Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme

Switch Atlas

Divinity Atlas

Disputed Statements

Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.

3,315 statements marked Debated.

Celestial Church of Christ, Contested or Appropriated Modern UseFounder Samuel Oshoffa's death in 1985 left succession unsettled, and rival claimants to leadership split the church into several formally organized factions across Benin, Nigeria and the diaspora, a division scholars of African Initiated Churches treat as a defining feature of the church's modern history rather than a resolved matter.

Celestial Church of Christ, Denominations

Standing

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Founder Samuel Oshoffa's death in 1985 left succession unsettled, and rival claimants to leadership split the church into several formally organized factions across Benin, Nigeria and the diaspora, a division scholars of African Initiated Churches treat as a defining feature of the church's modern history rather than a resolved matter.

Which faction, if any, holds legitimate succession from Oshoffa remains disputed among the church's own leadership bodies and has not been settled by any civil or ecclesiastical authority accepted by all sides.

Source Schism and Renewal in Africa: An Analysis of Six Thousand Contemporary Religious Movements, David B. Barrett

Celtic, Structure of the PantheonLocal and lineage cults gathered under one name, with no single frame

Celtic, Pantheons

Standing

Concerns Structure of the Pantheon

Currently States Local and lineage cults gathered under one name, with no single frame

The several hundred Gaulish theonyms recorded in inscriptions are overwhelmingly attested only once and only at a single place, which is the direct evidence behind classifying the Celtic pantheon as a local-cluster structure rather than a shared pan-Celtic one; the same fragmentation appears in the centuries-wide gap between the archaeological Iron Age and the medieval Irish and Welsh texts that record the Tuatha De Danann and figures such as Arianrhod. The Encyclopedia of Religion (Eliade, ed.; Jones, ed., 2nd ed., 2005) treats how much of that later literary material reflects genuine pre-Christian structure, as opposed to medieval Christian arrangement of it, as an open and disputed question rather than a settled one.

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

Celts, TraditionWhether the Iron Age peoples of Britain and Ireland were Celts, or whether insular Celtic identity is a modern scholarly construction, is debated

Celts, Cultures

Standing

Concerns Tradition

Currently States Whether the Iron Age peoples of Britain and Ireland were Celts, or whether insular Celtic identity is a modern scholarly construction, is debated

Simon James (The Atlantic Celts, 1999) argues that no ancient islander was called a Celt and that the shared insular identity was assembled from eighteenth century philology. John T. Koch and the linguistic continuity school hold that shared Celtic languages, institutions and art justify the shared name. Both positions are live in current scholarship.

Source The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention?, Simon James

Central African Republic Civil War, Religious DimensionNews coverage and international organizations including Amnesty International widely described the conflict as a religious war between the country's Muslim minority and Christian majority, a framing that fit the visible pattern of a mostly Muslim Seleka against Christian-organized anti-balaka militias and the deliberate targeting of mosques and churches. Ludovic Lado, writing for the Wilson Center's Africa Program, and Louisa Lombard, a Yale anthropologist whose study draws on years of fieldwork in the country, both argue the religious label explains less than it seems to: the Central African Republic carried no significant history of Christian-Muslim tension before the Seleka's 2013 offensive, and a genuinely political struggle for control of the state hardened into intercommunal violence that then looked, and increasingly became, religious in how it was carried out, without religion having been its actual cause. The UN Commission of Inquiry's own 2014 report reached a similar conclusion.

Central African Republic Civil War, Wars & Conflicts

Standing

Concerns Religious Dimension

Currently States News coverage and international organizations including Amnesty International widely described the conflict as a religious war between the country's Muslim minority and Christian majority, a framing that fit the visible pattern of a mostly Muslim Seleka against Christian-organized anti-balaka militias and the deliberate targeting of mosques and churches. Ludovic Lado, writing for the Wilson Center's Africa Program, and Louisa Lombard, a Yale anthropologist whose study draws on years of fieldwork in the country, both argue the religious label explains less than it seems to: the Central African Republic carried no significant history of Christian-Muslim tension before the Seleka's 2013 offensive, and a genuinely political struggle for control of the state hardened into intercommunal violence that then looked, and increasingly became, religious in how it was carried out, without religion having been its actual cause. The UN Commission of Inquiry's own 2014 report reached a similar conclusion.

Source State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic, Louisa Lombard

Central African Republic Civil War, Death Toll Minimum3000.000000

Central African Republic Civil War, Wars & Conflicts

Standing

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 3000.000000

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry's December 2014 report gives a conservative estimate of 3,000 to 6,000 people killed between January 2013 and December 2014, the acute phase the commission itself investigated, not a total conflict toll: fighting has continued at lower intensity in the years since, and no single named source has produced a count covering that longer period.

Source Final Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic, International Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic

Central African Republic Civil War, Death Toll Maximum6000.000000

Central African Republic Civil War, Wars & Conflicts

Standing

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 6000.000000

See death-toll-min. Human Rights Watch's own contemporaneous investigation, covering only Seleka forces' killings in the conflict's first year, separately documented 800 to 1,200 civilian deaths, a narrower finding consistent with, but not additive to, the Commission's fuller two-year estimate.

Source Final Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic, International Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic

Central African Republic Civil War, Death Toll AssessmentThe United Nations Commission of Inquiry's December 2014 report gives a conservative estimate of 3,000 to 6,000 killed in the acute phase it investigated, January 2013 to December 2014; fighting has continued at lower intensity in the years since with no single named source producing a count covering that longer period, so this atlas's range is understood as a floor for the war's full toll rather than a complete total. The conflict is widely reported in Christian-versus-Muslim terms (the mostly Muslim Seleka coalition against the mostly Christian and animist anti-Balaka militias), a framing the UN Commission itself used operationally to describe targeting patterns, though the Commission's own report also attributes the violence substantially to a collapse of state authority and pre-existing regional and ethnic grievance that religious identity came to mark rather than cause outright.

Central African Republic Civil War, Wars & Conflicts

Standing

Concerns Death Toll Assessment

Currently States The United Nations Commission of Inquiry's December 2014 report gives a conservative estimate of 3,000 to 6,000 killed in the acute phase it investigated, January 2013 to December 2014; fighting has continued at lower intensity in the years since with no single named source producing a count covering that longer period, so this atlas's range is understood as a floor for the war's full toll rather than a complete total. The conflict is widely reported in Christian-versus-Muslim terms (the mostly Muslim Seleka coalition against the mostly Christian and animist anti-Balaka militias), a framing the UN Commission itself used operationally to describe targeting patterns, though the Commission's own report also attributes the violence substantially to a collapse of state authority and pre-existing regional and ethnic grievance that religious identity came to mark rather than cause outright.

Source Final Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic, International Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic

Ceremonial Order and Magic, A Rival System's AttributionAlice Bailey's seven ray teaching, transmitted through Djwal Khul, fixed this ray's name and place as the seventh and last of the sequence; earlier Theosophical writers, Helena Blavatsky and Charles Leadbeater among them, had already sketched ray classifications of their own in less settled form, so which author's scheme is the true origin of this particular ray's naming is read differently by different students of the tradition.

Ceremonial Order and Magic, Seven Rays

Standing

Concerns A Rival System's Attribution

Currently States Alice Bailey's seven ray teaching, transmitted through Djwal Khul, fixed this ray's name and place as the seventh and last of the sequence; earlier Theosophical writers, Helena Blavatsky and Charles Leadbeater among them, had already sketched ray classifications of their own in less settled form, so which author's scheme is the true origin of this particular ray's naming is read differently by different students of the tradition.

Theosophical and post Theosophical writers do not agree on whether Alice Bailey systematized an existing Blavatsky and Leadbeater scheme or substantially reworked it into something new, and the tradition itself has never settled the question.

Source The Theosophical Enlightenment, Joscelyn Godwin

Cessation of the miraculous spiritual gifts, Status Within the TraditionGenuinely disputed within the tradition

Cessation of the miraculous spiritual gifts, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within the tradition

Affirmed as settled by the Reformed tradition broadly and by the Churches of Christ; Pentecostal and other continuationist Christians hold the opposite, so a comparison without this doctrine reads the two traditions as merely talking about different subjects when they in fact contradict each other.

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

Chachcha ਚ, Origin PeriodSikh tradition credits Guru Angad, the second Guru, with giving the script its settled form in the sixteenth century

Chachcha ਚ, Alphabet Letters

Standing

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Sikh tradition credits Guru Angad, the second Guru, with giving the script its settled form in the sixteenth century

According To The Gurmukhi script

Two reference works give incompatible accounts. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Harbans Singh, editor-in-chief, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998) carries the Sikh tradition that Guru Angad, the second Guru (1504-1552), devised the script. The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996), surveying the paleography of Indic scripts, holds instead that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Punjab as one of the Landa scripts descended from Sharada, and that comparing those existing Landa forms against the Gurmukhi letters attested from Guru Angad's era shows a fixing and standardising of a repertoire already in circulation rather than an invention from nothing. Neither side has displaced the other because the two accounts read different kinds of evidence, a community's own historical memory against a comparative script lineage, and the atlas records both without adjudicating.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Harbans Singh (editor-in-chief)

Chachcha ਚ, Origin PeriodHistorians of Indic writing place the letterforms earlier, in the Landa mercantile hands already used across the Punjab

Chachcha ਚ, Alphabet Letters

Standing

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Historians of Indic writing place the letterforms earlier, in the Landa mercantile hands already used across the Punjab

According To The Gurmukhi script

Two reference works give incompatible accounts. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Harbans Singh, editor-in-chief, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1998) carries the Sikh tradition that Guru Angad, the second Guru (1504-1552), devised the script. The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996), surveying the paleography of Indic scripts, holds instead that the letterforms were already in mercantile use in the Punjab as one of the Landa scripts descended from Sharada, and that comparing those existing Landa forms against the Gurmukhi letters attested from Guru Angad's era shows a fixing and standardising of a repertoire already in circulation rather than an invention from nothing. Neither side has displaced the other because the two accounts read different kinds of evidence, a community's own historical memory against a comparative script lineage, and the atlas records both without adjudicating.

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

Chalice of Valencia, Cup DatingAgate cup dated to the 2nd-1st centuries BC, eastern Mediterranean (Beltran 1960)

Chalice of Valencia, Artifacts & Relics

Standing

Concerns Cup Dating

Currently States Agate cup dated to the 2nd-1st centuries BC, eastern Mediterranean (Beltran 1960)

Antonio Beltran Martinez's El Santo Caliz de la Catedral de Valencia (1960) examines the agate cup venerated in Valencia Cathedral as the Holy Grail. Beltran's method is art-historical and archaeological dating of the cup itself, and he finds it is a genuine ancient vessel of a date plausible for the first century Near East, while noting no documentary or physical evidence demonstrates any link between this specific cup and Jesus's Last Supper beyond the medieval devotional tradition claiming one.

Source El Santo Caliz de la Catedral de Valencia, Antonio Beltran Martinez

Cham, Historical OriginTraditional accounts trace the dance to the eighth century and to Padmasambhava, who is said to have subdued the local deities of Tibet and bound them to the protection of the teaching

Cham, Sacred Dances

Standing

Concerns Historical Origin

Currently States Traditional accounts trace the dance to the eighth century and to Padmasambhava, who is said to have subdued the local deities of Tibet and bound them to the protection of the teaching

According To Tibetan Buddhism

This is the tradition's own account of its origin. The surviving dance manuals are very much later, and scholarship cannot establish how much of the eighth century attribution is history. The atlas records the claim as the tradition makes it and does not assert it as fact.

Source Tibetan Religious Dances: Tibetan Text and Annotated Translation of the Chams Yig, Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz

Chapter 1, Position in the CanonChapter 1 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Chapter 1, Scripture Portions

Standing

Concerns Position in the Canon

Currently States Chapter 1 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Robert G. Henricks's translation (Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Ballantine Books, 1989) compared the received chapter numbering against two excavated manuscript witnesses: the Mawangdui silk texts, recovered from a Han-dynasty tomb near Changsha and dated to the second century BCE, and the Guodian bamboo slips, excavated near Jingmen and dated to around 300 BCE. The comparison found the Mawangdui texts place the De material before the Dao material, reversing the received order, and that the Guodian slips hold only about a third of the received material with no division into the received chapters at all. Because the received numbering appears in neither older witness, Henricks's philological comparison concludes it is a later editorial convenience rather than a feature of how the text was composed, which is why the atlas treats the chapter number as a reliable citation address and not as a claim about original structure.

Source Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks

Chapter 10, Position in the CanonChapter 10 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Chapter 10, Scripture Portions

Standing

Concerns Position in the Canon

Currently States Chapter 10 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Robert G. Henricks's translation (Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Ballantine Books, 1989) compared the received chapter numbering against two excavated manuscript witnesses: the Mawangdui silk texts, recovered from a Han-dynasty tomb near Changsha and dated to the second century BCE, and the Guodian bamboo slips, excavated near Jingmen and dated to around 300 BCE. The comparison found the Mawangdui texts place the De material before the Dao material, reversing the received order, and that the Guodian slips hold only about a third of the received material with no division into the received chapters at all. Because the received numbering appears in neither older witness, Henricks's philological comparison concludes it is a later editorial convenience rather than a feature of how the text was composed, which is why the atlas treats the chapter number as a reliable citation address and not as a claim about original structure.

Source Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks

Chapter 11, Position in the CanonChapter 11 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Chapter 11, Scripture Portions

Standing

Concerns Position in the Canon

Currently States Chapter 11 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Robert G. Henricks's translation (Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Ballantine Books, 1989) compared the received chapter numbering against two excavated manuscript witnesses: the Mawangdui silk texts, recovered from a Han-dynasty tomb near Changsha and dated to the second century BCE, and the Guodian bamboo slips, excavated near Jingmen and dated to around 300 BCE. The comparison found the Mawangdui texts place the De material before the Dao material, reversing the received order, and that the Guodian slips hold only about a third of the received material with no division into the received chapters at all. Because the received numbering appears in neither older witness, Henricks's philological comparison concludes it is a later editorial convenience rather than a feature of how the text was composed, which is why the atlas treats the chapter number as a reliable citation address and not as a claim about original structure.

Source Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks

Chapter 12, Position in the CanonChapter 12 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Chapter 12, Scripture Portions

Standing

Concerns Position in the Canon

Currently States Chapter 12 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Robert G. Henricks's translation (Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Ballantine Books, 1989) compared the received chapter numbering against two excavated manuscript witnesses: the Mawangdui silk texts, recovered from a Han-dynasty tomb near Changsha and dated to the second century BCE, and the Guodian bamboo slips, excavated near Jingmen and dated to around 300 BCE. The comparison found the Mawangdui texts place the De material before the Dao material, reversing the received order, and that the Guodian slips hold only about a third of the received material with no division into the received chapters at all. Because the received numbering appears in neither older witness, Henricks's philological comparison concludes it is a later editorial convenience rather than a feature of how the text was composed, which is why the atlas treats the chapter number as a reliable citation address and not as a claim about original structure.

Source Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks

Chapter 13, Position in the CanonChapter 13 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Chapter 13, Scripture Portions

Standing

Concerns Position in the Canon

Currently States Chapter 13 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Robert G. Henricks's translation (Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Ballantine Books, 1989) compared the received chapter numbering against two excavated manuscript witnesses: the Mawangdui silk texts, recovered from a Han-dynasty tomb near Changsha and dated to the second century BCE, and the Guodian bamboo slips, excavated near Jingmen and dated to around 300 BCE. The comparison found the Mawangdui texts place the De material before the Dao material, reversing the received order, and that the Guodian slips hold only about a third of the received material with no division into the received chapters at all. Because the received numbering appears in neither older witness, Henricks's philological comparison concludes it is a later editorial convenience rather than a feature of how the text was composed, which is why the atlas treats the chapter number as a reliable citation address and not as a claim about original structure.

Source Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks

Chapter 14, Position in the CanonChapter 14 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Chapter 14, Scripture Portions

Standing

Concerns Position in the Canon

Currently States Chapter 14 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Robert G. Henricks's translation (Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Ballantine Books, 1989) compared the received chapter numbering against two excavated manuscript witnesses: the Mawangdui silk texts, recovered from a Han-dynasty tomb near Changsha and dated to the second century BCE, and the Guodian bamboo slips, excavated near Jingmen and dated to around 300 BCE. The comparison found the Mawangdui texts place the De material before the Dao material, reversing the received order, and that the Guodian slips hold only about a third of the received material with no division into the received chapters at all. Because the received numbering appears in neither older witness, Henricks's philological comparison concludes it is a later editorial convenience rather than a feature of how the text was composed, which is why the atlas treats the chapter number as a reliable citation address and not as a claim about original structure.

Source Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks

Chapter 15, Position in the CanonChapter 15 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Chapter 15, Scripture Portions

Standing

Concerns Position in the Canon

Currently States Chapter 15 of 81, in the Dao part of the received text

Robert G. Henricks's translation (Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Ballantine Books, 1989) compared the received chapter numbering against two excavated manuscript witnesses: the Mawangdui silk texts, recovered from a Han-dynasty tomb near Changsha and dated to the second century BCE, and the Guodian bamboo slips, excavated near Jingmen and dated to around 300 BCE. The comparison found the Mawangdui texts place the De material before the Dao material, reversing the received order, and that the Guodian slips hold only about a third of the received material with no division into the received chapters at all. Because the received numbering appears in neither older witness, Henricks's philological comparison concludes it is a later editorial convenience rather than a feature of how the text was composed, which is why the atlas treats the chapter number as a reliable citation address and not as a claim about original structure.

Source Lao Tzu: Te-Tao Ching, A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks