Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Ephesians (English → Vietnamese)
Purpose
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Ephesians curriculum. It identifies where the existing Vietnamese Bible-translation vocabulary (as codified in the Romans baseline Language Package) is sufficient, where it is absent (missing vocabulary), and where it is present but dangerously shared with a non-Christian source domain (crowded semantic neighborhoods). It then records the transliteration-vs-paraphrase decision for every borderline case and ranks the curriculum’s highest-risk ambiguities. This analysis is the linguistic-gap evidentiary basis underlying the term selections already recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and the Ephesians extension of bible_term_registry.json; it does not introduce new renderings inconsistent with those documents, but explains and defends the choices made there.
Coverage is FULL-BOOK: Ephesians 1–6, every chapter. The core passage, Ephesians 2:1–10, is the theological anchor of the curriculum (grace/faith/works/workmanship) but not the boundary of analysis.
Methodology
For each of the nine curriculum doctrines, this analysis asks three questions of the existing Vietnamese Protestant Bible-translation vocabulary (the Bản Dịch Truyền Thống tradition, as already anchored by the Romans baseline):
- Does an established Vietnamese term already exist and adequately carry the doctrinal weight? (→ reuse, per baseline term-consistency rule)
- Does no established term exist, requiring a new coinage, compound, or transliteration? (→ missing vocabulary)
- Does an available term already exist but also functions as the primary name for a concept in Vietnamese Buddhism, Confucian ethics, folk religion, or ancestor veneration, risking doctrinal collapse into that other system? (→ crowded semantic neighborhood requiring fencing)
Every chapter of Ephesians was reviewed against these three questions; chapters producing no new terms beyond those already resolved by the Romans baseline are explicitly noted as reviewed in Section 6.
Section 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
| # | Doctrine | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Salvation by Grace through Faith | ân điển, đức tin, sự cứu rỗi (all [Romans TM], reused exactly) | Baseline vocabulary is strong for grace/faith/salvation in the abstract, but Ephesians 2:8–9 introduces a forensic antithesis (grace vs. works, gift vs. earned) sharper than anywhere in Romans 1–8 alone. No existing Vietnamese theological term for “works-as-excluded-basis” (ἔργα, Eph 2:9) exists independent of the ordinary word for “work/deed” (việc làm/công việc), which is doctrinally neutral in everyday Vietnamese and carries no built-in warning against being read as merit. | Reuse baseline core terms exactly. Coin việc làm / công việc for ἔργα (2:9) and việc lành for ἔργα ἀγαθά (2:10) as two distinct new entries, with mandatory translator notes preserving the root/fruit contrast so readers do not silently reintroduce a merit-based reading. Coin sự ban cho (của Đức Chúa Trời) for δῶρον (2:8), fenced off from ân tứ (charisma) and from ơn nghĩa/phước đức/công đức. |
| 2 | Election and Predestination in Christ | sự lựa chọn (election, [Romans TM]) | Romans baseline covers ἐκλογή/ἐκλέγομαι but has no established rendering for προορίζω (predestination) — a term Romans itself uses (8:29–30) but the baseline registry does not isolate as a separate headword. Ephesians 1:5,11 foreground it as a distinct emphasis. This is a genuine vocabulary gap, not merely a crowded neighborhood, though Vietnamese folk vocabulary (số phận, số mệnh, định mệnh, nghiệp) is ready-to-hand and dangerously adjacent. | Coin sự định trước (a transparent compound: “determined/fixed beforehand”) rather than borrowing any folk-fate term. Fence explicitly against số phận/số mệnh/định mệnh/nghiệp in every occurrence; require the accompanying teaching note anchoring predestination to a personal, loving, covenant-keeping God who also holds hearers responsible to freely believe (1:13). |
| 3 | The Church as the Body of Christ | Hội Thánh ([Romans TM]) | Romans baseline names the church as assembly/community but never develops the organic body/head/fullness metaphor cluster, which is structurally central to Ephesians (1:22–23; 4:4–16; 5:23–30). No gap in the Vietnamese lexicon itself (thân thể, đầu, sự đầy dẫy all exist as ordinary words), but real risk that “fullness” collapses into the Sino-Vietnamese Buddhist attainment-term viên mãn if translators default to elevated Hán-Việt vocabulary. | Reuse Hội Thánh exactly. Use ordinary-register thân thể, đầu, and coin sự đầy dẫy (not viên mãn) for πλήρωμα, explicitly fenced against viên mãn’s self-attained-completion connotation; Christ’s fullness is given and displayed in the church, not achieved by the church. |
| 4 | Unity of Jews and Gentiles in One New Humanity | dân ngoại, giao ước, sự bình an (all [Romans TM]) | Romans 9–11 treats Jew/Gentile unity typologically (olive tree); Ephesians 2:11–22 treats it architecturally and corporately (dividing wall, one new man, temple). No existing single Vietnamese term for “one new man” (ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον) as a corporate new-humanity category distinct from the individual “new self” of 4:24. Risk of the two being flattened into one term and losing the corporate dimension. | Coin một người mới (một nhân loại mới) with the parenthetical clarifier retained in teaching materials to keep the corporate sense visible, distinct from người mới used individually in 4:24. Require a Temple-architecture explanatory note for vách ngăn (dividing wall, 2:14), since Vietnamese readers without OT/Temple background will not recover the allusion unaided. |
| 5 | The Mystery of Christ Revealed | (none directly; sự soi dẫn of Scripture, [Romans TM] doctrine, is adjacent) | This is the largest true missing-vocabulary gap in the curriculum. μυστήριον occurs seven times in Ephesians (1:9; 3:3,4,6,9; 5:32; 6:19) as a governing structural term, yet the Romans baseline has no headword for it at all. Vietnamese religious vocabulary offers a ready but doctrinally opposite candidate: huyền bí (esoteric/occult secret knowledge, gained through ritual or meditative initiation and reserved for adepts). | Coin sự mầu nhiệm, an existing general Vietnamese word for “wondrous/mysterious,” reframed and fenced explicitly against huyền bí: Paul’s mystērion was hidden but is now openly proclaimed to everyone, the reverse operating logic of huyền bí’s initiate-only esoteric transmission. Every occurrence requires this fencing note on first use in a lesson. |
| 6 | Spiritual Warfare and the Armor of God | quyền năng của Đức Chúa Trời ([Romans TM]) | The single largest crowded semantic neighborhood in the curriculum. Vietnamese folk religion possesses an extensive, named, ranked hierarchy of spiritual beings (thần, thổ địa, thành hoàng, tổ tiên, vong linh, ma, quỷ) engaged through offerings, mediums, and protective ritual objects (bùa, symbols from thầy pháp/thầy cúng). Ephesians 1:21, 2:2, 3:10, and 6:10–18 require naming real spiritual powers, a defeated personal enemy, and God-given protective equipment — using ordinary Vietnamese vocabulary that could easily be read as endorsing or modeling folk-religious engagement with these same categories. | No missing vocabulary here — the risk is entirely in fencing. Every power/authority/armor term (các quyền, các thế lực, ma quỉ, khí giới của Đức Chúa Trời, etc.) must carry a mandatory teaching note: (a) these powers are real but already defeated and subordinate to Christ (1:21); (b) engagement is exclusively through prayer, faith, Scripture, and righteous living; (c) never through folk exorcism, mediumship, ancestral appeasement, or protective amulets. All flagged Critical, human theologian review mandatory. |
| 7 | Household Codes and Christ-Centered Relationships | Cha ([Romans TM]), hiếu kính cha mẹ (established commandment-citation vocabulary) | Second-largest crowded neighborhood. Vietnamese family ethics is saturated with Confucian hierarchical vocabulary: tam cương (three bonds, including chồng-vợ/husband-wife hierarchy), tòng phu (wifely lifelong subordination to husband), đạo hiếu (filial duty). Ephesians 5:21–6:9 uses ordinary Vietnamese kinship and submission vocabulary (vâng phục, yêu, hiếu kính) that overlaps heavily with this Confucian lexicon but reframes every relationship’s ultimate ground “in the Lord” / “as to Christ.” No vocabulary gap; the risk is that the ordinary vocabulary silently imports the Confucian hierarchical framework wholesale, including its unconditional and unilateral character. | Fence, do not avoid, the overlapping vocabulary. Retain vâng phục nhau (5:21, mutual submission) as the interpretive frame for the specific instructions that follow; render wifely submission and husbandly love as two paired, comparably weighty obligations, not an isolated one-directional command; anchor hiếu kính cha mẹ (6:2–3) to God’s commandment and promise, not to ancestor-ritual obligation. |
| 8 | Gifts for Building Up the Church | ân tứ thuộc linh, sứ đồ, tiên tri ([Romans TM]) | Romans 12 already names spiritual gifts generally; Ephesians 4:7–12 adds specific named offices (εὐαγγελιστής, ποιμήν, διδάσκαλος) absent from the Romans baseline glossary. These map cleanly onto already-established modern Vietnamese Protestant clergy/ministry titles, so this is a low-risk, low-gap area — but διδάσκαλος (teacher) must be kept visibly distinct from generic Vietnamese religious-teacher roles (Buddhist monk/thầy, folk ritual specialist/thầy cúng). | Adopt existing modern Vietnamese Protestant institutional vocabulary directly: người truyền giảng Tin Lành (evangelist), người chăn/mục sư (pastor), người dạy dỗ (teacher, fenced against thầy/thầy cúng). No new coinage required beyond compounding onto the established Tin Lành root. |
| 9 | Walking in Newness of Life | sự nên thánh ([Romans TM]) | The governing keyword περιπατέω (“walk,” Eph 2:2,10; 4:1,17; 5:2,8,15) has an established Bản Dịch Truyền Thống idiomatic rendering (ăn ở/bước đi) already in Vietnamese Bible tradition, so this is not a gap. The larger risk cluster is Ephesians 5’s sacrificial and Spirit-filling vocabulary (5:2, 5:18), which sits in two of the most acute crowded semantic neighborhoods in the entire curriculum (ancestor food/incense offerings; spirit-mediumship trance). | Retain ăn ở/bước đi consistently as the “walk” keyword throughout. Fence lễ vật và của lễ có mùi thơm (5:2) explicitly against đốt nhang/cúng lễ vật (ancestor incense and food offerings); fence được đầy dẫy Đức Thánh Linh (5:18) explicitly against hầu đồng/lên đồng (spirit-possession trance). Both flagged Critical, human theologian review mandatory. |
Section 2: Missing Vocabulary Inventory
These are terms with no prior headword at all in the Romans baseline (translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json), requiring genuinely new coinage rather than reuse or minor extension. Each has been resolved with a specific Vietnamese rendering recorded in 08_core_glossary.md; this section documents the gap that necessitated the coinage.
| Concept | Greek | Gap Type | Chosen Vietnamese Rendering | Why No Existing Term Sufficed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mystery (mystērion) | μυστήριον | Total gap | sự mầu nhiệm | No Romans-baseline headword; nearest ready Vietnamese religious vocabulary (huyền bí) names the opposite epistemic model (esoteric/initiate-only vs. openly-proclaimed). |
| Predestination (proorizō) | προορίζω | Partial gap (root cognate ἐκλέγομαι exists, but this specific verb form is unaddressed) | sự định trước | Folk-fate vocabulary (số phận/số mệnh/định mệnh/nghiệp) is the ready alternative and must be actively excluded, not merely avoided by omission. |
| Fullness (plērōma) | πλήρωμα | Total gap | sự đầy dẫy | Sino-Vietnamese Buddhist viên mãn is the “obvious” elevated-register choice and must be actively rejected. |
| Rulers/authorities as a fourfold hierarchy (archē, exousia, dynamis, kyriotēs / kosmokratores) | ἀρχή κτλ. | Total gap | mọi quyền cai trị, mọi thẩm quyền, mọi quyền năng, mọi quyền thống trị / các quyền, các thế lực, các vua chúa của thế gian mờ tối này, các thần dữ | No Romans equivalent (Romans discusses “powers” only briefly, 8:38, with a different Greek set); this is a structurally new taxonomy for the curriculum. |
| Armor of God (panoplia) | πανοπλία | Total gap | khí giới của Đức Chúa Trời | No martial/protective-equipment metaphor cluster exists anywhere in the Romans baseline. |
| Redemption (apolytrōsis) as a distinct term from “salvation” | ἀπολύτρωσις | Total gap | sự cứu chuộc | Romans baseline registers salvation broadly but never isolates the “ransom/purchase” metaphor as its own headword. |
| Sealing by the Spirit (sphragizō) | σφραγίζω | Total gap | được đóng dấu | No baseline equivalent; nearest folk-ready alternative (bùa, protective amulet) must be actively excluded. |
| One new man (corporate) | ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον | Total gap | một người mới (một nhân loại mới) | Distinct from, and easily confused with, the individual “new self” of 4:24; requires its own entry to preserve the corporate sense. |
| Household-code specific instructions (submit to one another; wives/husbands; children/fathers; bondservants/masters) | ὑποτάσσω κτλ. | Total gap (no Romans household-code equivalent) | vâng phục nhau; vợ vâng phục chồng; chồng yêu vợ; con cái vâng phục cha mẹ; tôi mọi, chủ | Romans contains no household-code material; entire register is new to this curriculum and collides directly with Confucian family-hierarchy vocabulary. |
| Offering and sacrifice, fragrant aroma (Eph 5:2) | προσφορὰ καὶ θυσία εἰς ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας | Total gap | lễ vật và của lễ có mùi thơm | Romans discusses Christ’s death juridically (propitiation, 3:25) but never in explicit OT cultic-offering vocabulary; this is a new register colliding with ancestor-offering practice. |
| Filled with the Spirit (as a repeatable command, contrasted with drunkenness) | πληροῦσθε ἐν πνεύματι | Total gap | được đầy dẫy Đức Thánh Linh | Romans discusses the Spirit’s indwelling and intercession but never this specific “be filled” imperative construction, which collides with mediumship-trance vocabulary. |
Section 3: Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
Unlike Section 2, these terms have adequate existing Vietnamese vocabulary — the danger is not absence but proximity to a rival, well-established Vietnamese religious system. Each requires an explicit fencing note distinguishing the biblical sense from the neighboring folk/Buddhist/Confucian sense at every occurrence, per the baseline’s established convention (cf. grace/phước đức, salvation/giải thoát, resurrection/luân hồi).
| Vietnamese Term | Biblical Sense | Rival Neighboring System | Fencing Requirement |
|---|---|---|---|
| sự mầu nhiệm | Truth once hidden, now openly revealed to all in Christ | huyền bí — esoteric/occult secret knowledge attained through ritual or meditative initiation, reserved for adepts | State explicitly, on first occurrence per lesson: “hidden, now proclaimed to everyone,” reversing huyền bí’s initiate-only logic. |
| sự định trước | God’s sovereign, personal, loving plan, compatible with genuine human belief (1:13) | số phận / số mệnh / định mệnh (fixed, impersonal fate) / nghiệp (karma) | Explicitly deny fatalistic/impersonal-mechanism framing; affirm human responsibility to believe. |
| sự đầy dẫy | Christ’s own overflowing presence, given to and displayed in the church | viên mãn — self-attained perfect completion through spiritual practice | State that fullness is received/displayed, never self-cultivated or earned. |
| cơ nghiệp | Believer’s guaranteed future possession in Christ, received by grace | hương hỏa — ancestral estate/property maintained specifically to fund ancestor-worship rites; forfeitable by failing family duty | State that this inheritance carries no ritual-maintenance duty toward the dead and cannot be forfeited by failing an ancestral obligation. |
| được đóng dấu | The Spirit’s own personal, ownership-marking presence guaranteeing a promise already secured by grace | bùa — protective amulet/charm obtained through folk ritual to ward off evil | State that the seal is a divine Person’s presence, not a magical object acquired through ritual. |
| các nơi trên trời | Relational location “in Christ” (1:3,20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12) | cõi trời — Buddhist heavenly/deva realm attained through accumulated merit within the cycle of rebirth | Always anchor to “in Christ Jesus”; never use cõi trời. |
| các thời đại hầu đến | Future eras within linear, historical, God-governed time | kiếp — a cosmic cycle-era within samsara | Never use kiếp; retain the neutral thời đại. |
| ma quỉ / các quyền, các thế lực, các vua chúa của thế gian mờ tối này, các thần dữ | A real, organized, already-defeated hierarchy of fallen spiritual beings subordinate to Christ | thần, thổ địa, thành hoàng, tổ tiên, vong linh, ma — Vietnamese folk spirit hierarchy engaged through offerings/mediums | State defeat-and-subordination-under-Christ explicitly; state exclusive engagement through prayer/faith/Scripture, never folk exorcism, mediumship, ancestral appeasement, or amulets. |
| khí giới của Đức Chúa Trời (and each named piece: giáp, thuẫn, mão trụ, gươm) | God’s own provided spiritual equipment, received by faith/obedience/prayer | bùa/talisman/ritual protective object from thầy pháp/thầy cúng | State that this equipment is not a magical object acquired through ritual but Christ’s own truth/righteousness/gospel/faith/salvation/Spirit’s word, appropriated by trust and obedience. |
| vợ vâng phục chồng | Wifely submission qualified specifically “as to the Lord,” bounded by the husband’s own weightier self-sacrificial obligation (5:25) | tam cương/tòng phu — unconditional, socially mandated lifelong wifely subordination as a Confucian duty independent of the husband’s conduct | State the submission is worship-motivated trust in Christ, not an unqualified endorsement of patriarchal social authority as a cultural given; must be taught together with 5:25. |
| con cái vâng phục cha mẹ…trong Chúa / hiếu kính cha mẹ | Filial obedience/honor grounded in and bounded by God’s own commandment and promise | đạo hiếu — Confucian filial duty as an autonomous ethical-religious system, including ancestor-ritual obligation | State that the ultimate ground and authority is “in the Lord,” not an autonomous ancestral-hierarchical or ancestor-ritual system. |
| tôi mọi, chủ | First-century household/economic institution addressed with Christ-centered ethics | Contemporary risk of being read as endorsing exploitative labor relationships, or (in translation) confused with later chattel-slavery institutions | Require explicit historical-context teaching note distinguishing the addressed institution from both later chattel slavery and from license for present-day exploitative labor. |
| lễ vật và của lễ có mùi thơm | Christ’s unique, once-for-all, historical self-offering to God the Father | đốt nhang / cúng lễ vật — burning incense and presenting food offerings to deceased ancestors and spirits | State explicitly, every occurrence: unique, once-for-all, not a repeatable ritual believers replicate toward Christ, ancestors, or spirits. |
| được đầy dẫy Đức Thánh Linh | Ongoing Spirit-controlled life retaining full self-control, rational speech, and personal identity | hầu đồng / lên đồng — spirit-possession trance in which a medium is temporarily “mounted” by a spirit and loses ordinary self-control/identity | State explicitly: retains full personal identity, moral responsibility, and rational self-control; not a trance state of being taken over or displaced. |
| người dạy dỗ | A gifted teaching office within the Body of Christ | thầy (Buddhist monk/religious teacher) / thầy cúng (folk ritual specialist) | State the office is Scripture-grounded doctrinal instruction within the church, not a generic religious-teacher or ritual-specialist role. |
Section 4: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decision Log
Following the baseline’s established convention (transliterate proper names and a small set of fixed liturgical/technical terms; paraphrase/compound theological concepts into descriptive Vietnamese), the following decisions were made for Ephesians-specific vocabulary:
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Χριστός as title/name | Transliterate: Đấng Christ | Distinct headword from Đấng Mê-si-a (Romans baseline, reserved for explicit OT-promise contexts); Ephesians uses Χριστός overwhelmingly as Christ’s proper title/name rather than as an explicit messianic-fulfillment argument, matching established Vietnamese NT usage. |
| βάπτισμα (baptism) | Transliterate: phép báp-têm | Already the fixed, established Vietnamese Protestant sacramental transliteration; no descriptive paraphrase would improve clarity and departing from it would break cross-document consistency. |
| Ἀβραάμ-style proper names (Paul, etc., where they recur) | Transliterate, per baseline transliteration standards table | No change from Romans baseline; consistency rule applies. |
| μυστήριον (mystery) | Paraphrase (existing Vietnamese word repurposed): sự mầu nhiệm | A transliteration would produce an opaque loanword with zero existing resonance; the existing Vietnamese adjective-derived noun already carries “wondrous/hard to fully grasp,” which is fenced rather than replaced. |
| ἀρραβών (guarantee/earnest) | Paraphrase (existing commercial idiom): của cầm | An established Vietnamese Bible commercial-pledge idiom already exists and requires no new coinage or transliteration. |
| πανοπλία (armor of God) | Paraphrase (descriptive compound): khí giới của Đức Chúa Trời | A transliteration of a Greek military term would be opaque and would forfeit the opportunity to explicitly attach “của Đức Chúa Trời,” which is essential to the fencing against folk protective-amulet vocabulary. |
| ἀπολύτρωσις (redemption) | Paraphrase (descriptive compound): sự cứu chuộc | Standard, already-circulating Vietnamese Protestant compound; no transliteration warranted, and the ransom/purchase sense is better carried by the descriptive compound than a loanword. |
| προορίζω (predestination) | Paraphrase (descriptive compound, NOT a folk-fate loanword): sự định trước | A literal transliteration is impossible for a Greek verb of this kind; the alternative of borrowing folk-fate vocabulary (số phận/định mệnh) was considered and firmly rejected — see Section 3. |
| δωρεά τοῦ Χριστοῦ / δῶρον (gift constructs) | Paraphrase, kept as two distinct compounds: ân tứ thuộc linh (charisma, reused) vs. sự ban cho (của Đức Chúa Trời) (dōron) | Two distinct Greek lexemes with two distinct theological referents (ministry-enablement vs. salvation-itself) must not collapse into one Vietnamese term; paraphrase allows the needed distinction that a single transliteration could not. |
| Ἅβα (Abba) [carried over, not new to Ephesians but relevant to armor/prayer context] | Transliterate: Áp-ba | Reused exactly per Romans baseline; Aramaic intimacy term retained untranslated alongside Cha. |
General rule derived: transliterate only fixed proper names, established sacramental terms, and Aramaic exclamations already fixed in Vietnamese Bible tradition; paraphrase every new abstract theological concept into a transparent Vietnamese descriptive compound, explicitly avoiding any existing Vietnamese loanword whose primary cultural association belongs to Buddhism, Confucianism, or folk religion.
Section 5: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Ephesians
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × syncretism proximity × frequency), highest risk first. All items ranked Critical or High require human theologian review per the escalation rules already established in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
- Filled with the Spirit vs. spirit-mediumship trance (5:18) — Critical. The single most viscerally proximate folk-practice collision in the curriculum: hầu đồng/lên đồng possession trance is a live, visible, still-practiced Vietnamese phenomenon, not a historical artifact. Misreading risks readers modeling Spirit-filling on losing self-control and identity, the opposite of the text’s own contrast with drunkenness.
- Principalities and powers / armor of God (1:21; 2:2; 3:10; 6:10-18) — Critical. Ephesians’ entire spiritual-warfare register sits directly on top of Vietnamese folk religion’s most elaborate and most frequently practiced (not merely believed) system: spirit hierarchies engaged through offerings, mediums, and protective ritual objects. High frequency across the book compounds the risk.
- Offering and sacrifice, fragrant aroma (5:2) — Critical. Ancestor incense-and-food offering (đốt nhang, cúng lễ vật) is a near-universal, emotionally weighted Vietnamese practice; a poorly fenced rendering could be read as commending a repeatable devotional practice rather than pointing back to Christ’s unique historical death.
- Predestination / foreordained (1:5, 11) — Critical. Vietnamese folk vocabulary for fate is unusually rich and ready-to-hand (số phận, số mệnh, định mệnh, nghiệp), any of which would quietly convert Paul’s personal, relational, response-compatible sovereignty into an impersonal deterministic mechanism.
- Wives submit to husbands / husbands love wives (5:22-33) — High. The single passage in the curriculum most likely to be read through a pre-existing cultural grid (tam cương/tòng phu) rather than the text’s own qualifications; risk is compounded because isolating v.22 from vv.21 and 25 is linguistically easy and doctrinally distorting.
- Mystery of Christ (1:9; 3:3-9; 5:32; 6:19) — High. Structurally load-bearing across the whole letter; huyền bí is not merely a rejected alternative but an entire competing epistemological model (secret/initiate-only vs. openly-proclaimed) that could reshape a reader’s whole understanding of how Christian truth is known.
- Works excluded / good works (2:9-10) — Critical (escalation-mandatory per baseline grace-vs-works rule). The core-passage’s central theological hinge; công đức and đức hạnh are both live, well-understood Vietnamese moral-religious categories that a careless single-word rendering of “works” could reintroduce as salvation’s basis.
- Inheritance / cơ nghiệp (1:11,14,18; 5:5) — High. Hương hỏa (ancestral-estate-for-ancestor-worship) is a legally and culturally significant Vietnamese concept; conflation risks implying the believer’s heavenly inheritance carries ritual-maintenance obligations toward the dead, or can be forfeited by neglecting family duty.
- One new man / dividing wall / abolished (2:14-16) — High. Requires OT/Temple background the target audience is explicitly assumed (per baseline tone requirements) to lack; without the explanatory note, “abolished” risks being read as erasing the moral law entirely rather than only its Jew-Gentile boundary-marking function.
- Sealed by the Spirit / guarantee (1:13-14; 4:30) — High. Bùa (protective amulet) is a common, low-cost, widely available folk-religious object in Vietnam; the metaphor of “sealing” invites this association more readily than most other Ephesians metaphors.
- Heavenly places / ages to come (1:3,20; 2:6-7; 3:10; 6:12) — High. Cõi trời and kiếp are both live Buddhist cosmological categories that could silently relocate Paul’s “in Christ” relational language into a merit-attained cosmological realm.
- Children obey parents / honor father and mother (6:1-3) — High, but lower relative risk than items 1-11 because Scripture’s own vocabulary here appropriately and intentionally overlaps with hiếu; the task is anchoring, not fencing against a wholly rival concept.
- Bondservants and masters (6:5-9) — High, primarily a contemporary-application risk (exploitative labor) rather than a syncretism risk with an existing Vietnamese religious system; requires historical-context teaching rather than terminological fencing.
Section 6: Chapter-by-Chapter Coverage Confirmation
| Chapter | New/Escalated Vocabulary Introduced | Reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Ephesians 1 | Predestination, inheritance, sealing/guarantee, heavenly places, fullness, headship/body, fourfold rulers-and-authorities taxonomy, mystery (first occurrence), will/purpose of God, divine-power stacking terms | Reviewed — highest concentration of new Critical/High vocabulary in the letter |
| Ephesians 2 | Core passage (2:1-10): trespasses, wrath, spiritually dead, made-alive-with-Christ, workmanship, new-creation act, by-nature, works-excluded, good-works, gift-of-God, boast, mercy, redemption (root); (2:11-22): dividing wall, enmity, abolished, reconcile, access, one new man, fellow citizens, strangers/aliens, household of God, holy temple, cornerstone, dwelling place of God | Reviewed — core theological anchor of the curriculum plus the Jew-Gentile unity architecture |
| Ephesians 3 | Mystery (developed further), stewardship, manifold wisdom of God, unsearchable riches of Christ, boldness/access (extended), heavenly-places (extended to rulers/authorities) | Reviewed — no forbidden-substitution issues beyond those already flagged in ch.1-2; primarily extension of existing new terms |
| Ephesians 4 | Unity of the Spirit/bond of peace, mature man, gifted offices (evangelist, pastor, teacher), equipping, measure of the gift of Christ, baptism, walk (first extended occurrence), old man/new man, renewed in mind, grieve the Holy Spirit, descended/ascended | Reviewed — Gifts and Walking-in-Newness doctrines’ primary textual home |
| Ephesians 5 | Walk (continued), imitators of God, offering and sacrifice/fragrant aroma, children of light/darkness, filled with the Spirit, submit to one another, wives/husbands household instructions, one flesh, great mystery of marriage | Reviewed — the single highest-density chapter for Critical syncretism risk (offerings, Spirit-filling, household hierarchy) |
| Ephesians 6 | Children/parents, honor father and mother, fathers do not provoke, bondservants/masters, no partiality, armor of God (full six-piece list), schemes of the devil, praying in the Spirit, ambassador | Reviewed — Household Codes doctrine’s conclusion plus the entire Spiritual Warfare/Armor doctrine’s primary textual home |
No chapter of Ephesians was found to contribute zero load-bearing vocabulary; all six chapters carry Critical- or High-risk material requiring escalation per Section 5.
Section 7: Recommendations for Phase 2
- All Section 2 (missing vocabulary) coinages must be entered into an updated
translation_memory.json(version increment) before any Phase 2 segment translation begins, per the baseline’s Translation Memory Load and Enforcement Instructions. - All Section 3 (crowded semantic neighborhood) terms must carry their fencing note attached at first occurrence in every lesson/document, not merely once globally, given how emotionally and practically proximate several of these folk practices (ancestor offerings, spirit mediumship, protective amulets) remain in contemporary Vietnamese life.
- Items 1–4 in Section 5’s ranked list (Spirit-filling, principalities/armor, offering/sacrifice, predestination) should be prioritized first in the Phase 2 back-translation review queue, ahead of the core passage’s own works/grace vocabulary (item 7), because their syncretism proximity is higher even though the core passage is doctrinally central.
- The household-codes vocabulary (Section 3, items 9–12; Section 5, items 5, 12, 13) should be reviewed with attention to pastoral sensitivity as well as doctrinal accuracy — this is a case where the correct rendering is culturally resonant rather than culturally avoidant, and the risk is under-qualification rather than absence of vocabulary.
- This analysis, together with
08_core_glossary.md, supplies the complete linguistic-gap basis for the doctrine risk registry extension and the AI translation requirements update to follow in subsequent Phase 1 steps.