06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Matthew 1–28

English → Vietnamese Language Package Extension

Curriculum: Matthew 1–28 Core passage: Matthew 5:1–12 (theological anchor; full-book scope mandated) Baseline authority: Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json (vietnamese). This analysis extends, and does not contradict, the baseline or the Matthew 08_core_glossary.md / bible_term_registry.json extension already produced. Method: For every doctrine in the curriculum parameter list, and for every chapter of Matthew, the available Vietnamese lexical stock is tested against (a) existing Vietnamese Protestant Bible tradition (Bản Dịch Truyền Thống, 1926) usage, (b) the risk of collision with Buddhist, Confucian, and folk-religious/ancestor-veneration vocabulary, and (c) internal consistency with the Romans baseline.

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1. Purpose

This document identifies where Vietnamese lacks precise, non-syncretistic vocabulary for Matthew’s theology (“missing vocabulary”), where multiple biblical concepts crowd into a single Vietnamese word or root morpheme and must be fenced apart (“crowded semantic neighborhoods”), which terms should be transliterated versus paraphrased, and which ambiguities carry the highest doctrinal risk for Phase 2 translation. It supplies the linguistic reasoning behind the renderings already proposed in 08_core_glossary.md and the Matthew bible_term_registry.json, and must be loaded alongside those files before doctrine risk registry construction (Phase 1 Step 2 equivalent for this curriculum).

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2. Full-Book Chapter Sweep

Every chapter of Matthew was reviewed. Chapters not separately elaborated below in Sections 3–5 contribute no vocabulary beyond what is already captured in the Matthew glossary/registry; this is noted explicitly rather than silently omitted.

Ch.	Load-bearing content	Gap-analysis status
1	Genealogy, virgin conception, Immanuel	Analyzed — Section 3.2, 5
2	Magi, King of the Jews, flight to Egypt, prophecy fulfillment	Analyzed — Section 3.3, 4
3	John the Baptist, repentance, baptism, Trinitarian declaration	Analyzed — Section 3.4
4	Temptation, kingdom preaching, calling of first disciples	Analyzed — Section 3.1
5	Sermon on the Mount opening, Beatitudes (core passage), righteousness exceeding the Pharisees, law fulfilled	Analyzed in depth — Section 3.5 (core-passage focus)
6	Lord’s Prayer, providence, mammon, forgiveness of debt	Analyzed — Section 3.6
7	Authority of Jesus’ teaching, false prophets, narrow gate	Analyzed — Section 3.4
8	Healing, faith, Son of Man, cost of following	Reviewed — reuses established terms (faith, son_of_man, authority); no new gap
9	Calling of Matthew, authority to forgive sins	Reviewed — reuses established terms (called, sin, authority); no new gap
10	Mission discourse, apostleship, cross, sword-not-peace, deny self	Analyzed — Section 3.9
11	Yoke, rest for the soul, woes on unrepentant cities	Analyzed — Section 4 (crowded neighborhood: rest/nirvana)
12	Sabbath, blasphemy against the Spirit, sign of Jonah	Analyzed — Section 5 (ranked ambiguity: blasphemy)
13	Kingdom parables, mysteries of the kingdom	Analyzed — Section 3.1
14	Feeding of 5,000, walking on water, worship	Reviewed — worship_proskyneo and faith already fenced; no new gap
15	Tradition of the elders, Canaanite woman’s faith	Analyzed — Section 3.5 (tradition vs filial honor)
16	Peter’s confession, keys of the kingdom, cross, self-denial	Analyzed — Section 3.7
17	Transfiguration, glory, faith	Reviewed — reuses established glory/faith/resurrection-typology terms; no new gap
18	Church discipline, binding/loosing, gathered in Christ’s name, forgiving debt	Analyzed — Section 3.7
19	Marriage, “what God has joined,” eternal life	Reviewed — terms already fenced in Section A of glossary; no new gap beyond eternal_life (Section 3.8)
20	Vineyard workers (grace illustrated), ransom, servant-greatness	Analyzed — Section 3.9, ranked ambiguity: ransom
21	Triumphal entry, Hosanna, cornerstone, wicked tenants	Analyzed — Section 3.2
22	Wedding feast, greatest commandment, resurrection debate	Analyzed — Section 3.9 (called vs chosen)
23	Woes on scribes and Pharisees, hypocrisy	Analyzed — Section 3.5
24	Olivet discourse: end of the age, abomination of desolation, tribulation, parousia	Analyzed — Section 3.8
25	Judgment parables, least of these, eternal punishment	Analyzed — Section 3.8
26	Last Supper, blood of the covenant, Gethsemane intercession	Analyzed — Section 3.7
27	Crucifixion, cry of dereliction, temple veil, resurrection of saints	Analyzed — Section 5
28	Resurrection, worship, Great Commission, Trinitarian formula	Analyzed — Section 3.7

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3. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each curriculum doctrine: the available Vietnamese term(s), the specific linguistic/cultural weaknesses of the available stock, and the recommended strategy (reuse, coin, fence, or transliterate).

3.1 The Kingdom of Heaven

Available Vietnamese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Nước Thiên Đàng (new, for βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν)	“Thiên Đàng” is the standard Vietnamese word for the afterlife destination in both folk-Buddhist and Vietnamese Protestant usage (“lên Thiên Đàng” = “go to Heaven [when I die]”). Vietnamese readers, especially from a Buddhist background where the afterlife is the primary religious category of interest, will default to a future-only, post-mortem reading.	Retain “Nước Thiên Đàng” (already Bản Dịch Truyền Thống convention) but require a mandatory teaching note at first occurrence (3:2) establishing the present-and-coming “already/not yet” reign, reinforced at every kingdom-parable occurrence (ch. 13).
Nước Đức Chúa Trời (baseline, reused for βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ)	None significant; risk is translators harmonizing the two Greek phrases into one Vietnamese phrase, erasing a distinction Matthew himself preserves for stylistic/theological reasons (Jewish avoidance of the divine name favors “heaven” periphrasis).	Enforce phrase-level fidelity: render the Greek phrase actually present in each verse; do not silently normalize 6:33/12:28/19:24/21:43 to “Nước Thiên Đàng.”

3.2 Jesus as the Promised Messiah and Son of David

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
Đấng Mê-si-a (baseline) / Đấng Christ (new)	Two Vietnamese forms for what is functionally one referent; risk of readers treating them as two different figures or titles of differing authority.	Teach explicit synonymy at first co-occurrence (Matt 1:1, 16:16-20); reserve “Đấng Mê-si-a” for OT-promise-emphasis contexts, “Đấng Christ” for the quasi-name/title use, consistent with the Matthew registry.
Con Đa-vít (new)	Vietnamese has no native royal-messianic category; “Con Đa-vít” reads on the surface as a simple genealogical descriptor (“David’s son/descendant”) unless the 2 Samuel 7 covenant background is supplied.	Pair every high-density occurrence (9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30-31; 21:9,15; 22:42) with brief covenant-context framing in accompanying study material; this is a background-knowledge gap, not a lexical collision risk.
Vua dân Do Thái (King of the Jews)	Low risk; Vietnamese “vua” (king) is a well-understood monarchical term from Vietnam’s own dynastic history, which if anything strengthens rather than weakens the concept.	Reuse as-is.

3.3 Fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecy

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
được ứng nghiệm (fulfillment formula, new) / lời tiên tri (baseline)	Vietnamese Buddhist cosmology frames time cyclically (kalpas, rebirth cycles); “ứng nghiệm” itself is a religiously neutral verb (“to come true/be verified,” used of oracles, fortune-telling, and folk prophecy alike) and carries no inherent linear-history marking.	Reinforce linearity contextually at each of the ten fulfillment-formula occurrences (1:22; 2:15,17,23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 26:56; 27:9) rather than relying on the verb alone to carry the doctrine; do not coin a new verb, as “ứng nghiệm” is already the established, natural Vietnamese Bible term.
tiên tri (prophet, baseline, Low risk)	Minor collision with “thầy bói” (fortune-teller) already fenced in the baseline; Matthew’s heavy citation density (10 fulfillment formulas plus narrative references) increases exposure but does not change the risk tier.	Reuse baseline term exactly; no new fencing needed beyond the existing baseline note.

3.4 The Authority of Jesus’ Teaching

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
quyền / uy quyền (new, exousia)	Vietnamese “quyền” is heavily used in secular administrative, legal, and political registers (quyền lực = political power; quyền hạn = jurisdiction/scope of authority) — readers may default to a bureaucratic or legalistic reading rather than an inherent, self-attesting divine right to command.	Use “uy quyền” (the more dignified, weightier compound, lit. “awe-inspiring authority”) preferentially over bare “quyền” at Christologically loaded occurrences (7:29; 28:18); reserve bare “quyền” for delegated-authority contexts (10:1; 9:8, disciples/crowds).
quyền năng (baseline, dynamis)	Risk of conflation with the newly introduced “quyền/uy quyền” (exousia) if translators are not alert to the Greek distinction; Vietnamese has no morphologically distinct pair mapping cleanly onto exousia vs dynamis.	Maintain the fence documented in the Matthew registry: “quyền năng” = raw miracle-working power/capability; “uy quyền” = inherent right to command. Flag any segment where the two are used interchangeably for native-speaker review.

3.5 Righteousness Exceeding the Pharisees

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
sự công bình (reused baseline term, dual sense)	The single Vietnamese phrase must now carry two theologically distinct senses across the same curriculum: Romans’ forensic “declared righteous” status and Matthew’s “lived, practiced kingdom character” sense (5:6, 5:10, 5:20, 6:33). Vietnamese has no separate lexical item marking the distinction, and readers from a merit-based religious background may collapse Matthew’s sense into “tích đức” (accumulating merit through practiced virtue).	Do not coin a second term (this would break cross-curriculum consistency with Romans, violating the Theological Consistency Rules). Instead, mandate a teaching note at first Matthew occurrence (5:6) distinguishing the two senses while affirming both are grace-enabled, not self-achieved.
thầy thông giáo và người Pha-ri-si (new); truyền thống của các trưởng lão (new)	“Trưởng lão” (elders) and the broader theme of tradition intersect with the deeply positive Confucian value of “kính lão” (honoring elders) and ancestral tradition; a careless rendering could make Jesus appear to attack elder-honor itself.	Fence explicitly: the critique targets traditions that nullify God’s Word (15:1-9), never the honoring of elders as such. Required teaching note at 15:3-6.
kẻ giả hình (hypocrite, new)	Low collision risk; term is already used in general Vietnamese moral vocabulary for outward-inward inconsistency and maps well.	Reuse as-is.

3.6 (supporting doctrine) Providence, Prayer, and Kingdom Ethics in the Sermon on the Mount

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
sự quan phòng của Đức Chúa Trời (baseline, reused)	Risk unchanged from Romans baseline (số trời/nghiệp); Matthew 6:25-34’s extended “do not be anxious” passage increases exposure but the fence already documented suffices.	Reuse baseline exactly; no new gap.
Tiền Tài (Ma-môn) (new)	Vietnamese has no existing personified-wealth-as-rival-deity concept as sharp as Matthew’s; “Tiền Tài” (Money/Wealth) is a common secular collocation and does not on its own carry the “rival master” force of the Greek.	Retain the transliteration “Ma-môn” in parentheses alongside “Tiền Tài” to preserve the personification Jesus intends (6:24); the gloss alone would read as a general warning against greed rather than a claim about ultimate loyalty.
tha nợ (forgive debt, new)	Low-to-medium risk; “nợ” (debt) is a live everyday Vietnamese concept, but Vietnamese social practice around debt often does carry moral/relational reciprocity expectations similar to “ơn nghĩa.”	Reinforce at 6:12 and 18:21-35 that the debt is cancelled outright by grace, explicitly fenced against “ơn nghĩa” per the baseline’s existing grace fence.

3.7 The Church and Church Discipline

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
Hội Thánh (baseline, reused)	Low risk; well-established.	Reuse exactly.
chìa khóa Nước Thiên Đàng; buộc lại…mở ra (keys/bind-loose, new)	Vietnamese folk religion has a robust living vocabulary of “bùa chú” (magical binding/loosing charms, curses, protective talismans) applied to spirits; the bare verbs “buộc” (bind) and “mở/tháo” (loose/release) are the exact verbs used in such folk-magic contexts.	High collision risk requires a mandatory teaching note at both occurrences (16:19; 18:18) explicitly distinguishing delegated, Christ-authorized doctrinal/disciplinary authority from independent occult ritual power. Do not render with any verb pair drawn from folk-charm vocabulary (e.g., avoid “trấn,” “ếm,” associated with spirit-binding rites).
nhóm lại trong danh ta (gathered in my name, new)	Risk of assimilation to invoking ancestral or spirit presence at a family altar/shrine (an act also described with “danh” — the deceased’s name — in ancestor-veneration ritual speech).	Teaching note at 18:20 clarifying this is the risen, living Christ’s own promised presence, not an invoked departed spirit.
đây là thân thể ta; huyết của sự giao ước (Lord’s Supper terms, new)	“Huyết của sự giao ước” risks assimilation to “huyết thệ” (folk blood-oath brotherhood pacts, e.g., historical/literary sworn-brotherhood scenes familiar from Vietnamese and Chinese classical literature and film) — a reciprocal pact between equals, the opposite theological direction from a unilateral, sacrificial, covenant-inaugurating death.	Mandatory teaching note at 26:26-28; never abbreviate to a bare “huyết ta” without the “giao ước” qualifier, which is the only element distinguishing it from an oath-pact reading.

3.8 Judgment and the End of the Age

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
sự tận thế / sự cuối cùng của thời đại này (end of the age, new)	Vietnamese Buddhist cosmology (kalpa cycles) and the “mạt pháp” (dharma-decline era) concept both describe recurring or gradually degenerating ages, not a single final linear consummation.	Fence explicitly at every occurrence (13:39-40,49; 24:3,14; 28:20) as a one-time, final, linear event under Christ’s own future return and judgment.
sự hình phạt đời đời (eternal punishment, new) vs sự sống đời đời (eternal life, new)	The parallel grammatical structure in Greek (25:46) must be matched in Vietnamese, but “hình phạt” alone risks being read against the backdrop of “địa ngục” as a temporary purgative naraka-realm exited once negative karma is exhausted.	Require explicit “đời đời” (forever) on both members of the pair without exception; flag any segment omitting “đời đời” from either side for theologian review.
sự đến (của Con Người) (parousia, new)	Vietnamese has no existing vocabulary distinguishing a “second,” visible, bodily, glorious coming from an ongoing “presence” or figurative “coming” (e.g., of an era, an idea); “sự đến” alone is thin and could be read as merely “arrival” in a weak sense.	Pair consistently with concrete markers of visibility/glory drawn directly from the passage (24:27,30 — “như chớp,” “trong sự vinh hiển”) so the translated phrase is not left to stand alone as an abstract noun.
sự gớm ghiếc tàn nát (abomination of desolation, new)	No native Vietnamese religious category corresponds to this Danielic apocalyptic sign; risk is unfamiliarity, not syncretism.	Retain the concrete, historically anchored phrase; supply background notes rather than substituting general moral-decline language.

3.9 Discipleship and the Cost of Following Jesus

Available terms	Weaknesses	Strategy
môn đồ (disciple, baseline, reused)	“Môn đồ” shares its root morpheme “môn” with “môn phái” (a martial-arts or philosophical school/sect) and “môn sinh” (a school’s student, bound by technique-transmission hierarchy) — both live, common Vietnamese concepts (wuxia fiction, traditional Vietnamese martial arts lineages).	Teaching note recommended at first dense occurrence (10:1-42) and reinforced at 28:19: biblical discipleship is covenantal allegiance to Christ’s person, not mastery of a transmitted technique or membership in a lineage-school.
từ bỏ mình / mất mạng sống vì cớ ta (deny self/lose life, new)	Highest risk of assimilation in the entire discipleship set: Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist teaching on “vô ngã” (no-self/non-self) is widely known even among non-practicing Vietnamese as the metaphysical goal of dissolving the self; “từ bỏ mình” (renounce/abandon oneself) uses close vocabulary.	Mandatory teaching note at every occurrence (10:39; 16:24-25) clarifying that this is a relational reorientation of allegiance toward Christ, not a metaphysical negation of selfhood as an end in itself.
gươm (sword, not peace, new)	Acutely sensitive given “đạo hiếu” (filial duty) and ancestor-veneration family obligations; a family-division reading could be heard as Jesus commanding actual violence against family, or as devaluing filial duty itself.	Teaching note required at 10:34-37 clarifying relational conflict caused by supreme allegiance, not literal violence nor abolition of filial honor.
ách / gánh (yoke, new); sự yên nghỉ (rest for the soul, new)	“Sự yên nghỉ” risks being heard through “niết bàn” (nirvana), the cessation-of-craving goal of Buddhist practice, especially since both are offered as the resolution to spiritual “weariness” (11:28).	Fence explicitly: Christ’s rest is relational communion with a living Person, received as gift, not extinguishing of desire/selfhood.
giá chuộc (ransom, new)	Vietnamese “chuộc” (to redeem/buy back, e.g., “chuộc lỗi” = atone for a fault) already carries some merit-based, self-effort connotation in ordinary usage (“chuộc lỗi” implies the wrongdoer’s own corrective effort).	Fence at 20:28: the ransom is paid by Christ, not by the one ransomed, and is not repayment of an impersonal karmic debt that could in principle be self-paid through effort or accumulated merit.
đầy tớ (servant, greatness inverted, new)	Low risk; “đầy tớ” is a plain, unambiguous Vietnamese word for a household servant, and inverted-honor teaching (20:26-28; 23:11) is culturally legible, if countercultural, in an honor-conscious society.	Reuse as-is; note countercultural force in teaching material rather than lexical fencing.

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4. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

4.1 Missing Vocabulary (no adequate existing Vietnamese term; requires coining, compounding, or heavy contextual reinforcement)

Concept	Gap	Resolution
Danielic “Son of Man” force (divine-yet-human judging authority)	“Con Người” (lit. “child/son of a human being”) is semantically thin in Vietnamese — it reads as a plain, almost philosophical descriptor of humanity in general (cf. secular Vietnamese usage of “con người” = “human beings” collectively), carrying none of Daniel 7’s enthroned, judging, universal-authority force on its own.	No better single-term alternative exists in established Vietnamese Bible usage; retain “Con Người” but require it always to be reinforced by its immediate context (coming in glory, judging, receiving dominion) rather than left as a bare title, especially at first occurrence (8:20) and at the trial (26:64) and Olivet discourse (24:27-44) clusters.
”Poor in spirit” (πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι, Matt 5:3)	The 1926 Bản Dịch Truyền Thống rendering “có lòng khó khăn” uses “khó khăn,” a word whose dominant modern meaning is “difficult/hardship,” risking a literal-poverty or “having a hard life” misreading rather than the intended spiritual humility/emptiness before God.	Retain the established BDTT phrase for continuity with existing Vietnamese Protestant tradition (per baseline register requirements), but this is the single highest-priority teaching-note requirement in the entire Beatitudes passage — see Section 5, rank #1.
A term for “meek” that avoids passivity/weakness misreading	”Nhu mì” (gentle, meek) is the established rendering and is adequate, but Vietnamese honor-culture readers may hear meekness as social weakness or low status rather than the disciplined, submitted strength Matthew 5:5 intends.	No lexical gap requiring a new term; flag as a teaching emphasis only (Medium risk), not a translation-memory risk.

4.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (existing Vietnamese terms doing double or triple duty across biblical and non-biblical religious concepts; require explicit fencing)

Root morpheme / term	Competing occupants of the neighborhood	Fencing required
thờ (to venerate/worship)	thờ phượng (worship of Christ, Critical) vs. thờ cúng (ancestor veneration at the family altar) vs. thờ Phật (Buddha worship)	Every occurrence of thờ phượng directed at Christ (2:2,11; 4:9-10; 14:33; 28:9,17) requires a teaching note; this is the single most structurally embedded collision risk in the entire language pair, since the shared root is unavoidable in Vietnamese.
thánh (holy)	thánh (holy, God-directed, High) vs. các thánh (deified folk heroes at đền, e.g., Thánh Trần) vs. Phật/Bồ Tát status language in popular piety	Baseline fence (các thánh đồ, never bare các thánh) already governs; Matthew reinforces at 4:5 (holy city), 6:9 (hallowed be your name), 27:53 (holy city) — no new fence needed beyond baseline, but density is higher in Matthew than in Romans.
phước (blessed/fortunate)	Phước cho… (Beatitudes “blessed,” divine favor bestowed) vs. phước đức (Buddhist accumulated merit, already forbidden for “grace” in the baseline)	See Section 5, ranked ambiguity #1 — this is a new, curriculum-specific instance of the baseline’s phước đức fence, now triggered by the core passage itself rather than by the “grace” term.
quyền (authority/power/right)	uy quyền/quyền (exousia, inherent authority) vs. quyền năng (dynamis, power) vs. quyền lực (secular political power) vs. quyền lợi (legal rights/entitlements)	Requires the three-way fence documented in Section 3.4; highest density at 7:28-29, 21:23-27, 28:18.
môn (school/gate/discipline)	môn đồ (disciple) vs. môn phái (martial-arts/philosophical school) vs. môn sinh (student of a named master/lineage)	Requires the fence documented in Section 3.9.
sự công bình (righteousness)	Forensic declared-righteousness (Romans sense) vs. lived/practiced kingdom righteousness (Matthew 5:20, 6:33 sense) vs. potential misreading as tích đức (accumulated moral merit)	Requires the fence documented in Section 3.5; this is an internal cross-curriculum crowding, not merely a competing-religion crowding, and is therefore especially easy to miss in review.
chuộc (redeem)	giá chuộc (ransom paid by Christ) vs. chuộc lỗi/chuộc tội (colloquial “make up for a fault,” implying self-effort)	Requires the fence documented in Section 3.9.
buộc / mở (bind/loose)	Church-disciplinary binding/loosing (16:19; 18:18) vs. folk-magic “bùa chú” binding/loosing charms and curses	Requires the fence documented in Section 3.7; among the highest-severity crowding risks because the ordinary verbs, not a specialized noun, are shared with the folk-magic register.
yên nghỉ / nghỉ (rest)	sự yên nghỉ (relational rest in Christ, 11:28-29) vs. niết bàn-adjacent cessation-of-craving concepts in popular Buddhist piety	Requires the fence documented in Section 3.9.

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5. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Hô-sa-na (Hosanna, 21:9,15)	Transliterate	No Vietnamese equivalent conveys the untranslatable Hebrew acclamation force; established convention in Vietnamese Bible tradition.
Em-ma-nu-ên (Immanuel, 1:23)	Transliterate + mandatory gloss	Retain both the transliteration and the parenthetical Vietnamese gloss (“Đức Chúa Trời ở cùng chúng ta”) since the doctrinal payload (Deity of Christ) is carried by the gloss, while the transliteration preserves the name’s identity as a proper name/title.
Ma-môn (Mammon, 6:24)	Transliterate, paired with paraphrase “Tiền Tài”	The paraphrase alone loses the personified rival-deity force; the transliteration alone would be opaque to readers without background; use both together.
Sa-bát (Sabbath, 12:1-14)	Transliterate	Already fully established in Vietnamese Bible usage; no viable native paraphrase exists that would not misleadingly suggest a generic “day of rest.”
báp-têm (baptism, 3:6-16; 28:19)	Transliterate	Established convention; paraphrasing as “phép rửa” (a common alternate rendering in some Vietnamese contexts, including Catholic usage) risks conflating with ritual washing (tẩy uế) already flagged as a forbidden association; retain the transliterated Protestant convention.
tin lành, Ki-tô — not applicable here (already governed by baseline; Ki-tô explicitly rejected as the Catholic-tradition alternative to Đấng Christ).
Con Người (Son of Man)	Paraphrase (literal calque), not transliteration	Untransliterable Greek phrase; no shorter Vietnamese phrase improves on the literal calque, but see Section 4.1 — this paraphrase requires heavy contextual reinforcement rather than a lexical fix.
Nước Thiên Đàng / Nước Đức Chúa Trời (Kingdom of Heaven/God)	Paraphrase	Both are compound noun phrases already established in Vietnamese Bible usage; transliteration is not applicable to a phrase-level theological concept.
chìa khóa Nước Thiên Đàng; buộc lại…mở ra (keys/bind-loose)	Paraphrase, with explicit teaching note	No transliteration option exists for a metaphorical action-phrase; paraphrase is the only path, which is precisely why the crowding risk with “bùa chú” (Section 4.2) cannot be resolved lexically and must be resolved through mandatory contextual teaching notes instead.
Con Đa-vít, dòng dõi Đa-vít (Son of David / seed of David)	Transliterate the proper name only (Đa-vít, per baseline) within an otherwise paraphrased title	Consistent with baseline convention for proper names; the title itself (Con/dòng dõi) is paraphrased/calqued.

General principle applied: transliteration is reserved for (a) proper names already fixed by the 1926 Bản Dịch Truyền Thống tradition, and (b) untranslatable acclamations/loanwords with no native equivalent risk of syncretistic collision. Paraphrase is used for all doctrinal concept-phrases, since Vietnamese theological register (per the baseline’s own established practice, e.g., “sự xưng công bình,” “sự làm con nuôi”) favors transparent compound phrases over opaque coinages or borrowed Sino-Vietnamese theological jargon unfamiliar to ordinary readers.

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6. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities (This Curriculum)

Ranked by combination of (a) doctrinal centrality, (b) severity of potential syncretistic misreading, and (c) how easily the ambiguity could be missed in ordinary translation workflow because it hides inside an already-established, seemingly safe term.

1. “Phước cho…” (Blessed are…, Matt 5:3-11, the core passage itself). The established Vietnamese Bible rendering of makarios uses “phước,” the very root morpheme explicitly forbidden by the baseline in the compound “phước đức” (Buddhist accumulated merit) when rendering “grace.” The Beatitudes are the curriculum’s theological anchor, and their opening word carries an unavoidable echo of merit-based fortune-telling/folk-blessing language (“cầu phước,” “xin phước” — practices of petitioning for fortune at temples and shrines). Highest risk in the entire curriculum precisely because it sits in the core passage and cannot be avoided by substitution (no alternative Vietnamese Bible-tradition rendering exists). Requires a mandatory theologian-reviewed teaching note at 5:3, distinguishing divine favor graciously bestowed by the King on kingdom citizens from any notion of self-generated or self-accumulated fortune.

2. “Con Người” (Son of Man) as a thin calque for the Danielic authoritative title. Risk of silent semantic collapse into “a human being” in ordinary reading, undermining both the Authority of Jesus’ Teaching and Deity of Christ doctrines across 8:20 through 26:64. Compounded by the sheer frequency of the title (20+ occurrences).

3. “Buộc lại…mở ra” (bind/loose, 16:19; 18:18) using the same ordinary verbs employed in folk “bùa chú” magical binding/loosing charms. Unlike most Critical terms, this risk lives in common verbs rather than a specialized noun, making it far easier for a translator or reviewer to miss during segment-level QA.

4. “Huyết của sự giao ước” (blood of the covenant, 26:28) vs. “huyết thệ” (folk blood-oath brotherhood). The distinguishing element is a single qualifying word (“giao ước”); any abbreviation or paraphrase that drops it collapses a unilateral, sacrificial, once-for-all covenant act into a mutual oath-pact between equals — a direct doctrinal inversion.

5. “Từ bỏ mình” (deny self, 10:39; 16:24-25) vs. Buddhist “vô ngã” (no-self). Both traditions use the vocabulary of self-renunciation/self-abandonment as a path to true life/rest, but for opposite metaphysical reasons (relational reorientation to Christ vs. dissolution of selfhood as the goal itself); the surface-level similarity is high enough that even careful native speakers may not flag it without training.

6. “Sự công bình” carrying two senses across one curriculum pair (Romans forensic vs. Matthew practiced-righteousness, 5:6,5:10,5:20,6:33). Risk is internal to the Language Package itself, not merely external to competing religions, and could produce inconsistent teaching between the two curricula if the distinguishing note is dropped in Phase 2.

7. “Nước Thiên Đàng” defaulting to a post-mortem afterlife destination rather than a present-and-coming reign, given that “Thiên Đàng” is the ordinary Vietnamese word for “Heaven [you go to when you die]” in both folk-Buddhist and everyday Vietnamese Christian speech.

8. “Uy quyền/quyền” (authority, exousia) collapsing into “quyền năng” (power, dynamis) or into secular administrative “quyền lực.” High-frequency term (7:29; 9:8; 10:1; 21:23-27; 28:18) where imprecision quietly erodes the Authority of Jesus’ Teaching doctrine without triggering any obvious forbidden-term flag.

9. “Giá chuộc” (ransom, 20:28) echoing “chuộc lỗi” (self-effort atonement for a fault) in ordinary Vietnamese usage. Risk of subtly reintroducing a self-effort dynamic into a doctrine (substitutionary atonement) that must remain unilateral and Christ-accomplished.

10. “Sự yên nghỉ” (rest for the soul, 11:28-29) echoing “niết bàn” (nirvana, cessation of craving/self). Both concepts resolve a stated “weariness” with an offered “rest,” making the surface parallel unusually persuasive to a reader without prior catechesis.

11. “Gươm” (sword, not peace, 10:34-37) read against “đạo hiếu” (filial duty) and ancestor-veneration family obligation, risking either a literal-violence misreading or an implied devaluation of filial honor that Matthew does not intend.

12. “Truyền thống của các trưởng lão” (tradition of the elders, 15:1-9) read against “kính lão” (honoring elders), a core positive Confucian-Vietnamese value. Risk of the critique landing as an attack on elder-honor itself rather than on traditions that nullify God’s Word specifically.

13. “Sự nói phạm đến Đức Thánh Linh” (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, 12:31-32) generalized to any offense against the folk category “thần linh” (spirits). Risk direction here is pastoral over-anxiety (readers fearing they have committed an unforgivable sin for ordinary offenses) rather than syncretism per se, but it remains Critical because it touches the Judgment doctrine directly.

14. “Thờ phượng” (worship, proskyneō) sharing its root with “thờ cúng” (ancestor veneration). Ranked lower than items 1–13 only because the baseline has already fenced this risk thoroughly for Romans-adjacent contexts; Matthew increases occurrence density (2:2,11; 4:9-10; 14:33; 28:9,17) but does not introduce a new dimension of the risk.

15. “Sự tận thế” (end of the age, 13:39-40,49; 24:3,14; 28:20) read against cyclical kalpa cosmology or “mạt pháp” era-decline framing. Risk is real but more easily corrected by surrounding narrative context (a specific, described final judgment scene) than most items above it.

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7. Recommendations for Phase 2

1. Load this document alongside 08_core_glossary.md and the Matthew bible_term_registry.json before any segment translation of Matthew 5:1-12 (core passage) specifically; the Beatitudes require the single highest density of mandatory teaching notes in the curriculum (see Section 6, rank #1).
2. Route every occurrence of the ranked ambiguities in Section 6 rated Critical in the companion doctrine risk registry to human theologian review without exception, consistent with the baseline’s escalation rules.
3. Do not attempt to resolve the crowded-neighborhood risks in Section 4.2 by coining new vocabulary; Vietnamese Protestant Bible tradition already provides adequate, established terms in every case, and the remedy is contextual/teaching reinforcement, not lexical substitution.
4. Preserve the “thin calque” renderings identified in Section 4.1 (“Con Người,” “có lòng khó khăn”) exactly as documented, since no superior alternative exists within the established Vietnamese Bible tradition; compensate through mandatory contextual notes rather than translation-memory substitution.

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This analysis extends but never overrides the Romans baseline or the Matthew 08_core_glossary.md. Where this document’s findings imply a mandatory teaching note, that requirement should be encoded into the doctrine risk registry (Phase 1 Step 2 equivalent) and the AI translation requirements instruction set for this curriculum.