Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: Acts (English–Urdu)
Purpose and Method
This document executes Phase 1 Step 8 for the Acts curriculum, extending (never contradicting) the baseline Romans/Galatians translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json, and incorporating the Acts-specific terminology already seeded in 08_core_glossary.md and the Acts additions to bible_term_registry.json. It answers four questions for every doctrine named in the curriculum parameters and for the book as a whole:
- What Urdu vocabulary is available for this doctrine, and what does each candidate term cost us?
- Where is vocabulary missing outright, versus where is it crowded by a pre-existing, differently-freighted Islamic theological or legal term that must be fenced off?
- Where should the AI transliterate (retain a Greek/Aramaic/proper-name form) versus paraphrase (build a descriptive Urdu phrase) versus reuse an existing shared word with mandatory annotation?
- Of all the ambiguities surfaced, which carry the highest risk, ranked, so Phase 2 review routing can be prioritized?
Coverage is full-book: every chapter of Acts 1–28 is accounted for in the chapter coverage table (Part 5), even where a chapter introduces no new vocabulary beyond what Parts 1–4 already resolve.
Part 1 — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each doctrine named in the curriculum parameters: available Urdu terms, their weaknesses, and the recommended strategy. All renderings below are already recorded in translation_memory.json/bible_term_registry.json (baseline) or 08_core_glossary.md (Acts additions) and must be enforced exactly; this matrix explains why.
1. The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holy Spirit | روح القدس | IS a Qur’anic phrase (Qur’an 2:87, 2:253, 16:102), traditionally identified in tafsir with Jibreel, not a co-equal divine Person | Reuse (no alternative exists that readers would recognize); mandatory personhood/deity annotation at every doctrinally load-bearing occurrence, intensified in Acts by 5:3 (Spirit personally lied to) and 15:28 (Spirit personally decides) |
| Pentecost | پنتِکُست کا تہوار | عید (the generic festival word) triggers immediate Eid al-Fitr/Eid al-Adha association | Transliterate the proper name + پیر neutral تہوار; never عید |
| Tongues (glossolalia) | دیگر زبانیں | Risk of collapse into generic ecstatic-speech phenomena recognized in regional devotional traditions (e.g., some dhikr practice) | Paraphrase (“other/different languages”), not a coined technical term; anchor every occurrence to the text’s own claim that these are real, intelligible human languages confirmed by hearers (2:6,8,11) |
| Gift of the Holy Spirit | روح القدس کی بخشش | Risk of conflation with روحانی نعمتیں (baseline spiritual_gifts, ongoing ministry-enablements) | Keep the two categories lexically distinct: بخشش (foundational, once-for-all, at conversion) vs نعمتیں (ongoing, variously distributed) |
| Vision/dream | رویا / خواب | Genuinely shared vocabulary with Islamic ru’ya/istikhara dream-guidance tradition | Reuse with a framing note: unrepeated, apostolic-founding-narrative authority, not a general personal-guidance technique for ongoing replication |
Recommended strategy overall: Treat Pentecost (Acts 2) as the doctrinal anchor chapter where the Holy Spirit’s personhood must be taught most explicitly, since the book’s entire subsequent narrative (4:8, 4:31, 6:3, 7:55, 9:17, 13:9, 13:52, 15:28) assumes what chapter 2 establishes.
2. The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gentiles | غیر قوموں | None significant if کافر is excluded | Reuse; never کافر (baseline forbidden substitution), reinforced by Acts’ unusually high frequency (9:15; 10:45; 11:1,18; 13:46-48; 15:3-23; 28:28) |
| Clean/unclean | پاک / ناپاک | Structural parity with the Islamic حلال/حرام dietary-law system, currently and widely practiced | Reuse پاک/ناپاک (already established from the baseline “holy” entry), explicitly not حلال/حرام, to avoid the text being read as a verdict on contemporary Islamic dietary law rather than OT dietary-purity categories |
| God shows no partiality | خدا کسی کا طرفدار نہیں | Genuine resonance with Qur’anic divine-impartiality affirmations, risking a premature “we already agree” reading | Reuse with explicit teaching that the specific application (Gentiles fully included through faith in Christ, on equal terms with Jews, without circumcision/law) exceeds the shared premise |
| Unknown God | نامعلوم خدا | Risk of pluralist misreading (“all religions worship this same God under different names, Islam included”) | Reuse with explicit framing toward exclusive identification and the call to repent (17:30-31), never toward equivalence |
Recommended strategy overall: This doctrine’s linguistic risk is not a missing-word problem but a false-agreement problem: several available terms and formulas sound like immediate common ground with Islamic theology and must be taught with the “yes, and also” contrastive move rather than left as though the resonance settles the matter.
3. Repentance and Baptism
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Repentance | توبہ | Simultaneously the established Christian term and the central Islamic tawbah concept, operating within a mercy-weighed-against-deeds framework | Reuse (no alternative exists that would be recognized); mandatory contrastive teaching every doctrinally load-bearing occurrence (2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20), joining repentance immediately to baptism and the Spirit’s gift, not a standalone act awaiting a separate future reckoning |
| Baptism | بپتسمہ | Risk of collapse into غسل (ghusl) or وضو (wudu), repeatable Islamic ritual-purity acts | Retain the transliterated Christian term; explicitly one-time, tied to Christ’s death/resurrection, forgiveness, and the Spirit — never a repeatable purification rite |
| Call on the name of the Lord | خداوند کے نام کا پکارنا | Combines two Critical baseline terms (خداوند, نجات) in a single formula | Render identically at 2:21; 9:14,21; 22:16, and identically again wherever Romans 10:9-13 is cross-referenced, per baseline cross-document consistency rule |
| John’s baptism vs. baptism in Jesus’s name | (no separate lexical item; distinguished by modifier) | Risk of flattening 18:25 and 19:1-5’s internal distinction into a single undifferentiated “baptism” | Preserve the qualifying phrases (یوحنا کا بپتسمہ / خداوند یسوع کے نام سے بپتسمہ) explicitly at each occurrence; do not compress |
Recommended strategy overall: توبہ is this doctrine’s single highest-density shared-word risk in the whole curriculum (structurally identical in kind to نجات in the baseline); Acts 2:38, the core passage’s climactic verse, is the highest-priority single occurrence for contrastive teaching in this entire Phase 1 output.
4. The Church as Community
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Church | کلیسیا | None if مسجد/امت excluded | Reuse; never مسجد or امت |
| Having all things in common | سب کچھ مل کر بانٹنا | Risk of being read as enforced communal property, or as a substitute obligation parallel to zakat/sadaqah | Frame explicitly as voluntary, love-motivated sharing, distinct in mechanism and obligation-structure from zakat/sadaqah, without denigrating the latter |
| Breaking of bread | روٹی توڑنا | Risk of over-defining as the later formalized Eucharistic rite | Keep descriptive at this narrative stage (2:42,46; 20:7,11); do not import later sacramental theology not yet established in the text |
| Elders/overseers | بزرگ / نگہران | بزرگ carries Sufi pir/elder devotional-veneration associations in popular usage | Frame explicitly as a functional teaching-and-shepherding office among equals, echoing the baseline’s caution against ولی for “saints” |
| General favor (2:47) | لوگوں کی نظر میں پسندیدگی | Risk of confusion with فضل (baseline Critical soteriological grace) if rendered the same way | Keep lexically distinct from فضل; this is social goodwill, not saving grace |
| Nazirite-type vow | نذر | None significant — genuine positive bridge with Islamic nadhr | Reuse, framed as Paul’s cultural accommodation to Jewish custom (21:23-26), not a gospel requirement |
Recommended strategy overall: This doctrine has the fewest acute collision risks in the curriculum; the main task is fencing (keeping فضل/پسندیدگی and بزرگ/ولی pairs from bleeding into each other) rather than resolving denial or negation risk.
5. Apostolic Authority and Miracles
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apostle | رسول | Read through the Quranic scripture-bearing-messenger paradigm culminating in Muhammad as “seal of the prophets” | Reuse with the baseline’s clarifying note; anchor Acts’ own qualification (eyewitness resurrection-testimony, 1:22) as the defining criterion, distinct from that paradigm |
| Signs and wonders | نشان اور عجائبات | معجزہ (miracle, singular) is the standard Islamic technical term for a prophet’s authenticating sign | Prefer the compound نشان اور عجائبات over bare معجزہ; teach as authenticating Jesus’s unique divine identity/lordship/resurrection specifically, not adding apostles to a shared generic prophet-miracle category |
| Servant (pais) title | خدا کا خادم | Risk of confusion with ‘Abduhu (His servant), the Islamic devotional honorific for Muhammad | Anchor explicitly to Isaiah’s Suffering Servant fulfilled uniquely in Jesus |
| Spirit of divination | غیب گوئی کی روح | Bare روح risks conflation with روح القدس | Always qualify with بد روح (evil/unclean spirit); never share vocabulary with the Holy Spirit entry |
| Council decree | فیصلہ | فتویٰ (fatwa) is the specific, live Islamic juridical-ruling term issued by a qualified religious authority | Forbidden substitution: never فتویٰ; the council’s Spirit-and-elders collegial model (15:28) has no true Islamic-authority-structure parallel |
Recommended strategy overall: The main fencing task here is separating apostolic/Spirit-empowered authority language from three adjacent, well-known Islamic authority categories (prophethood, prophetic miracle, and juridical fatwa) that a reader might otherwise assume as the default frame.
6. Persecution and Bold Witness
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Witness | گواہ | Must not be prematurely read as “martyr” | Keep the “testifier” sense primary; distinguish from the developing martyr sense (below) |
| Martyr (of Stephen) | شہید | Simultaneously established Christian vocabulary and the central Islamic term for one who dies defending the faith, frequently associated with jihad/armed struggle and popular automatic-paradise belief | Reuse (no viable alternative), but mandatory explicit teaching every occurrence that Stephen’s death is suffered, non-violent, and forgiving (7:60) — the opposite posture from the jihad-martyrdom paradigm |
| Blasphemy | کفر / گستاخی | CRITICAL AND DISTINCT IN KIND: collides with live Pakistani/Indian criminal law (e.g. PPC 295-C), not merely historical doctrine, with documented mob-violence history | Mandatory contextual-safety note at every occurrence (ch. 6-7, 26:11); combined theologian + native-speaker legal-context review, not either alone |
| Boldness | دلیری | Risk of being taught as encouragement toward public confrontation/defiance | Frame strictly as confident, unashamed proclamation flowing from conviction — per the baseline’s persecution/apostasy pastoral-safety framework, never a summons to increase real-world exposure |
| The Way | یہ راہ | Close parallel to Qur’an’s “straight path” (al-sirat al-mustaqim) and shari’ah’s etymology | Usable as a genuine bridge point, but must specify: following the crucified and risen Jesus as Lord specifically, not a generic interchangeable path-metaphor |
Recommended strategy overall: بلاسفیمی/گستاخی is the single term in this entire Language Package (Romans + Galatians + Acts) whose primary risk is contemporary legal exposure rather than historical-theological collision; it requires review protocols distinct from every other Critical term in the package.
7. Conversion of Paul
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion (of Paul) | رجوع | Risk of assimilation to the Islamic “reversion” concept (return to innate Muslim nature, fitrah) | Frame explicitly as sovereign, Christ-initiated interruption and re-commissioning of a zealous, sincerely practicing religious man — not a return to an original nature |
| Chosen instrument | چنا ہوا برتن | Ties to the baseline election entry (خدا کا انتخاب) | Reuse the baseline’s caution regarding تقدیر; do not let “chosen” drift into the taqdir predestination debate without direct engagement |
| Satan | شیطان | Genuinely shared, low-risk vocabulary | Reuse without extensive caveat (26:18); minor translator-awareness note on the Iblis/shaytan distinction only |
Recommended strategy overall: Paul’s threefold retelling of his own conversion (ch. 9, 22, 26) should render identically across all three occurrences per the baseline’s cross-document consistency principle, since Acts itself treats consistency of testimony as evidentially significant.
8. Justification apart from the Law
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Justification | راستباز ٹھہرایا جانا | Risk of collapsing into معافی پانا (mere forgiveness), assimilable to Islamic mercy-at-judgment framing | Reuse the exact baseline compound at 13:39, the direct narrative bridge to Romans/Galatians |
| Works of the law | شریعت کے اعمال | اعمال is itself a live Islamic deeds-at-judgment term | Anchor to Mosaic Torah-observance specifically at every occurrence (15:1,5 implicit; 13:39); never bare اعمال |
| Circumcision | ختنہ | Currently, widely practiced Islamic sunnah, not a historical curiosity | Distinguish requiring circumcision for justification (denied, ch. 15) from the practice itself (not condemned, 16:3); mandatory theologian review every occurrence |
| Council decree | فیصلہ | See above (Apostolic Authority) | Never فتویٰ |
Recommended strategy overall: Acts 15 is the narrative enactment of the very controversy Galatians treats doctrinally; every rendering choice made for Galatians’ works_of_the_law, circumcision, and law_and_grace entries must be reused identically here rather than re-derived, preserving curriculum-wide consistency.
9. The Great Commission Fulfilled
| Available term | Urdu | Weakness | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ends of the earth | زمین کی انتہا تک | None significant | Render identically at 1:8 and 13:47; this is the book’s structural bracket-phrase |
| Kingdom of God | خدا کی بادشاہی | Risk of political caliphate/khilafat association | Reuse baseline caution; opens (1:3,6) and closes (28:23,31) the book |
| Unhindered | بلا روک ٹوک | Risk of triumphalist over-translation | Preserve the text’s own open, hopeful, non-triumphalist tone as the book’s deliberate final word |
| Mission | بشارت کی خدمت | دعوت/تبلیغ are specific competing-religion missionary technical terms | Never دعوت/تبلیغ, per baseline forbidden substitution, reinforced through ch. 13-28 |
Recommended strategy overall: This doctrine’s vocabulary is comparatively low-risk on a term-by-term basis; the primary translation task is structural — making the 1:8 / 13:47 / 28:31 bracket audible in Urdu as a deliberate narrative arc, not merely three unrelated verses.
Part 2 — Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Crowded semantic neighborhoods requiring active fencing
Acts intensifies several baseline crowding problems and introduces some new ones. “Fencing” here means: the term is correct and must be kept, but its neighbor-term(s) must be explicitly ruled out and the distinction taught, not merely assumed.
| Urdu term (ours) | Crowding neighbor (Islamic/cultural) | What must be fenced |
|---|---|---|
| روح القدس | Jibreel-identified Qur’anic ruh al-qudus | Personhood, co-equal deity, capacity to be lied to (5:3) and to decide (15:28) — none possible for a created angel |
| توبہ | tawbah within the mizan/qiyamat framework | Immediate union with baptism and Spirit-reception; not a standalone act awaiting separate future reckoning |
| شہید | jihad-martyrdom, popular automatic-paradise belief | Suffered, non-violent, forgiving posture (7:60) |
| کفر / گستاخی | PPC 295-C and related contemporary criminal law | First-century Jewish legal-religious charge vs. present-day real legal exposure for the reader — two entirely different registers requiring separate framing |
| پاک / ناپاک | حلال / حرام dietary law (currently practiced) | OT ritual-purity abolition, not a verdict on contemporary Islamic dietary law |
| ختنہ | Islamic sunnah of khatna (currently practiced) | Requirement-for-justification (denied) vs. the practice itself (not condemned) |
| رسول | Quranic messenger-prophet paradigm, “seal of the prophets” | Eyewitness-resurrection-testimony criterion (1:22), not scripture-bearing prophetic office |
| نشان اور عجائبات | معجزہ (prophetic authenticating miracle) | Authentication of Jesus’s unique identity/lordship/resurrection, not a shared miracle-worker category |
| فیصلہ | فتویٰ (juridical ruling by qualified authority) | Collegial Spirit-and-elders discernment model, no fatwa-issuing-authority parallel |
| بزرگ | Sufi pir/wali devotional-veneration figure | Functional shepherding office among equals, not a veneration category |
| یہ راہ | al-sirat al-mustaqim / shari’ah (etymological “the way”) | Following the crucified, risen Jesus as Lord specifically |
| رجوع | Islamic “reversion” (return to fitrah) | Sovereign Christ-initiated interruption of a sincere prior religious life, not return to an innate nature |
| آزادی | apostasy/freedom-from-Islam framing | Freedom from law-as-justification and sin’s dominion only; never license, defiance, or apostasy activism |
| نامعلوم خدا | pluralist “all paths lead to the same God” reading | Exclusive identification + call to repent, not equivalence |
| نذر | Islamic nadhr (a genuine, positive shared practice) | Low risk — flagged here as a positive bridge, not a danger, but still worth explicit framing (cultural accommodation, not gospel requirement) so it is not over-read as doctrinally load-bearing |
2.2 Genuinely missing vocabulary (no adequate existing Urdu term)
Unlike the crowding cases above, these concepts have no pre-existing Urdu word carrying the needed sense at all, requiring coined compounds or paraphrase rather than fencing an existing term:
- Glossolalia as known, intelligible Spirit-given human language (2:4-11) — no single Urdu word distinguishes this from generic “speaking in tongues” as popularly understood in some charismatic-adjacent or ecstatic-devotional registers regionally. Resolved by paraphrase (دیگر زبانیں) plus mandatory framing that these are real, known human languages, confirmed by hearers — not private ecstatic utterance.
- The distinct once-for-all “gift” (dōrea) of the Spirit at conversion vs. ongoing “gifts” (charismata) for ministry — Urdu نعمت/بخشش vocabulary does not lexically force this distinction the way Greek’s two separate roots do. Resolved by disciplined, consistent separate compound usage (روح القدس کی بخشش vs. روحانی نعمتیں), never interchanged.
- A neutral, non-Eid-associated word for a Jewish pilgrimage festival — تہوار plus transliteration is a workaround, not a true equivalent, since Urdu’s festival vocabulary is otherwise saturated by Islamic festival associations (عید) or Hindu-festival associations (تہوار can occasionally evoke mela-type usage). Monitor for unwanted connotation drift in Phase 2 back-translation testing.
- A term for “chosen instrument” (skeuos eklogēs) that avoids both a mechanical-tool reading and premature identification with taqdir — چنا ہوا برتن (chosen vessel) is serviceable but should be reviewed alongside the baseline’s election entry rather than treated as a fully independent term.
- A precise Urdu equivalent for the internal John’s-baptism-vs-Spirit-baptism distinction (18:25; 19:1-5) — there is no single noun distinguishing the two; only the qualifying phrase preserves the distinction, and translators risk silently collapsing it under time/space pressure. Flag explicitly as a paraphrase-dependent, not lexicalized, distinction.
Part 3 — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rendering | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pentecost | Transliterate + paraphrase | پنتِکُست کا تہوار | Proper name preserved; تہوار avoids عید’s Islamic-festival pull |
| Baptism | Transliterate | بپتسمہ | Established Christian Greek-via-Syriac loanword; paraphrasing risks drifting into غسل/وضو territory |
| Tongues (glossolalia) | Paraphrase | دیگر زبانیں | No established transliteration; a coined loanword would obscure the text’s own “real known languages” claim more than a plain descriptive phrase does |
| Jesus | Transliterate (established form) | یسوع (یسوع مسیح) | Never bare عیسیٰ; baseline forbidden-substitution rule carried forward unchanged |
| Messiah | Transliterate (shared with Qur’anic usage) | مسیح | Shared proper title, correct per baseline, always with the “content beyond Qur’anic al-Masih” note |
| Christian (self-designation) | Reuse established formal term, avoid colloquial alternative | مسیحی (not عیسائی in formal doctrinal material) | مسیحی is the settled formal register; عیسائی is acceptable colloquially but not preferred here |
| Repentance | Reuse existing shared word (no transliteration option exists) | توبہ | Already the established Christian term; transliterating a Greek metanoia-derived form would be unrecognizable and pastorally counterproductive |
| The Way | Paraphrase | یہ راہ | No transliteration tradition exists; paraphrase preserves the bridge-and-collision value with al-sirat al-mustaqim while remaining natural Urdu |
| Nazirite-type vow | Reuse existing Urdu/Islamic-shared term, no transliteration | نذر | Genuine positive bridge word already naturalized in Urdu religious vocabulary; transliterating “Nazirite” would add an unfamiliar technical term for no doctrinal gain |
| Council decree | Paraphrase, explicitly avoiding the nearest transliteration-adjacent option | فیصلہ (never فتویٰ) | فتویٰ is available and would be the “natural” transliteration-adjacent borrowing, but is explicitly forbidden due to differing authority-structure implications |
| Signs and wonders | Paraphrase (compound), avoiding the single-word Islamic-technical-term option | نشان اور عجائبات (never bare معجزہ) | معجزہ is available and shorter, but its specific Islamic prophetic-authentication associations make the longer compound the safer choice |
| Amen, Hallelujah | Transliterate (per baseline) | آمین, ہلelویاہ | Already-established forms carried forward unchanged from the baseline package |
| Roman citizenship / Appeal to Caesar | Paraphrase (civil-legal, low doctrinal risk) | رومی شہریت / قیصر سے اپیل کرنا | Purely descriptive; no transliteration tradition needed or expected |
General rule for this curriculum: transliterate proper names, established loanwords, and liturgical exclamations already fixed in Urdu Christian tradition; paraphrase novel technical concepts (glossolalia, council decree, signs and wonders) where an available Islamic-technical-term transliteration exists but would misdirect the reader; reuse existing shared vocabulary with mandatory annotation where no better option exists at all (repentance, martyr, blasphemy, Holy Spirit).
Part 4 — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Acts
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision/crowding acuteness × real-world consequence for the reader), highest first:
- Acts 2:23, 2:36; 4:10; 5:30; 10:39 — the crucifixion accusation formula (“you crucified/killed him… God raised him”). Repeated across multiple independent sermons, reinforcing apostolic-consensus testimony against Qur’an 4:157’s explicit denial. Highest-priority escalation item in the whole curriculum; every occurrence mandatory theologian review.
- Acts 2:38 — repentance + baptism + forgiveness + gift of the Spirit, in one verse. The single densest convergence of four flagged terms (توبہ, بپتسمہ, گناہ, روح القدس کی بخشش) at the climax of the core passage itself; the contrastive-teaching burden is maximal here.
- Acts 6:11,13; 26:11 — blasphemy (کفر/گستاخی). Unique in this entire Language Package for colliding with live criminal law and documented mob-violence risk, not historical doctrine alone. Requires a review protocol (combined theologian + legal-context native-speaker) found nowhere else in the package.
- Acts 9:20; 13:33 — Son of God (خدا کا بیٹا). Inherits the baseline’s single most explosive doctrinal collision (Qur’an 4:171, 112:3); mandatory eternal-not-begotten annotation at every occurrence, now doubled by Acts’ narrative confirmation alongside the resurrection claim.
- Acts 15:1-29 — works of the law, circumcision, council decree. A three-term cluster where mis-anchoring any one (bare اعمال, unqualified ختنہ, or فتویٰ-style فیصلہ) collapses the entire Jerusalem Council narrative into either a generalized anti-religious-law statement or a false-parallel Islamic authority structure.
- Acts 10:14-15,28; 11:8-9; 15:9,20,29 — clean/unclean (پاک/ناپاک). Structural parity with the circumcision escalation; risk of being read as direct commentary on contemporary halal/haram practice rather than OT purity-law abolition.
- Acts 4:12 — “salvation in no one else.” The single most exclusivist salvation statement in the curriculum; نجات’s shared-word risk (mercy-weighed-at-judgment vs. Christ’s atonement) is here compressed into an absolute negative claim with no room for softening.
- Acts 7:54-60 — Stephen’s martyrdom (شہید). High risk of the jihad-martyrdom paradigm supplying the reader’s default frame unless the suffered, non-violent, forgiving posture is made explicit at first occurrence.
- Acts 5:3; 15:28 — Holy Spirit personhood. These two verses are the strongest available textual counter-evidence in Acts against the ruh al-qudus/Jibreel identification (a lied-to, decision-making Person, not a conveying angel); under-translation here weakens the whole book’s Pneumatology.
- Acts 16:30-31 — “What must I do to be saved?” Prime, high-visibility teaching text for the نجات contrastive requirement; frequently extracted for evangelistic use, raising the stakes of getting the framing right on a verse likely to circulate outside its full chapter context.
- Acts 17:22-31 — Unknown God / Areopagus speech. High risk of pluralist misreading at scale, since this is Acts’ most philosophically-framed, apparently-conciliatory speech; the turn toward exclusive repentance (17:30-31) must not be lost beneath the bridge-building opening.
- Acts 9, 22, 26 — Paul’s threefold conversion narrative (رجوع). Risk of quiet assimilation to the Islamic “reversion” concept across three retellings; consistency of framing across all three is itself part of the text’s persuasive strategy and must not drift between occurrences.
- Acts 1:8; 24:23 — freedom/apostasy-adjacent framing (آزادی). Lower doctrinal density than in Galatians but carries the same politically-resonant risk wherever teaching material extrapolates from Acts’ narrative into applied discipleship content.
- Acts 3:14-15 — “Holy and Righteous One,” “Author of Life.” Compounds two Critical baseline risks (پاک, راستبازی) immediately adjacent to a crucifixion-accusation clause; low frequency but high per-occurrence density.
- Acts 19:1-5; 18:25 — John’s baptism vs. baptism in Jesus’s name. Lower doctrinal stakes than items above, but the highest mechanical risk of silent flattening under translation-workflow time pressure, since no single lexical item carries the distinction — only careful phrase-level discipline does.
Part 5 — Full-Book Chapter Coverage Confirmation
Every chapter of Acts has been reviewed for terminology introduced or intensified beyond what Parts 1-4 above already resolve. Chapters not separately itemized here contribute no vocabulary beyond terms already covered.
| Ch. | Coverage status |
|---|---|
| 1 | Covered above: kingdom_of_god, power_of_god, ends_of_the_earth, witness, promise (of the Father), apostle (replacement criterion, 1:22) |
| 2 | Core passage; covered extensively above: pentecost, tongues, holy_spirit, repentance, baptism, gift_of_the_holy_spirit, call_on_the_name_of_the_lord, church-community terms, general_favor_nonsoteriological |
| 3 | Covered above: servant_title_pais, holy_and_righteous_one, author_of_life, repentance, resurrection, covenant/promise |
| 4 | Covered above: boldness, salvation (4:12), grace, one_heart_and_soul, having_all_things_in_common |
| 5 | Covered above: signs_and_wonders, savior_title, boldness, angel_of_the_lord; Holy Spirit personhood (5:3) — see ranked risk item 9 |
| 6 | Covered above: blasphemy (charge against Stephen), church (deacon-function selection — no new lexical item beyond elders_overseers/church entries; reviewed, no additional term required) |
| 7 | Covered above: covenant, promise, law, glory, martyr (developing sense); Stephen’s speech reviewed in full — dense OT-history content but no additional new-term risk beyond what covenant/promise/law entries already carry |
| 8 | Covered above: gift_of_the_holy_spirit (Simon Magus), baptism, holy_spirit; Samaritan and Ethiopian-eunuch episodes reviewed — extend gentiles/gospel-inclusion themes already covered under Doctrine 2, no additional new term required |
| 9 | Covered above: conversion_of_paul, chosen_instrument, the_way, baptism; Ananias/Tabitha healing miracles reviewed — covered by signs_and_wonders entry, no additional term required |
| 10 | Covered above: clean_unclean, god_shows_no_partiality, gift_of_the_holy_spirit (Gentiles), vision_dream, tongues |
| 11 | Covered above: christian_name (Antioch), repentance, gift_of_the_holy_spirit; Jerusalem church’s response reviewed — no additional term beyond gentiles/god_shows_no_partiality entries |
| 12 | Covered above: angel_of_the_lord; Herod’s death (glory-misappropriation, 12:23) reviewed under baseline glory entry — no additional new term required |
| 13 | Covered above: messiah, justification (13:39), resurrection, promise, savior_title, boldness, ends_of_the_earth (13:47); Cyprus/sorcerer episode (Bar-Jesus) reviewed — covered by spirit_of_divination-adjacent occult framing, no additional term required |
| 14 | Covered above: signs_and_wonders, tribulation_persecution, kingdom_of_god, grace; Lystra healing/near-worship-of-Paul-and-Barnabas episode reviewed — no additional new term beyond glory/idolatry framing already established |
| 15 | Covered above: works_of_the_law, circumcision, council_decree, freedom/yoke, gentiles — the Jerusalem Council, this book’s densest single-chapter concentration of Doctrine 8 vocabulary |
| 16 | Covered above: spirit_of_divination, baptism, salvation (16:30-31), roman_citizenship; Timothy circumcision reference (16:3) reviewed under the ch. 15 circumcision entry, no new term required |
| 17 | Covered above: unknown_god, resurrection (Athens debate), repentance (17:30), god_shows_no_partiality-adjacent idol-critique |
| 18 | Covered above: baptism (Apollos, John’s-baptism distinction, 18:25); Corinth/Gallio episode reviewed — no additional new term beyond church/law entries already established |
| 19 | Covered above: baptism (disciples of John re-baptized, 19:1-5), tongues, the_way (riot, 19:9,23); Ephesian magic-scroll-burning episode reviewed — covered by spirit_of_divination/occult framing already established, no additional new term required |
| 20 | Covered above: elders_overseers, tribulation_persecution, breaking_of_bread (20:7,11) |
| 21 | Covered above: vow_nazirite, law; arrest-in-temple riot reviewed — no additional new term beyond the_way/blasphemy-adjacent persecution framing already established |
| 22 | Covered above: conversion_of_paul (retelling), call_on_the_name_of_the_lord (22:16), roman_citizenship, the_way (22:4) |
| 23 | Covered above: resurrection (Pharisee/Sadducee debate — see ranked risk discussion under Doctrine-1/Eschatology distinguishing note); roman_citizenship |
| 24 | Covered above: the_way, freedom (loose custody, non-doctrinal sense), hope, law |
| 25 | Covered above: appeal_to_caesar; Festus/Agrippa hearing reviewed — no additional new term required |
| 26 | Covered above: conversion_of_paul (third retelling), hope, satan, blasphemy (26:11), boldness (26:26) |
| 27 | Covered above: providence (27:22-24), breaking_of_bread (27:35); shipwreck narrative reviewed — no additional new term beyond providence/roman-legal-context entries already established |
| 28 | Covered above: unhindered, kingdom_of_god, boldness; Malta snake-bite episode reviewed — covered by signs_and_wonders/providence framing already established, no additional new term required |
Conclusion: All 28 chapters of Acts have been reviewed. No chapter contributes doctrinal or terminological content requiring a new entry beyond those already resolved in Parts 1-4 of this analysis and the accompanying 08_core_glossary.md/bible_term_registry.json additions. This linguistic gap analysis is ready to inform Phase 1 Step 2 (doctrine_risk_registry.json extension for Acts) and the Phase 2 translation pipeline’s pre-flight checklist.