Disputed Statements

The Yazidi Genocide by the Soran Emirate, 1832 to 1834, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 70000.000000

The lower bound of the range historians have offered for those killed across the Sheikhan, Sinjar and Erbil campaign, as surveyed in secondary accounts of the episode; contemporary population records for the affected districts are too thin to narrow the range further.

Source Yazidi Genocide by the Soran Emirate, 1832 to 1834 (Wikipedia) tier 3

The Yazidi Genocide by the Soran Emirate, 1832 to 1834, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 135000.000000

The upper bound of the same range. The historian Sadiq al-Damlouji's separate finding, that only about five percent of the targeted population survived, points toward the higher end without itself resolving to a single figure.

Source Yazidi Genocide by the Soran Emirate, 1832 to 1834 (Wikipedia) tier 3

The Yoga of Knowledge and the Renunciation of Action, Scripture Portions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether the verse deriving the four social orders from quality and work grounds them in conduct or merely restates birth as their basis

Traditional commentary reads the verse as describing an order established by God and inherited by birth. Reformist and anti-caste readings from the nineteenth century onward take quality and work as the operative terms and argue the verse detaches the orders from descent. Both readings are current, and the Sanskrit sustains the argument rather than settling it.

Source An Introduction to Hinduism, Gavin Flood tier 1

The Yoga of Liberation by Renunciation, Scripture Portions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States What it means to be told to abandon all duties and take refuge in Krishna alone

Sri Vaishnava commentary treats this as the final verse of the Gita, the charama shloka, and reads it as surrender replacing every other means. Advaita commentary reads it as the relinquishing of agency rather than of obligation, leaving the duties of chapter 18 standing. Others read it as addressed to Arjuna's particular case. The disagreement is doctrinally load-bearing and has never been settled.

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

The Yoga of Royal Knowledge and Royal Secret, Scripture Portions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States How to read the verse naming women, vaishyas and shudras among those who reach the highest goal by taking refuge

One reading takes the verse as removing every barrier of birth and sex from access to liberation, and it was cited that way by devotional movements and by twentieth century reformers. Another notes that the same line groups those categories together as people of, in its phrase, lowly birth, and so reinscribes the hierarchy it appears to lift. Commentators have divided on this since at least the medieval period.

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

The Yoga of the Field and the Knower of the Field, Scripture Portions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Verses

Currently States 34 verses in editions following Shankara; 35 where Arjuna's opening question is numbered as a verse

The commentarial traditions differ over whether the opening question, in which Arjuna asks about nature and spirit and the field and its knower, belongs to the text or is a later addition. Shankara's recension omits it and gives 34 verses. Ramanuja's includes it and gives 35, which shifts every subsequent verse number in the chapter by one. Printed editions follow one or the other without always saying which.

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

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Whether the received text is the work of a single author or a later compilation of separate sources is an open question among scholars.

Some scholars, most notably Philipp Maas, argue from shifts in terminology and structure that the received text is a compilation stitched together from at least two originally separate treatises by a later redactor rather than a single sustained composition, while other scholars continue to defend single authorship and read the apparent breaks as changes of subject rather than seams between sources. No manuscript evidence from before the surrounding commentarial tradition survives to settle the question either way.

Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Edwin F. Bryant tier 1

The Yoruba Four-Day Week, Calendars

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States The Kojoda reckoning, which numbers years from a remote epoch and opens the year in early June, is a twentieth century construction rather than an attested traditional era.

The four day week and the market cycle are attested in the earliest records of the language. The numbered Kojoda year is a modern cultural revival scheme and is presented as traditional in a good deal of popular writing.

Source African Religions and Philosophy, John S. Mbiti tier 1

Themistocles, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Manner of Death

Currently States Disputed

Ancient tradition offers competing accounts: ordinary illness, poison, and a dramatic suicide by drinking bull's blood rather than fight against the city that had exiled him, the version Plutarch preserves centuries later. No contemporary source settles which, if any, is accurate, and modern historians treat all three as unverifiable rather than choosing among them.

Source Histories, Herodotus tier 1

Themistocles, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Manner of Death Detail

Currently States Plutarch, writing centuries later, gives suicide by poison as the most dramatic version, drunk rather than fight against the city that had exiled him; other ancient accounts give ordinary illness. No contemporary source settles which, if any, is accurate.

Source Histories, Herodotus tier 1

Themistocles, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -524

The source gives this year as about, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Histories, Herodotus tier 1

Themistocles, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States -459

The source gives this year as about, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Histories, Herodotus tier 1

Theodore of Mopsuestia as the Authoritative Interpreter of Scripture, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States The Second Council of Constantinople condemned him in 553, in the affair of the Three Chapters, more than a century after his death, and the Church of the East neither received that council nor accepted the condemnation. A father honoured by one church and anathematised by another is one of the sharpest markers of the division.

Theodore of Mopsuestia, who died in 428, is known in the East Syriac tradition simply as Mpashqana, the Interpreter, without further qualification, and his historical, literal Antiochene method of reading scripture, contrasted with the Alexandrian school's allegorical reading, became the Church of the East's normative exegetical method; his christological vocabulary underlies that church's later two qnome formula. Christoph Baumer's history of the Church of the East records that the Second Council of Constantinople condemned Theodore in 553, in the affair known as the Three Chapters, more than a century after his death, on the ground that his christology anticipated the errors later associated with Nestorius. The Church of the East neither received that council nor accepted the condemnation, since it does not recognise the council's authority over its own tradition, and continues to honour as authoritative the same father another major church tradition anathematised. A father honoured by one church and formally condemned by another is treated by Baumer as one of the sharpest institutional markers of the ancient division, and the disagreement has not closed because it turns on which councils each church recognises as authoritative in the first place, a question prior to and not settled by any argument about Theodore's theology itself.

Source The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity, Christoph Baumer tier 1

Theories of the Origin and Function of Religion, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Structure

Currently States Documented functional accounts include the Durkheimian functionalist tradition, the Marxist ideology critique, Peter Berger's plausibility structures and sacred canopy, and intellectualist and cognitive science of religion accounts.

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

Theories of the Origin and Function of Religion, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Critics of the Marxist ideology critique point to the historical role of religiously motivated movements, including abolitionism and liberation theology, in challenging rather than stabilizing unjust social orders.

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

Theories of the Origin and Function of Religion, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within this tradition

The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2005) surveys documented functional accounts of religion's origin, including Durkheimian functionalism, the Marxist ideology critique, Peter Berger's plausibility structures and sacred canopy, and intellectualist and cognitive science of religion accounts, and records that they compete without a single settled theory. Critics of the Marxist critique, examining historical cases of religiously motivated social movements, point to abolitionism and liberation theology as counter-evidence that religion is not purely an instrument of the ruling order.

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

Theotokos, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Whether Theotokos or Christotokos correctly names Mary's role

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2005) records that the Church of the East, sometimes called Nestorian, rejects the title Theotokos and continues to hold a Christology closer to Nestorius's own fifth century position, against the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic and most Protestant churches, which affirm the title as settled by the ecumenical councils at Ephesus in 431 CE and Chalcedon in 451 CE. Whether Theotokos or the rejected alternative Christotokos correctly names Mary's role remains, on that division, an open dispute between the Church of the East and the churches that accepted the conciliar settlement rather than a question those councils actually closed for all of Christianity.

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

Therigatha, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States The seventy-three poems of this Khuddaka Nikaya collection carry the names of individual bhikkhunis of the earliest Buddhist community, an attribution preserved in the Pali text itself. Caroline Rhys Davids, whose Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters (Pali Text Society, 1909) was the first full English translation, records that scholars remain divided over whether these attributions are genuine historical authorship or a later canonical framing imposed on older verse, since both readings draw on the same transmitted text and neither has displaced the other.

Caroline Rhys Davids, whose Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters (Pali Text Society, 1909) was the first full English translation of this Khuddaka Nikaya collection, examined the attributions the Pali text itself preserves, naming individual bhikkhunis of the earliest Buddhist community as the authors of its seventy-three poems. Because both the reading that takes these as genuine historical authorship and the reading that takes them as a later canonical framing imposed on older verse draw on that same transmitted text with no independent way to adjudicate between them, she records the question as genuinely divided among scholars rather than settled either way.

Source Psalms of the Early Buddhists: Psalms of the Sisters, Caroline A. F. Rhys Davids (translator) tier 1

Theta ⲑ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Greek letters wrote Egyptian from about the first century CE, settled by the fourth

According To The Coptic alphabet of Christian Egypt

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) surveys the small corpus of Old Coptic texts, pre-Christian magical and astrological papyri in which Egyptian was first written out using Greek letters plus a few signs borrowed from Demotic, against the standardised Coptic used in Christian scripture translation from around the third century CE onward. Comparing the two corpora, its contributors find the evidence thin enough to support two readings: that the Old Coptic magical texts already fixed the practice of writing Egyptian in Greek-based letters, or that the Christian translation project, needing a stable and teachable orthography for scripture, was the decisive act that standardised the script that survives. Because both readings draw on the same handful of surviving texts and no source describes an official act of decision, the volume treats the question as open rather than favouring either camp.

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

Third Crusade, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 2500.000000

Scoped to a single documented engagement, not an aggregate for the whole Third Crusade: Richard the Lionheart's execution of the Acre garrison's Muslim prisoners at Ayyadieh outside Acre on 20 August 1191, after the agreed deadline for Saladin to deliver the ransom, the True Cross relic and further prisoner exchanges passed. Secondary accounts of the massacre report figures from about 2,500 to 3,000 killed; this atlas records the lower reported bound as its floor.

Source A History of the Crusades, Volume 3: The Kingdom of Acre (Runciman), Steven Runciman tier 1