Disputed Statements

Sodom, Cities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Founded

Currently States The Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference, 2024) records that Sodom, the city of Genesis 18 and 19 destroyed with Gomorrah by fire from heaven, has not been identified on the ground; Genesis places it in the plain near the Dead Sea, and several excavated sites in that region, among them Tall el-Hammam, have been proposed by their own excavators, but no proposed identification commands agreement among archaeologists working the wider plain.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Soka Gakkai, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Institutional Wealth or Finances

Currently States Forbes reported in 2004 that a Japanese parliamentarian had, about a decade earlier, put the value of Soka Gakkai founder-honorary-president Daisaku Ikeda's organizational empire at 100 billion dollars, a figure Soka Gakkai called wrong while otherwise declining to discuss its finances with the magazine. The same article gave Forbes' own conservative estimate of at least 1.5 billion dollars a year in the organization's top-line revenue, drawn from its membership, tithing demands and commercial activities including funeral plots, religious goods and a newspaper with 5.5 million subscribers, and reported that the affiliated Soka University of America, a separate US nonprofit corporation, told the Internal Revenue Service its own assets exceeded 740 million dollars. No later independently audited figure for the organization as a whole was located in this pass.

Source Sensei's World (Forbes, 2004) tier 2

Sokushin Jobutsu (Buddhahood in This Very Body), Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Which warrant for the claim is the sounder, the esoteric argument that practitioner and Mahavairocana are not separate to begin with, or the Tendai appeal to the Lotus Sutra. The two schools argued the question from the ninth century without reaching agreement.

Source The Weaving of Mantra: Kukai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse, Ryuichi Abe tier 1

Sol, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Worship and Practice

Currently States The archaic Roman sun god Sol, sometimes called Sol Indiges, held an ancient shrine on the Quirinal Hill and a yearly festival, but had become a minor figure in mainstream Republican religion well before the emperor Aurelian established the far more prominent state cult of Sol Invictus in the third century AD. Historians of Roman religion disagree about how directly the earlier cult relates to the later imperial one: some treat Sol Invictus as substantially a new cult drawing on eastern solar traditions, others argue for meaningful continuity in name, iconography and ritual, and the fragmentary evidence has not settled the question either way.

Source Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.) tier 1

Sol Invictus, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Textual Note

Currently States Scholars have long debated whether Aurelian's state cult of Sol Invictus directly influenced the later Christian church's choice of the twenty fifth of December, the traditional date of Sol's principal festival, as the date for celebrating Christmas, though the evidence for a direct causal link remains contested rather than settled.

Scholars who once treated the coincidence of dates as settled evidence of direct borrowing have increasingly questioned it, noting the earliest clear references linking Christmas to the twenty fifth of December are not demonstrably dependent on Aurelian's solar festival, so the direction and reality of any influence remains an open scholarly question rather than a fixed fact.

Source The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning, Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens tier 1

Sol Invictus, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Mythic Association

Currently States Sol Invictus's recorded birthday of the twenty-fifth of December is why his cult is named in every discussion of the date of Christmas, though whether one influenced the other is unresolved.

The Chronography of 354 records a birthday of the Unconquered Sun on the twenty-fifth of December, which is why Sol Invictus's cult is named in every discussion of the date of Christmas. Whether the Christian feast was set against this date or the two arose independently is a live scholarly disagreement the atlas does not settle.

Source The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning, Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens tier 1

Sola Busca, Tarot Decks

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Artist

Currently States Debated. Arthur Mayger Hind, in his 1935 Early Italian Engravings, argued from the deck's own imagery, its references to the Republic of Venice, that it was made for a Venetian client and proposed the engraver Mattia Serrati da Cosandola on that basis. A separate theory instead names the painter Nicola di Maestro Antonio. Neither identification commands scholarly consensus.

Source A History of the Occult Tarot, Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett tier 1

Sola Busca, Tarot Decks

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Creator / Originator

Currently States Debated, and considerably less settled than the engraver identification recorded under artist. No historical record names who conceived or commissioned the deck outright; the same two rival theories proposed for its engraver, a Venetian client served by Mattia Serrati da Cosandola, or the painter Nicola di Maestro Antonio, are the only candidates ever put forward, and neither commands scholarly consensus as the deck's originator any more than as its maker.

Source A History of the Occult Tarot, Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett tier 1

Solar Plexus, Chakras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Purnananda, a sixteenth-century Bengali tantric author

According To Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577)

Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016) traces the composition date of Purnananda Yati's Sri-tattva-cintamani, the Sanskrit source text behind the seven-chakra system as it reached the West, and finds two dates still in circulation among catalogers and translators, converted from the Hindu Saka calendar: Saka 1448 (1526 CE) and Saka 1499 (1577 CE). Leland compares the manuscript colophons and the catalogue entries recording each date and reports neither has driven out the other in the secondary literature, which is why this atlas's own separate article on the text gives 1577 as a working date while this property records the dispute rather than silently picking one figure.

Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, Kurt Leland tier 1

Solar Plexus, Chakras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Its date is given as 1526 in some reckonings and 1577 in others

According To Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577)

Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016) traces the composition date of Purnananda Yati's Sri-tattva-cintamani, the Sanskrit source text behind the seven-chakra system as it reached the West, and finds two dates still in circulation among catalogers and translators, converted from the Hindu Saka calendar: Saka 1448 (1526 CE) and Saka 1499 (1577 CE). Leland compares the manuscript colophons and the catalogue entries recording each date and reports neither has driven out the other in the secondary literature, which is why this atlas's own separate article on the text gives 1577 as a working date while this property records the dispute rather than silently picking one figure.

Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, Kurt Leland tier 1

Solar Plexus, Chakras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States The Sat-Cakra-Nirupana is the sixth chapter of his Sri-tattva-cintamani

According To Sat-Cakra-Nirupana (1577)

Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016) traces the composition date of Purnananda Yati's Sri-tattva-cintamani, the Sanskrit source text behind the seven-chakra system as it reached the West, and finds two dates still in circulation among catalogers and translators, converted from the Hindu Saka calendar: Saka 1448 (1526 CE) and Saka 1499 (1577 CE). Leland compares the manuscript colophons and the catalogue entries recording each date and reports neither has driven out the other in the secondary literature, which is why this atlas's own separate article on the text gives 1577 as a working date while this property records the dispute rather than silently picking one figure.

Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, Kurt Leland tier 1

Solar Plexus, Chakras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1919

According To The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan

Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body (Ibis Press, 2016) dates the London publisher Luzac and Co.'s first printing of Arthur Avalon's (John Woodroffe's) The Serpent Power, the work that fixed the seven-chakra scheme for Western readers, to 1919, based on the publisher's own catalogue record; some other library catalogues, and the Chakra 1 article elsewhere in this collection, instead give 1918. Leland does not adjudicate the one-year gap, which most likely reflects the ordinary difference between a book's printing date and its public release date, a common source of catalogue disagreement for this period. The atlas records 1919 as the publisher-attributed year and flags the alternative rather than asserting either flatly.

Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, Kurt Leland tier 1

Solar Plexus, Chakras

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1919

According To The Western chakra system, from Blavatsky to Brennan

Kurt Leland's Rainbow Body (Ibis Press, 2016) dates the London publisher Luzac and Co.'s first printing of Arthur Avalon's (John Woodroffe's) The Serpent Power, the work that fixed the seven-chakra scheme for Western readers, to 1919, based on the publisher's own catalogue record; some other library catalogues, and the Chakra 1 article elsewhere in this collection, instead give 1918. Leland does not adjudicate the one-year gap, which most likely reflects the ordinary difference between a book's printing date and its public release date, a common source of catalogue disagreement for this period. The atlas records 1919 as the publisher-attributed year and flags the alternative rather than asserting either flatly.

Source Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, Kurt Leland tier 1

Solomon, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Historicity debated

Lester L. Grabbe's Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (2007) examines the biblical claims for Solomon's building programme and empire against the excavated tenth century BCE remains at Jerusalem. Grabbe's method is archaeological, comparing the scale of construction 1 Kings describes with what excavation at the City of David has actually recovered, and finds no extra-biblical text names Solomon and the excavated tenth century Jerusalem will not support the building programme and empire the text describes. Judaism, Christianity and Islam hold him to be a historical king regardless.

Source Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, Lester L. Grabbe tier 1

Solomon, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -970

The source calls this a traditional chronology, not an independently fixed date.

Source Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, Lester L. Grabbe tier 1

Solomon, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States -931

The source calls this a traditional chronology, not an independently fixed date.

Source Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, Lester L. Grabbe tier 1

Soma, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Botanical Identification

Currently States Fly agaric, Amanita muscaria

R. Gordon Wasson, an ethnomycologist, proposed in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1968) that soma was the fly agaric mushroom, Amanita muscaria, arguing from the Rigveda's own physical description of the plant, which mentions stalks and shoots but never root, leaf, flower, seed or fruit, a description Wasson read as suiting a mushroom's form far better than any flowering plant. Wasson further read certain Rigvedic passages as describing the drinking of urine, which he connected to documented Siberian shamanic practice of recycling the mushroom's psychoactive compound, which passes through the human body largely unchanged, allowing a second person to experience the effect. Against the identification, the fly agaric grows in association with birch and pine woodland rather than on the open plains where the Rigveda was composed, and its pharmacological action is heavy and sedative rather than matching the stimulating exaltation the hymns describe. The method is ethnomycological and philological, comparing the mushroom's documented ecology, chemistry and cross-cultural use against the Rigveda's own description of soma.

Source Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, R. Gordon Wasson tier 3

Soma, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Botanical Identification

Currently States Ephedra

Soma is the sacred plant pressed for its juice in Vedic ritual and personified as a deity across many Rigvedic hymns, and its botanical identity has been argued over since Vedic philology began comparing the hymns' physical description against candidate species. David Flattery and Martin Schwartz's Haoma and Harmaline (1989) argues for ephedra on the strength of the living Zoroastrian Yasna ceremony, which presses ephedra for haoma, the Avestan cognate of soma described in closely parallel terms, an unbroken ritual practice rather than a modern reconstruction, and on the plant's ecology, since ephedra grows in the upland terrain the hymns describe. Against the identification, ephedra is chemically a stimulant and bronchodilator rather than a visionary substance, sitting awkwardly beside the exalted state the hymns describe, and continuity of the pressing rite in Zoroastrian practice does not by itself establish continuity of which species was pressed across the centuries and distance separating the two traditions. The method is comparative philology and ethnobotany, weighing the hymns' physical and experiential description against each candidate plant's documented properties.

Source Haoma and Harmaline: The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen and Its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore, David Stophlet Flattery and Martin Schwartz tier 3

Soma, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Botanical Identification

Currently States Syrian rue, Peganum harmala

David Flattery and Martin Schwartz, in Haoma and Harmaline: The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen and Its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore (1989), proposed Peganum harmala, Syrian rue, as an alternative candidate for soma alongside their own primary ephedra identification, on the strength of the plant's seeds carrying harmine and harmaline, beta-carboline alkaloids that are genuinely psychoactive unlike ephedra's stimulant profile, and on the plant being native to the Iranian and Central Asian range where the Indo-Iranian tradition places itself. Against the identification, Flattery and Schwartz themselves note that across that entire range the plant is traditionally burned as a fumigant rather than pressed for its juice, while pressing the plant for its juice is the one procedural detail the Vedic and Avestan texts are consistent about describing for soma and haoma, a direct mismatch between the candidate plant's traditional use and the ritual procedure the ancient texts require. The method is ethnobotanical and philological, comparing each candidate plant's traditional use against the specific ritual procedure the hymns describe.

Source Haoma and Harmaline: The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen and Its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore, David Stophlet Flattery and Martin Schwartz tier 3

Somnath Temple, Sacred Sites

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Institutional Wealth or Finances

Currently States A separate 2016 profile of the Trust cited an annual budget of roughly Rs 132 crore, substantially higher than the approximately Rs 31 crore in 2014-15 revenue reported elsewhere in the same source, with no explanation given for the larger figures basis.

Genuine unresolved discrepancy within the same secondary source between an audited-style revenue figure and a much larger budget claim; recorded as debated rather than resolved by picking one number.

Source Somnath Temple: Trust and Tradition, KBS Sidhu tier 2