Disputed Statements

Helmut Schmidt, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Key Experiment

Currently States Electronic random number generators driven by radioactive decay, built at the Boeing Scientific Research Laboratories and reported from 1969, the design that founded micro-psychokinesis research

Helmut Schmidt's Precognition of a Quantum Process (Journal of Parapsychology, 1969) reported testing whether subjects could predict which of several lamps a quantum-mechanically random electronic device, based on radioactive decay, would light next, above the rate chance would predict. Schmidt's apparatus, using genuine physical randomness rather than a pseudo-random algorithm, and his statistical method for scoring predictions against it are widely admired within the parapsychological literature as methodologically careful; the reported above-chance effect itself has not been accepted as demonstrating precognition outside the field, since independent physicists and psychologists have not treated the result as meeting the evidentiary bar extraordinary claims require.

Source Precognition of a Quantum Process, Helmut Schmidt tier 2

Henry Sidgwick, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Key Experiment

Currently States The Census of Hallucinations, conducted with Eleanor Sidgwick, Alice Johnson, Frederic Myers and Frank Podmore and reported in 1894

Henry Sidgwick, Eleanor Sidgwick, Frederic W. H. Myers, Frank Podmore and Alice Johnson published the Report on the Census of Hallucinations in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research in 1894, surveying thousands of respondents about waking hallucinatory experiences and comparing their frequency, especially hallucinations of a specific person coinciding with that person's death, against a calculated chance baseline. The survey itself, its scale and its data collection, is a real and substantial piece of Victorian social-scientific work; the two elements later methodologists have criticised since its publication are the chance baseline's own assumptions about hallucination frequency in the general population and the survey's reliance on respondents' retrospective, unverified self-report of experiences often recalled years after the fact.

Source Report on the Census of Hallucinations, Henry Sidgwick, Eleanor Sidgwick, Frederic W. H. Myers, Frank Podmore, Alice Johnson tier 1

Hephaestus, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Hephaestus's name has no secure Greek etymology and is widely thought to be a pre-Greek loanword, though the exact source is unsettled.

Hephaestus's name has no secure Greek or Indo-European etymology, and specialists widely consider it a loanword from a pre-Greek Aegean language, though no single derivation has won general acceptance among scholars.

Source Greek Religion, Walter Burkert tier 1

Hercules (1997), Screen Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Religious Subject Matter

Currently States Dramatizes the birth and heroic trial of Hercules within Greek myth, but rewrites the central relationships that Greek religious tradition uses to explain his suffering. In the myths preserved by ancient sources, Heracles is the illegitimate son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, and Hera's enduring hostility toward him, born of that adultery, later drives him to madness and the killing of his own family, a crime his famous labors exist to atone for. The film instead makes Zeus and Hera a devoted married couple and Hercules their legitimate son, drops the madness and the killing entirely, and reassigns Hera's traditional antagonism to Hades. It also has Hercules himself slay Medusa, a feat the myths credit to Perseus.

Vasillis Lambrinodakis, an antiquities expert at the University of Athens, said the studio should have changed the characters' names if it wanted this much freedom with them. Yiannis Tzedakis, director of antiquities at Greece's Culture Ministry, called the result a distorted portrayal of the Herculean myth and said plainly the film was not made for Greece. Disney itself distributed explanatory booklets at Greek screenings stating the film was not a lesson in mythology, an acknowledgment built into the release that its version and the version Greek tradition tells are not the same story. Sourced to the Guardian report carried by Deseret News, corroborated by Wikipedia's own reception section and by the Deseret News critique cataloguing the specific departures from the myths.

Source Smith, "Greek Viewers Hiss at Distortion of Myths in Disney's 'Hercules,'" The Guardian via Deseret News, 1997, Helena Smith tier 2

Hermann of Reichenau, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States The Salve Regina and the Alma Redemptoris Mater are both traditionally ascribed to Hermann of Reichenau, known as Hermannus Contractus for the severe physical disability he lived with from birth in 1013 at the Benedictine monastery on Reichenau. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) treats neither ascription as certain.

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

Hermann of Reichenau, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Place of Origin

Currently States Historians are almost equally divided between Saulgau and his father's castle at Altshausen, both in Swabia (present day Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany). He is also sometimes styled "Hermann of Vohringen" after a third place tied to his birth.

The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive's biography of Hermann of Reichenau, by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson (University of St Andrews, School of Mathematics and Statistics), reports historians genuinely split between two named birthplace traditions, both in Swabia: the town of Saulgau and the family castle at Altshausen. The archive's biographical entry adds that Hermann is sometimes styled Hermann of Vohringen after a third place tied to his birth, a detail the record preserves without resolving, and notes that neither of the two sources already cited elsewhere on this page settles which of the three locations is correct, since medieval biographical notice of him focuses on his scholarly and monastic career rather than his birth.

Source Hermann of Reichenau (MacTutor History of Mathematics biography), J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews tier 1

Herod Antipas, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -20

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date. The source gives no exact death year, only that he was alive after 39 CE.

Source Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XVIII, Flavius Josephus tier 2

Herod the Great, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Tradition

Currently States Named in the gospel of Matthew as ordering the killing of the male infants of Bethlehem

According To Christianity

Per Bilde's Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works, and Their Importance (Aarhus University Press, 1988) examines the Massacre of the Innocents, which appears in Matthew's Gospel alone, against Josephus's own first century catalogue of Herod's killings. Bilde's method is comparative source history, and he finds Josephus catalogues Herod's killings in detail, including of his own wife and sons, and does not mention the Bethlehem massacre; most historians, reading Matthew's account against its own narrative structure, read it as a literary parallel to the infancy of Moses rather than as reported history, while a minority argue a killing in a village Bethlehem's size would have been too small for Josephus to have recorded.

Source Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works, and Their Importance, Per Bilde tier 1

Herod the Great, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -73

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

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.) tier 1

Herodotus, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -484

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

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Herodotus, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States -425

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

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Hesiod, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States -750

Hesiod's exact dates are contested. Scholars generally place his active period between about 750 and 650 BCE, with ongoing disagreement over whether he wrote before or after Homer.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Hesiod, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States -650

Hesiod's exact dates are contested. Scholars generally place his active period between about 750 and 650 BCE, with ongoing disagreement over whether he wrote before or after Homer.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.) tier 1

Hesychasm, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 400

Hesychasm's contemplative roots trace to the Desert Fathers of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism from around the fourth century, the earliest period represented among the Philokalia's own source texts, while the practice is attested by that name only from around the eleventh century at Mount Athos, with its doctrinal defense by Gregory Palamas following in the 1330s and 1340s. No single date captures both the deep contemplative lineage and the moment the named, organized tradition emerges.

Source The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware) tier 2

Hesychasm, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1100

Hesychasm's contemplative roots trace to the Desert Fathers of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism from around the fourth century, the earliest period represented among the Philokalia's own source texts, while the practice is attested by that name only from around the eleventh century at Mount Athos, with its doctrinal defense by Gregory Palamas following in the 1330s and 1340s. No single date captures both the deep contemplative lineage and the moment the named, organized tradition emerges.

Source The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware) tier 2

Hevajra Tantra, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition Start Year

Currently States 750

David Snellgrove's critical study, the first full Western translation of the text, concludes the Hevajra Tantra existed in its present form by the end of the eighth century CE. Ronald Davidson's later scholarship places its composition closer to the late ninth or early tenth century in eastern India, while Farrow and Menon's study favors the eighth to ninth century in the Bengal region; the three readings overlap only loosely, and no single date commands agreement among specialists in the Yogini class tantras.

Source The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study (David Snellgrove), David L. Snellgrove tier 1

Hevajra Tantra, Esoteric Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Era of Composition End Year

Currently States 950

David Snellgrove's critical study, the first full Western translation of the text, concludes the Hevajra Tantra existed in its present form by the end of the eighth century CE. Ronald Davidson's later scholarship places its composition closer to the late ninth or early tenth century in eastern India, while Farrow and Menon's study favors the eighth to ninth century in the Bengal region; the three readings overlap only loosely, and no single date commands agreement among specialists in the Yogini class tantras.

Source The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study (David Snellgrove), David L. Snellgrove tier 1

Hezekiah, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Tradition

Currently States Removed the high places and concentrated legitimate sacrifice at the Jerusalem temple

According To Judaism

The Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition (Macmillan Reference, 2007), examines the religious reform attributed to King Hezekiah, reported in Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah, against the excavated archaeological evidence at Tel Arad and Tel Beersheba. The encyclopedia's method is comparative textual and archaeological, and it finds historians differ over how much of the reform belongs to Hezekiah himself and how much is projected back onto him from King Josiah's later, better documented reform, while the excavated evidence, though consistent with a centralizing religious measure, cannot be tied to either king's decree specifically.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.) tier 1

Hieros Gamos, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Standing as a Comparative Category

Currently States Largely abandoned as a comparative category

The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2005) distinguishes what the cuneiform evidence supports from what was built on it: the Mesopotamian sacred-marriage rite is attested in Sumerian hymns and ritual texts and is not in doubt, but the Frazerian generalisation built on it, that a fertility rite of this shape was a widespread ancient institution, has not survived examination of the wider evidence. That a Mesopotamian king physically enacted the marriage with a priestess is asserted by older scholarship and rejected by recent work, because the cuneiform sources that survive are hymns and ritual texts that describe no such act.

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

Hieros Gamos, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within this tradition

The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2005) records that hieros gamos, sacred marriage, was applied broadly in earlier comparative religion to ritual and mythic sacred marriage across many cultures. More recent scholarship, examining the specific textual and ritual evidence tradition by tradition rather than assuming a single underlying rite, treats the category more cautiously, questioning whether the cases grouped under it share enough in common to be treated as one phenomenon.

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