Disputed Statements

Tav ת, 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

Tav ת, 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

Tawe (Ta) ተ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States Why the script was vocalised in the fourth century CE, after centuries of writing consonants alone, is argued and not settled

According To The Ge'ez script

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) reviews the Aksumite inscriptions that first show Ge'ez written with vocalisation, a fourth-century CE innovation that is not in dispute, and canvasses three explanations for why it happened then: an internal development inside the Aksumite royal chancery seeking a more precise script for administration; a response to the newly Christian court's need for scripture translated and taught with unambiguous vowels after Aksum's conversion under King Ezana; and influence carried by vocalised Indian scripts reaching the Aksumite court through Red Sea trade contact. Comparing the timing, the epigraphic evidence and the trade record for each explanation, the volume's contributors find none conclusive, since Aksum's fourth-century contacts touched all three at once; the dating of the change is settled, its cause is not.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Tayt (Tha) ጠ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States Why the script was vocalised in the fourth century CE, after centuries of writing consonants alone, is argued and not settled

According To The Ge'ez script

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) reviews the Aksumite inscriptions that first show Ge'ez written with vocalisation, a fourth-century CE innovation that is not in dispute, and canvasses three explanations for why it happened then: an internal development inside the Aksumite royal chancery seeking a more precise script for administration; a response to the newly Christian court's need for scripture translated and taught with unambiguous vowels after Aksum's conversion under King Ezana; and influence carried by vocalised Indian scripts reaching the Aksumite court through Red Sea trade contact. Comparing the timing, the epigraphic evidence and the trade record for each explanation, the volume's contributors find none conclusive, since Aksum's fourth-century contacts touched all three at once; the dating of the change is settled, its cause is not.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Ta'ziyeh, Performance Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Year

Currently States 1501

The Safavid dynasty, under which ta'ziyeh performance began to thrive, was founded in 1501, but scholars disagree about when the fully staged dramatic form performed today actually consolidated, some dating that development to the late seventeenth century and others to the mid eighteenth.

Source Ta'zieh (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors tier 3

Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Named for a century in settler accounts as a murderer, and recognised in later scholarship as a prophet and church founder

The Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition, Mircea Eliade founding editor, Lindsay Jones revising editor (Macmillan Reference, 2005), sets the 1868 Matawhero killings Te Kooti led against the documented circumstances that preceded them: his deportation to the Chatham Islands without trial and the subsequent four-year military pursuit of him across the North Island. The killings themselves are not disputed as historical fact; what is argued, and what New Zealand historiography has substantially revised since the 1970s as settler-colonial historical narratives have been re-examined against Maori accounts and the documented injustice of the deportation, is how the killings should be weighed against the unlawful deportation and pursuit that provoked them, a question of historical judgment rather than of disputed fact.

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

Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1832

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Manatu Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage tier 1

Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1893

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Manatu Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage tier 1

Te Whiti o Rongomai, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1830

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Manatu Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage tier 1

Te Whiti o Rongomai, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1907

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Manatu Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage tier 1

Tecuilhuitontli, Veintenas

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Approximate Gregorian Span

Currently States Early to late June

Scholars have proposed several correlations between the xiuhpohualli year and the Gregorian calendar. The month range given here follows one widely reproduced reconstruction and is offered for relative placement only, not as a settled date: the 365 day count carried no intercalated leap day, so its alignment with the solar year is understood to have drifted across the centuries of its use, and colonial era testimony was recorded decades after the practice had ended.

Source The Aztecs (Smith, 3rd edition), Michael E. Smith tier 1

Tekle Haymanot, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1215

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's traditional chronology gives this year; it is hagiographic tradition rather than an independently established date, matching the same reasoning already recorded for the legendary elaboration of his life.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Tekle Haymanot, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1313

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's traditional chronology gives this year; it is hagiographic tradition rather than an independently established date, matching the same reasoning already recorded for the legendary elaboration of his life.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Telepathy, Psi Phenomena

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Replication Status

Currently States The 1986 Hyman-Honorton joint communique agreed ganzfeld results were not attributable to chance or selective reporting alone but left open whether they demonstrated psi; later large replications have not settled the question.

Ray Hyman and Charles Honorton's 1986 joint communique on the ganzfeld controversy set out the standards a telepathy experiment would need to meet to be accepted as a controlled positive result by both a proponent and a skeptical reviewer working from the same data. J. B. Rhine's original 1930s and 1940s Duke card-guessing trials, the first large-scale laboratory telepathy program, and the ganzfeld studies that followed it are both cited in that literature, and the 1986 communique itself records that no single result had, to that point, been accepted as conclusive by both parapsychologists and mainstream psychologists reviewing the same study. The method throughout is controlled experimental replication under progressively tightened protocols, each round intended to close a specific objection the previous round had raised. Because later meta-analyses applying the communique's own standards have continued to disagree over which studies qualify for inclusion, no independent replication of telepathy has since been accepted as conclusive by both sides, which is why the replication status remains disputed.

Source A Joint Communique: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy, Ray Hyman, Charles Honorton tier 1

Temperance, Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Two dates fold into this entry. The four cardinal virtues are named in Plato's Republic in the fourth century BCE, taken up by Aristotle and the Stoics, and given the name cardinal only later, by Ambrose of Milan in the late fourth century CE. Temperance's place as a contrary virtue against gluttony follows the later Psychomachia of Prudentius, written around 400 CE, though in the poem itself Sobrietas overthrows Luxuria, lust, not gluttony; the gluttony pairing was fixed only in the later medieval lists.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Temple Elephants, Practices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Standing as a Comparative Category

Currently States Used, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed

The practice of keeping elephants for temple ceremony and procession, concentrated above all in Kerala temples, is used in the atlas as a comparative category for animal use in ritual, but its standing is disputed because temple authorities and animal welfare advocates hold genuinely opposed positions on whether the practice, even properly regulated, can be reconciled with animal welfare at all. Temple authorities and many devotees hold that regulated captivity and ceremonial use are compatible with the animals' wellbeing and are integral to the temple's ritual life. Welfare advocates, citing documented conditions in individual temples, hold that captivity itself, whatever the regulation, cannot meet a wild animal's needs and that the ceremonial role is not a sufficient justification. The disagreement is a values dispute about what counts as acceptable treatment rather than a disagreement over the facts of how the elephants are kept, which is why regulation has narrowed but not ended it.

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

Temple Elephants, Practices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Standing Detail

Currently States Subject to sustained, documented animal welfare concern; Kerala state regulation attempts to set minimum captive elephant welfare standards

Kerala, where the largest concentration of temple elephants is kept, has adopted state regulation setting minimum standards for captive elephant welfare, covering matters such as chaining duration, rest periods and veterinary care, in direct response to sustained and documented welfare concern raised by advocacy organisations and reported in individual cases of mistreatment or elephant deaths during festival processions. The regulation itself is evidence that the welfare concern is treated as substantive by the relevant state authority rather than as an outside objection to a settled local matter, but it has not resolved the underlying disagreement recorded above: welfare advocates hold that the standards are inconsistently enforced and that no standard removes the basic problem of keeping a wild animal in temple captivity, while temple authorities hold that regulated compliance answers the concern. Whether enforcement is adequate is itself disputed and is a matter for ongoing monitoring rather than one that has been settled.

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

Temple Endowment, Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historical Origin

Currently States The relationship between the endowment and Freemasonry, which Joseph Smith joined weeks before first administering it, is genuinely disputed. The church acknowledges shared vocabulary and structure while holding the content to be restored; most historians outside the movement read the borrowing as more substantial.

According To The Latter Day Saint movement

Source The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.) tier 1

Templo Mayor, Sacred Sites

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Reported Figure

Currently States Colonial-era accounts give totals in the tens of thousands for the dedication of the enlarged temple in 1487.

According To Colonial Spanish and Nahua sources

The atlas does not repeat a specific number here, because the numbers in circulation cannot be traced to a count. They appear in narratives compiled after the conquest, in some cases decades after the event described, and modern estimates built on them differ by more than an order of magnitude. That the dedication involved mass sacrifice is not the disputed part; how many people is.

Source The Great Temple of the Aztecs, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma tier 1

Tendai, Denominations

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Defining Doctrinal Position

Currently States Buddhahood realised in this very body and lifetime

Tendai claims it on the authority of the Lotus Sutra; Shingon claims it on the authority of the esoteric texts and by a ritual method. The two schools argued the question directly from the ninth century and have not agreed since.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr. tier 1