Disputed Statements

Shimabara Rebellion, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Religious Dimension

Currently States Scholars agree Matsukura's tax burden and a regional famine were the immediate triggers, but differ on how much weight to give the rebels' Christian identity as a distinct driver rather than an incidental feature of a heavily Christianized region's population. George Elison's study situates the revolt within the shogunate's broader ideological campaign against Christianity as an inherently seditious loyalty, one in which armed peasant resistance from Shimabara was read, and treated, as a religious rebellion regardless of its immediate economic trigger, which is why the shogunate's reprisal fell specifically on Christianity rather than on peasant unrest in general.

Source Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan, George Elison tier 1

Shimabara Rebellion, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 37000.000000

The lower, more commonly cited figure holds that all roughly 37,000 rebels at Hara Castle were killed after the siege. A second figure of up to 40,000, including women and children in the besieged town, is also in circulation; both describe the same near-total massacre rather than two different events.

Source Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan, George Elison tier 1

Shimabara Rebellion, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 40000.000000

See death-toll-min.

Source Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan, George Elison tier 1

Shimon bar Yochai, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 90

Wikipedia's infobox states birth_date 90 and death_date "160 (aged 70)" with no citation attached to either figure. The Divinity Atlas's own Open Question 259456 records that rabbinic sources document his teaching, his hiding from Rome and his tomb at Meron, but that no source gives an actual birth or death year, and that the later literary Shimon bar Yochai of the Zohar complicates any single dating further. 90 and 160 are recorded here as the commonly repeated traditional figures, not as settled fact; the open question is left standing.

Source Wikipedia: Shimon bar Yochai tier 2

Shimon bar Yochai, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 160

Wikipedia's infobox states birth_date 90 and death_date "160 (aged 70)" with no citation attached to either figure. The Divinity Atlas's own Open Question 259456 records that rabbinic sources document his teaching, his hiding from Rome and his tomb at Meron, but that no source gives an actual birth or death year, and that the later literary Shimon bar Yochai of the Zohar complicates any single dating further. 90 and 160 are recorded here as the commonly repeated traditional figures, not as settled fact; the open question is left standing.

Source Wikipedia: Shimon bar Yochai tier 2

Shin ש, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Shin ש, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Shinbutsu Bunri, Religious Events

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States The policy created the modern category of Shinto as a separate religion, which is one reason historians treat that category as partly a product of the nineteenth century rather than a description of ancient practice.

How far pre-modern kami worship can be called Shinto at all is a live question in the field.

Source Shinto: A History, Helen Hardacre tier 1

Shiur Qomah, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 200

Gershom Scholem argued for an early date, the second to fourth century CE, reading the text as preserving authentic Tannaitic and Amoraic speculation about the divine form. David Halperin challenged this directly, arguing on other grounds for a much later composition in the seventh or eighth century in Babylonia, and Peter Schafer's subsequent study treats the surviving text as multiple layers of unequal age bound together rather than a single stratum, so the wide range reflects a genuine and unresolved disagreement rather than an average of estimates.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Shiur Qomah, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 800

Gershom Scholem argued for an early date, the second to fourth century CE, reading the text as preserving authentic Tannaitic and Amoraic speculation about the divine form. David Halperin challenged this directly, arguing on other grounds for a much later composition in the seventh or eighth century in Babylonia, and Peter Schafer's subsequent study treats the surviving text as multiple layers of unequal age bound together rather than a single stratum, so the wide range reflects a genuine and unresolved disagreement rather than an average of estimates.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Shiva, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Shiva's name is traditionally glossed as the auspicious one, though scholars debate whether this began as a euphemistic title for the fiercer Vedic Rudra rather than an original name.

Shiva's name is traditionally glossed as the auspicious one. Scholars debate whether this is itself a later euphemistic title layered onto the more fearsome Vedic Rudra rather than an original meaning of the name, and the question of priority between the epithet and the god it came to name is unresolved.

Source Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.) tier 1

Shiva Sahasranama, Hymns & Liturgical Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States The Shiva Sahasranama survives in multiple versions across scripture rather than a single origin text. Its best known version stands in the Anushasana Parva of the Mahabharata, where Krishna recites the thousand names to Yudhishthira as he learned them from the sage Upamanyu, while further, distinct thousand-name lists are preserved in the Shiva Purana and the Linga Purana. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Cush, Robinson and York, eds., Routledge, 2008) treats these as parallel versions rather than one deriving from another, consistent with the record that tradition itself differs on which list is primary.

The Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Cush, Robinson and York, eds., Routledge, 2008) examined the multiple versions of the thousand-name litany to Shiva preserved across scripture: the best known, in the Anushasana Parva of the Mahabharata, where Krishna recites the names to Yudhishthira as he learned them from the sage Upamanyu, and separate, distinct thousand-name lists preserved in the Shiva Purana and the Linga Purana. Comparing the three, it treats them as parallel versions rather than one deriving from another, and records that tradition itself differs on which list is primary rather than settling the question.

Source Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.) tier 1

Shiva Sutras, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Historicity debated

The tradition presents the aphorisms as a revealed discovery; historians of the text generally treat this as the tradition's own framing device rather than as an independently verifiable claim, and no manuscript or external record settles the question of composition versus discovery.

Source Shiva Sutras: The Yoga of Supreme Identity, Jaideva Singh tier 1

Shiva Sutras, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Kashmiri tradition holds that the seventy-seven aphorisms came to the ninth-century teacher Vasugupta by revelation, most commonly through a dream instruction from Shiva directing him to a rock near Harwan in Kashmir where the aphorisms were found already inscribed, rather than by his own composition. Jaideva Singh's Shiva Sutras: The Yoga of Supreme Identity (Motilal Banarsidass, 1979) presents the tradition's own account without treating the question of discovery against authorship as separable from the text's transmission.

Source Shiva Sutras: The Yoga of Supreme Identity, Jaideva Singh tier 1

Shobo (The Age of the True Dharma), Ages

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proposed Dating Start Year

Currently States -949

The Japanese Tendai reckoning places the Buddha's death in 949 BCE and gives this first age 1,000 years; Chinese calculations from the sixth century onward placed the same transitions variously, so this is a real, named calculation rather than a single undisputed date.

Source Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline, Jan Nattier tier 1

Shobo (The Age of the True Dharma), Ages

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proposed Dating End Year

Currently States 52

The same Japanese reckoning that dates the Buddha's death to 949 BCE closes this first age 1,000 years later, at the point the Age of the Semblance Dharma opens. Chinese calculations worked out from the sixth century onward placed the same transition variously, so this is a real, named calculation rather than a single undisputed date.

Source Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline, Jan Nattier tier 1

Shri Vidya, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Whether left hand or right hand ritual practice is the authentic form of Shri Vidya

Shri Vidya ritual has historically included both a left hand mode, vamachara, using substances orthodox Brahminical society treats as impure, and a right hand mode, dakshinachara, substituting symbolic equivalents. The two camps have long disagreed on which is authentic, and Bhaskararaya's influential 18th century commentaries argued for a symbolic, right hand reading that eased the tradition's acceptance among orthodox Smarta Brahmins.

Source The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies, Hugh B. Urban tier 1

Shroud of Turin, Artifacts & Relics

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Radiocarbon Date

Currently States AD 1260-1390 (95% confidence, three-laboratory AMS, 1988)

P. E. Damon and colleagues published Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin in Nature in 1989, reporting the results of independent carbon-14 testing carried out by three separate laboratories, Oxford, Zurich and Arizona, on samples cut from the shroud's cloth. Their method was standard accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating, and the three laboratories converged on a medieval date range of approximately 1260 to 1390 CE; advocates for an earlier origin have since disputed whether the sample cut for testing was representative of the whole cloth, but that specific 1989 medieval date has not been overturned by any subsequent published testing.

Source Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin, P. E. Damon et al. tier 1

Shu, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Scholars debate whether passages stating an abstract single-principle ethics, the shu passage among them, are original to the Analects or later interpolations into the text, a live question in Confucius scholarship rather than a settled point of textual history.

Source Confucius (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry), Mark Csikszentmihalyi tier 2

Siddhartha Gautama, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit

Currently States The short chronology for Siddhartha Gautama's dates, giving a life of roughly 480 to 400 BCE, is the dating now generally preferred among historians of Buddhism, developed from a fresh assessment of the ancient Indian chronological evidence rather than from the traditional Buddhist reckoning. It is set out among the specialists gathered by Heinz Bechert in the symposium volumes The Dating of the Historical Buddha (Die Datierung des historischen Buddha, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht), which lay the short and the traditional long chronology side by side without the question being closed.

Source The Dating of the Historical Buddha (Die Datierung des historischen Buddha), Heinz Bechert, editor tier 1