Distillation of Christianity (the Bible) — Decision Record

Per-tradition entry point for Plan 010. This README fixes which texts and which translation are distilled. See the Atlas architecture for the cross-tradition layer.

Tradition

• Slug: christianity-bible
• Tradition / family: Christianity (the biblical corpus). This entry distills the Bible itself.
• Primary frame in one sentence: a theistic covenant of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation — humanity made in God's image (imago Dei), reconciled to God through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and called to love God and neighbour.

Canon selection (what is included, and why)

Text	Included?	Rationale
Old Testament (39 books)	yes	Hebrew Scriptures as received in the Christian canon; creation, covenant, law, wisdom, prophets
New Testament (27 books)	yes	Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Revelation — the distinctively Christian witness to Christ
Deuterocanon / Apocrypha (Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Maccabees, etc.)	noted	Part of the Catholic and Orthodox canons but absent from the WEB base text used here; flagged as Stage-B scope so as not to silently adopt the Protestant canon as "the" canon

• Canon scope: the Protestant 66-book canon (the WEB base edition), with the Catholic deuterocanon (Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Maccabees, etc.) covered at Stage-B via the Douay-Rheims. The Orthodox canon is larger still and remains a flagged boundary.
• Full-canon commitment: yes — every one of the 66 books is covered, grouped into ~12 book-group N=1 files at book/section-level granularity. Per-verse depth for any single book is flagged as Stage B.

Translation policy

• Named translation: World English Bible (WEB), complete, public domain.
• Access: Project Gutenberg #8294 (plain text; from www.ebible.org, reformatted by Martin Ward).
• Why this translation: unambiguously public-domain, a complete modern-English revision of the ASV (1901), with clear chapter:verse structure. Caveat: the WEB renders the Tetragrammaton as "Yahweh" (where most English Bibles read "the LORD") and uses "Kingdom of Heaven"/"Kingdom of God"; these choices are noted where load-bearing.
• Citation form: standard Book Chapter:Verse, e.g. John 1:1, Genesis 1:27, 1 Corinthians 13:13.
• Quote accuracy: working quotes are from the Gutenberg plain text with WEB editorial footnote markers {...} stripped; final character-for-character verification is a Phase 7 audit task. All quotes are marked pending Phase 7 audit.

Untranslatables to preserve (transliterations / load-bearing terms)

Greek/Hebrew terms whose theological weight is flattened by any single English word — preserved throughout and flagged as WEAK-distinctive candidates for the Atlas:

• agapē (ἀγάπη) — self-giving, unconditional love (distinct from eros, philia, storgē)
• logos (λόγος) — Word/reason; the divine self-expression made flesh (John 1:1)
• charis (χάρις) / grace — unmerited divine favour
• basileia (βασιλεία) — kingdom/reign of God
• kenōsis (κένωσις) — self-emptying (Philippians 2:7)
• koinōnia (κοινωνία) — communion/fellowship/sharing-in-common
• hesed (חֶסֶד) — covenant loving-kindness / steadfast mercy (WEB: "loving kindness")
• imago Dei — the image of God in humanity (Latin; Genesis 1:27)

Reviewer / standpoint

• Within-tradition reviewer: none secured.
• Therefore: this output is "one structured reading, not authoritative" and the reviewer gap is flagged. Christianity is internally plural (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant; canon and interpretation differ), and this stack does not adjudicate among them; it offers one structured reading of the WEB 66-book canon. The tradition stays in scope per the Plan 010 policy.

Structure for this tradition

• N=1 unit ("books/"): a book-group (e.g., Pentateuch, Gospels, Pauline Epistles); verses cited as Book Ch:V. Per-verse depth flagged Stage-B.
• Internal N=2 layer: none — this is a single-source (Bible-only) distillation. Cross-tradition N=2 is handled at the Atlas layer.
• Sensitivity boundaries: handle the sin/judgment material and exclusivist claims (e.g., John 14:6) descriptively, not as endorsement or polemic; preserve the standpoint note above.

Files

File	Status
00-methodology.md	done
books/00-index-and-traceability.md	done (all 66 books, ~12 groups)
books/01..12 (N=1 group files)	done — book-group principles with verbatim verse anchors
principles-distillation.md (N=3)	done — 15 core principles
structural-analysis.md	done
compass-christianity-bible.md	done (rooted Christian family compass)

References

• Plan 010 · Atlas architecture · Methodology v2 · Buddhist pilot exemplar