’s own mental discipline.

9. πίστις Χριστοῦ genitive ambiguity (3:9) — High. Not a Thai-specific collision but a persistent cross-linguistic exegetical ambiguity; flagged high because the wrong resolution (subjective genitive, “Christ’s own faithfulness,” rendered as ความเชื่อของพระคริสต์) would still be grammatically plausible in Thai and could pass a cursory review unless the alternatives_considered flag from the baseline’s ambiguity-handling rule is actively checked.

10. τέλειος / “press on” (διώκω, καταλαμβάνω, 3:12-15) vs. the arahant ideal and the Eightfold Path structure — High. Lower individual severity than items above because the risk is structural/collocational rather than a single forbidden lexical substitution, but broad in exposure across the whole of chapter 3’s argument; requires consistent anchoring to “already grasped by Christ” (3:12b) throughout, not a one-time fix.

11. Sacrificial/offering vocabulary (θυσία, ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας, 2:17; 4:18) vs. บูชา — High. No substitute vocabulary exists at all, so this risk cannot be resolved by word choice; it must be resolved entirely through consistent teaching-note fencing distinguishing biblical sacrificial response-to-grace from Thai merit/favor-transaction offering logic.

12. Deacon loanword (διάκονος, 1:1) vs. มัคนายก — Medium-High. Lower doctrinal stakes than the items above (an established, unavoidable convention) but flagged for completeness because the loanword’s origin in Thai Buddhist lay-temple administration is rarely explained to congregations and should not be assumed self-evidently safe merely because it is conventional.

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Summary for Phase 2 Handoff

• Zero missing-vocabulary problems are unresolved in this analysis; every genuinely missing concept (Section 2.1) has an adopted paraphrase or fenced compound recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and bible_term_registry.json.
• Ten crowded semantic neighborhoods (Section 2.2) require active, ongoing fencing through teaching notes and translator training rather than one-time lexical fixes; these should be built into Phase 2’s segment-level validation checklist as recurring flags, not one-time approvals.
• Contentment (αὐτάρκεια) is this letter’s counterpart to the Galatians package’s flagship “sowing and reaping vs. กฎแห่งกรรม” case study, and should receive equivalent priority in Phase 2 translator training materials, alongside kenosis and “work out your own salvation.”
• All rankings and fences in this document must be loaded alongside translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json before Phase 2 segment translation of Philippians begins.