Executive Summary — Luke — English → Ukrainian

Why it matters

Luke is the Ukrainian church’s most theologically resonant Gospel to translate right now: it names captives, the poor, widows, enemies, and civic authority — categories that are live daily news in wartime Ukraine, not historical background. The core passage (Luke 4:16-21) makes Jesus’ messianic self-disclosure hinge on exactly this vocabulary. Getting the Ukrainian rendering right or wrong here shapes whether this curriculum lands as pastorally powerful truth or as either detached academic language or unintended political commentary.

Key findings

• Doctrine load is unusually concentrated. Of 31 doctrines analyzed across all 24 chapters, 11 are Critical and 13 are High risk (24 of 31, 77%) — nearly eight in ten doctrines in this curriculum require the highest review tiers, compared to a lighter concentration in the Romans/Galatians baseline.
• Term-level risk is equally concentrated. Of the Luke-specific term registry, 40 terms are Critical or High risk (11 Critical, 29 High), spanning core-passage vocabulary (anointed, captives, poor, release/forgiveness, acceptable year of the Lord, today) through to closing-chapter vocabulary (new covenant, witnesses, repentance-and-forgiveness-to-all-nations).
• Three risk clusters are genuinely new relative to the Romans/Galatians baseline: (1) wartime-current vocabulary (полонений/captives, вдова/widows, любіть ворогів своїх/love your enemies) with no equivalent acuity in the Epistles; (2) a structurally unresolved Greek ambiguity with major doctrinal stakes (ἐντὸς ὑμῶν, Luke 17:21) requiring mandatory dual-reading exposition; (3) the highest Holy-Spirit reference density of any book yet processed (30+ occurrences), maximally exercising the standing “дух must never stand alone for the Spirit” rule.
• 22 of 31 doctrines require mandatory human theologian review; 9 require native speaker review; zero are automated-only — a materially higher theologian-review burden than the Romans baseline.

Risks

• Political misreading of pastoral language. “Captives” (4:18, 21:28), “love your enemies” (6:27-36), and “render to Caesar” (20:20-26) each risk being heard as commentary on the current war or on Ukrainian civic/church authority disputes if not explicitly, consistently fenced in exposition.
• Doctrinal flattening at the core passage. Softening сьогодні (“today,” 4:21) or the perfect-tense force of наблизилося (“has come near,” 10:9-11) in either direction — fully-arrived or merely-imminent — misstates this curriculum’s own named Kingdom-Present-and-Future doctrine at its most important texts.
• Sacramental/ritual collision. покаяння (repentance) and освячення-adjacent language risk being heard as referring only to discrete sacramental rites (Confession, ritual blessing) already flagged Critical in the baseline, rather than Luke’s broader whole-life categories.
• Marian/grace proof-text sensitivity. Luke 1:28 (κεχαριτωμένη/благодатна) sits atop the baseline’s Critical three-tradition grace divergence and is a primary devotional proof-text for two of Ukraine’s three living church traditions.
• погани drift at the two universal-mission bookends. Luke 2:32 and 24:47 are the Gospel’s clearest “all nations” statements; погани’s modern derogatory drift (“wicked people”) would directly undermine the curriculum’s headline doctrine if it leaked into either verse.

Opportunities

• Cultural assets outweigh most risks if handled deliberately. Спаситель (Savior) is culturally pre-rooted via the folk-liturgical “Спас”/“Спасівка” vocabulary; resurrection and Transfiguration land on already-beloved feast days (Великдень, Преображення); the ransom/redemption vocabulary (визволення/відкуплення) and captivity-to-freedom arc can become genuinely powerful pastoral bridges — not just risks to manage — for a nation praying for its own prisoners and displaced people, provided the theological referent is always kept primary and explicit.
• Gospel-narrative reinforcement of Epistle doctrine. Luke 18:9-14’s виправданий (justified) offers a vivid, accessible narrative confirmation of the Critical justification doctrine already established in Romans/Galatians — a strong cross-curriculum teaching asset.
• Full-book coverage is already achieved. All 24 chapters have been reviewed and mapped to doctrine and term registries with no silent omissions, giving Phase 2 a complete, load-bearing foundation to build from.

Recommended actions

1. Route all 22 theologian-required doctrines and all 40 Critical/High terms through mandatory human theologian review before any segment is marked approved, per the escalation rules in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
2. Apply mandatory pastoral-warmth framing (not merely doctrinal accuracy) to полонений, вдова, пригноблені/зламані, and любіть ворогів своїх at every occurrence — these are lived realities for the audience, not abstractions.
3. Enforce народи (never погани) at both universal-mission bookends (2:32; 24:47) and log any drift as an automatic validation failure.
4. Require explicit both/and exposition, never a silent single resolution, at every Kingdom-arrival node (4:21; 10:9-11; 11:20; 17:20-21; 19:11; 21:31) and at the ἐντὸς ὑμῶν crux (17:21).
5. Carry the newly registered молитва/молитися term into all Phase 2 workers immediately, since prayer is one of Luke’s most structurally pervasive words and was previously untracked.